"How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" by Marvin Gaye was inspired by Jackie Gleason's saying, "How Sweet It Is!"
Christine McVie wrote "Songbird" for Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album in just half a hour after she woke up in the middle of the night with the song in her head.
The actress Michelle Pfeiffer gets namechecked in the 2014 megahit "Uptown Funk" ("Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold"). When it was released, "Riptide" by Vance Joy was on the charts; that song also mentions her ("Closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you've ever seen").
Rachel Platten refused to talk politics when her "Fight Song" became the anthem for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, a decision she came to regret.
"Sunday Girl" was written by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein to cheer up Debbie Harry after her cat had run away whilst they were away on tour. The gray cat was called Sunday Man.
A one-ton bell was custom made for AC/DC's "Hell's Bells." The recording was slowed to half speed to make it sound like a more ominous two-ton bell.
Rosanne talks about the journey that inspired her songs on her album The River & the Thread, including a stop at the Tallahatchie Bridge.
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.
Into the vaults for this talk with Bolton from the '80s when he was a focused on writing songs for other artists.
When a waitress wouldn't take him home, Jack wrote what would become one of the Eagles most enduring hits.
Pool balls, magpies and thorns without roses - how well do you know your Tom Waits lyrics?
A song he wrote and recorded from "sheer spiritual inspiration," Allen's didn't think "Southern Nights" had hit potential until Glen Campbell took it to #1 two years later.