The Matchbox Twenty song "3 AM" is about the difficult times lead singer Rob Thomas spent caring for his mother, who had cancer.
Eric Clapton wrote "Wonderful Tonight" while waiting for his girlfriend, Pattie Boyd, to get ready for a night out. By the time she was ready, he had written the song.
The Squeeze song "Tempted" is one of their few with lead vocals by Paul Carrack, who sang the Ace song "How Long" and was in Mike + The Mechanics.
The events described in Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic," like rain on your wedding day, are not examples of irony. Irony is the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning.
"I Wish" by Skee-Lo was the first hit song to use the word "baller" in the chorus ("I wish I was a baller..."). That term pervaded pop music over the next several year.
Barry Sonnenfeld, who would later direct the movies Get Shorty and Men in Black, was the director of photography on the "Rock the Casbah" video for The Clash.
A Soul Train dancer takes us through a day on the show, and explains what you had to do to get camera time.
Dave explains how the video appropriated the meaning of "Runaway Train," and what he thought of getting parodied by Weird Al.
Tom stopped performing Thompson Twins songs in 1987, in part because of their personal nature: "Hold Me Now" came after an argument with his bandmate/girlfriend Alannah Currie.
Did Eric Clapton really write "Cocaine" while on cocaine? This question and more in the Clapton edition of Fact or Fiction.
Rickie Lee Jones on songwriting, social media, and how she's handling Trump.
