Frank Sinatra was 64 when he had his last hit: "New York, New York." The song pegged him to New York City, leaving Las Vegas to Elvis.
"Unchained Melody" first appeared in a 1955 movie called Unchained. The Righteous Brothers recorded it in 1965, and their version was resurrected in the 1990 movie Ghost.
Van Halen's first #1 hit was "Jump," an unusual song for the band because the lead instrument was synthesizer, not guitar.
The Men Without Hats lead singer wrote "The Safety Dance" after getting kicked out of a bar for dancing too aggressively. The song is literally about being safe to dance if you want to.
Cake lead singer John McCrea says their song "The Distance" is about the "failure of success." No matter how much we strive for victory, we'll always want more, particularly in the corporate world.
The Naughty by Nature hit "O.P.P." doesn't have any curse words, but many oversensitive radio stations played a "clean" version with the word "kitten" edited out, surely the first time that word was censured.
A Soul Train dancer takes us through a day on the show, and explains what you had to do to get camera time.
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."
Faith No More's bassist, Billy Gould, chats to us about his two new experimental projects, The Talking Book and House of Hayduk, and also shares some stories from the FNM days.
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.
Michael tells the story of "Send Me On My Way," and explains why some of the words in the song don't have a literal meaning.
Switchfoot's frontman and main songwriter on what inspires the songs and how he got the freedom to say exactly what he means.