Shaggy wrote his swaggering hit "Boombastic" after learning what "shag" means in the UK.
"Mr. Roboto" by Styx was written by their keyboard player, Dennis DeYoung, who used Japanese words and imagery to create an allegory about censorship.
"Jessie's Girl" was the #1 song in America when MTV went on the air. They put it in hot rotation right away, making the song even more popular.
Elvis Costello says "Everyday I Write The Book" is a knockoff of Nick Lowe's "When I Write the Book."
Dido helped shut down a Neo-Nazi Web site after learning it was using "White Flag" to promote its hateful messages. Owners of the site had misinterpreted the track as racist and thought they represented their white supremacy views.
Meghan Trainor and her producer Kevin Kadish wrote "All About That Bass" for another artist to record, but after Epic Records boss LA Reid heard Meghan play a demo of the song on a ukulele, he signed her to his label and told her she should sing it.
When Dave recorded the first version of the song with his group the Blasters, producer Nick Lowe gave him some life-changing advice.
The Bush frontman on where he finds inspiration for lyrics, if his "machine head" is a guitar tuner, and the stories behind songs from the album The Kingdom.
Harry Wayne Casey tells the stories behind KC and The Sunshine Band hits like "Get Down Tonight," "That's The Way (I Like It)," and "Give It Up."
Nick made some of the biggest videos on MTV, including "The Final Countdown," "Heaven" and "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)."
Armed with a childhood spent devouring books, Mike Scott's heart was stolen by the punk rock scene of 1977. Not surprisingly, he would go on to become the most literate of rockers.
