"Mother" by Danzig is about censorship, specifically the Parents Music Resource Center, which pushed record labels to put warning stickers on albums with explicit lyrics.
The songs on Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster album represent a "fear" of some "monster." "Alejandro" is her "fear of sex" monster.
"Piano Man" was inspired by Billy Joel's time playing at a piano bar in Los Angeles. The "real estate novelist" was a guy who always talked about writing a book, but spent all his spare time in the bar.
David Bowie's "Station to Station" is over 10 minutes long. Bowie was doing a lot of drugs at the time and later said, "I have only flashes of making it."
The White Stripes song "We're Going To Be Friends" is very innocent, but Jack White feared it would be interpreted cynically. It wasn't, and was even adapted into a children's book.
The kid in Madonna's "Open Your Heart" video became a successful songwriter. His songs include Amy Winehouse's "You Sent Me Flying" and James Blunt's "1973."
He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."
The former Dead Kennedys frontman on the past, present and future of the band, what music makes us "pliant and stupid," and what he learned from Alice Cooper.
Brenda talks about the inspiration that drove her to write hit songs like "Get Here" and "Piano in the Dark," and why a lack of formal music training can be a songwriter's best asset.
Doors expert Jim Cherry, author of The Doors Examined, talks about some of their defining songs and exposes some Jim Morrison myths.
Stage urinals, flute devices, and the real Aqualung in this Fact or Fiction.
The Scorpions and UFO guitarist is also a very prolific songwriter - he explains how he writes with his various groups, and why he was so keen to get out of Germany and into England.