Pete Townshend wrote The Who's "Pinball Wizard" to coax a good review for the Tommy album out of a rock critic who loved pinball. It worked.
"Womanizer" was Britney Spears' comeback song, going to #1 about 10 months after she was institutionalized to get treatment for addictions and mental health issues.
"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.
Phil Collins' "Take Me Home" is about a patient in a mental institution and was inspired by the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Shaggy wrote his swaggering hit "Boombastic" after learning what "shag" means in the UK.
Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" was originally called "Brown Skinned Girl," and was about an interracial relationship.
The Guns N' Roses rhythm guitarist in the early '90s, Gilby talks about the band's implosion and the side projects it spawned.
Rob Halford, Richie Faulkner and Glenn Tipton talk twin guitar harmonies and explain how they create songs in Judas Priest.
Steve Cropper on the making of "In the Midnight Hour," the chicken-wire scene in The Blues Brothers, and his 2021 album, Fire It Up.
Devo founders Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale take us into their world of subversive performance art. They may be right about the De-Evoloution thing.
How a goofy detective movie, a disenchanted director and an unlikely songwriter led to one of the biggest hits in pop history.
Michelle Branch talks about "Everywhere," "The Game Of Love," and her run-in with a Christian broadcasting network.
