The first big hit by an X Factor winner was "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis, who won the British version of the show in 2008. The song was intended for Jesse McCartney, who wrote it with Ryan Tedder.
YouTube had to upgrade after PSY's "Gangnam Style" broke their hit counter in 2012. Once the video 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.
When Marc Cohn played "True Companion" to his girlfriend, she thought he was proposing. He wasn't, but he did eventually marry her.
Bruce Sprinsteen said "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" was "the best love song I ever wrote."
The B-52's chose the location of their song "Private Idaho" because the state has a reputation for being wacky and mysterious. The title is a play on the phrase "private eye."
The very American song "What Made Milwaukee Famous" was never a big hit in the US, but Rod Stewart made it famous in the UK.
The man who ran Nirvana's first label gets beyond the sensationalism (drugs, Courtney) to discuss their musical and cultural triumphs in the years before Nevermind.
Shows like Dawson's Creek, Grey's Anatomy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed the way songs were heard on TV, and produced some hits in the process.
P.F. was a teenager writing hits and playing on tracks for Jan & Dean when he wrote a #1 hit that got him blackballed.
After studying in Paris with a famous composition teacher, Charles became the most successful writer of TV theme songs.
Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.
When Judd Apatow needed under-appreciated rockers for his Knocked Up sequel, he immediately thought of Parker, who just happened to be getting his band The Rumour back together.