"Panama" by Van Halen is not about the country or the canal, but about a stripper David Lee Roth met in Arizona.
Alicia Keys wrote "If I Ain't Got You" just after she'd heard the news that Aaliyah had passed away. in a plane crash.
The actor Dan Aykroyd sang on "We Are The World." LaToya Jackson did too, so we know they weren't all that picky.
"Mickey" by Toni Basil was originally a song called "Kitty" by a male group. She picked the new name after Micky Dolenz of The Monkees.
Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" is a country reworking of J-Kwon's hip-hop hit "Tipsy," with the setting changed from a club to a dive bar.
"Cotton Eye Joe" is a folk song dating to the 1800s, but it became a hit when a Swedish act called Rednex did a psychokinetic version in 1994.
When singers started spoofing their own songs on Sesame Street, the results were both educational and hilarious - here are the best of them.
Kristian talks songwriting technique, like how the chorus should redefine the story, and how to write a song backwards.
"Mr. Jones" took on new meaning when the song about a misguided view of fame made Adam famous.
10 Questions for the author of Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces
How the American gangsta rappers made history by getting banned in the UK.
The guy who brought us "Stacy's Mom" also wrote the Jane Lynch Emmy song and Stephen Colbert's Christmas songs.