"Spoonman" by Soundgarden is about a real street performer in Seattle: Artis the Spoonman.
It really was so easy for Linda Ronstadt to score a hit with her Buddy Holly cover of "It's So Easy." She would sometimes change the lyric to: "It's so easy to have a hit, all you have to do is recycle it."
The Jesus Jones song "Right Here, Right Now" was conceived as an optimistic version of Prince's "Sign O' The Times."
When it topped the chart in 2012, Dierks Bentley's "5-1-5-0" became the first #1 Country hit with a title that's all numbers.
Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start The Fire" after a 21-year-old told him, "everyone knows that nothing happened in the '50s."
The inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" came when he was worrying about his girlfriend, who was out at bars all day while he was home writing songs.
Bowie's "activist" days of 1964 led to Ziggy Stardust.
Their frontman (Chris Cornell) started out as their drummer, so Soundgarden takes a linear approach when it comes to songwriting. Kim explains how they do it.
On "Life Is A Highway," his burgeoning solo career, and the Rascal Flatts song he most connects with.
The revered singer-songwriter talks inspiration and explains why she put a mahout in "Drop the Pilot."
The leader of the Modern A Cappella movement talks about the genre.
When he was asked to write a song for the Singles soundtrack, Mark thought the Seattle grunge scene was already overblown, so that's what he wrote about.