The Blues Traveler song "Hook" is a Peter Pan reference, but also about the catchy hook of the song, which is what "brings you back."
Eric Clapton wrote "Wonderful Tonight" while waiting for his girlfriend, Pattie Boyd, to get ready for a night out. By the time she was ready, he had written the song.
"We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Postal Service sounds happy and fun, but it's a very bleak song about a nuclear winter. Lead singer Ben Gibbard wrote the lyric while ruminating over 9/11.
Al Green's "Take Me to the River" describes a baptism. Two years later, he became a reverend.
On Missy Elliott's "Work It," the backward vocal is the previous line, "Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it," in reverse. She stumbled on it when the engineer played it backward by mistake.
The songwriting team Leiber and Stoller wrote "Hound Dog" for a blues singer named Big Mama Thronton, who first recorded the song in 1953. Elvis covered it in 1956, and it became his biggest hit.
The lead singer of Everclear, Art is also their primary songwriter.
Was a Beatles song a TV theme? And who came up with those Fresh Prince and Sopranos songs?
The man who brought us "Red Skies" and "Saved By Zero" is now an organic farmer in France.
Can you be married in one country but not another? Only if you're part of a gay couple. One of the first famous singers to come out as a lesbian, Janis wrote a song about it.
Soul music legend Bill Withers on how life experience and the company you keep leads to classic songs like "Lean On Me."
How Bing Crosby, Les Paul, a US Army Signal Corps Officer, and the Nazis helped shape rock and Roll.