Jay-Z's version of "99 Problems" is a cover of a 1993 song by Ice-T with the lyrics changed to be about Jay's rise to fame.
The 1979 song "Life During Wartime" by Talking Heads deals with how technology could be exploited to take down the framework of society and enable government surveillance.
"Irreplaceable" wasn't specifically penned for Beyonce - in fact, Ne-Yo wrote it more as a country song and had Faith Hill and Shania Twain in mind.
Movie director Michel Gondry played live drums on the Late Registration track, "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind filmmaker happened to be in the studio on a day when producer Jon Brion was setting up a drum kit
The Texas songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker wrote "Mr. Bojangles" after a weekend in jail where a fellow inmate told him his life story.
Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl" opens with the South African female singer Letta Mbulu saying the Swahili phrase "Naku penda piya-naku taka piya-mpenziwe." There was some geographic liberty here, as Swahili is not spoken in the West African nation of Liberia.
Jon Fratelli talks about the band's third album, and the five-year break leading up to it.
It took him seven years to recover from his American hit "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," but Chris Rea became one of the top singer-songwriters in his native UK.
Do their first three albums have French titles? Is "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" really meaningless? See if you can tell in this Fact or Fiction.
What happens when Kurt Cobain, Iron Maiden and Johnny Lydon are told to lip-synch? Some hilarious "performances."
The Def Leppard frontman talks about their "lamentable" hit he never thought of as a single, and why he's juiced by his Mott The Hoople cover band.
The co-writer/guitarist on many Alice Cooper hits, Dick was also Lou Reed's axeman on the Rock n' Roll Animal album.
