Lady Gaga says that "Poker Face" is about her personal experience with bisexuality; being with a man but thinking about a woman.
"November Rain" by Guns N' Roses has a literary influence: The lyric is based on a story called Without You by Del James.
The Simpsons theme song was composed by Danny Elfman, who went on to write music for films like Edward Scissorhands and Men In Black. He had a band at the time called Oingo Boingo, which did the theme song to the 1985 movie Weird Science.
Kelly Clarkson's coronation song when she won American Idol in 2002 was "A Moment Like This," which was released as her first single and went to #1. Every finalist that season recorded the song in case they won.
A live, stripped-down version of "Flying Without Wings" by the Irish boy band Westlife was the first #1 on the Official UK Download Chart. It was recorded in May 1994 at The Globe, Stockholm.
Roger Daltrey stutters the vocal on "My Generation" by The Who. The idea was to sound like a British kid on speed.
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.
Oliver Leiber talks about writing and producing hits for Paula Abdul, and explains his complicated relationship with his father, the songwriter Jerry Leiber.
Iron Maiden, Adele, Toto, Eminem and Earth, Wind & Fire are just some of the artists with songs directly inspired by movies - and not always good ones.
A talented lyricist, Philip helped revive Neil Sedaka's career with the words to "Laughter In The Rain" and "Bad Blood."
You know the scenes - Tom Cruise in his own pants-off dance off, Molly Ringwald celebrating her birthday - but do you remember what song is playing?
The singer/bassist for Concrete Blonde talks about how her songs come from clairvoyance, and takes us through the making of their hit "Joey."