"The Rubberband Man" is a "short, fat guy" with rhythm and grace. Spinners producer Thom Bell wrote it to boost the self-esteem of his rotund son.
The melody to "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream, but the lyrics he had to write consciously. His first attempt at the title was "Scrabble Eggs."
YouTube were forced into an upgrade after PSY's "Gangnam Style" broke the video-sharing website's hit counter. Once the tune reached 2,147,483,647 views, the maximum positive value for a 32-bit signed binary integer in computing, the view-counter could no longer work.
The death of John Lennon was an influence on the Stevie Nicks hit "Edge Of Seventeen." He's the one with the "words of a poet and voice from a choir."
"The Night Chicago Died" was written and recorded by the British group Paper Lace. They talk about Al Capone in the song, but got a lot of details wrong - understandable since they wrote it based on gangster movies.
One of the first hit songs used in a major marketing campaign was "Start Me Up" by The Rolling Stones. Microsoft paid $3 million to use it in commercials for Windows '95.
How a goofy detective movie, a disenchanted director and an unlikely songwriter led to one of the biggest hits in pop history.
A talented lyricist, Philip helped revive Neil Sedaka's career with the words to "Laughter In The Rain" and "Bad Blood."
Test your metal - Priest, Maiden, and Beavis and Butt-head show up in this one.
Joe talks about the challenges of of making a Duke Ellington tribute album, and tells the stories behind some of his hits.