Jeff Lynne sang the word "groose" in the chorus of "Don't Bring Me Down" as a nonsense placeholder, but left it in when he found out it means "greetings" in German ("gruss").
On Missy Elliott's "Work It," the backward vocal is the previous line, "Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it," in reverse. She stumbled on it when the engineer played it backward by mistake.
Sweet's hit "Ballroom Blitz" was inspired by an incident in 1973 when the band were performing in Scotland and driven offstage by a barrage of bottles.
John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath got its title from a line in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic": "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."
Carla Thomas became the first woman to achieve a Top 10 hit on the Hot 100 with a song she wrote herself when "Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes)" reached #10 in 1961. Thomas was just 16 years old when she wrote it.
Newman makes it look easy these days, but in this 1974 interview, he reveals the paranoia and pressures that made him yearn for his old 9-5 job.
An interview with Dr. John Covach, music professor at the University of Rochester whose free online courses have become wildly popular.
With Bernie Taupin, Martin co-wrote the #1 hits "We Built This City" and "These Dreams." After writing the Pretty Woman song for Go West, he had his own hit with "In the House of Stone and Light."
Whether he's splitting ears or burning Nazis, Quentin Tarantino uses memorable music in his films. See if you can match the song to the scene.
Shears does very little promotion, which has kept him secluded from the spotlight. What changed when Cyndi Lauper had a hit with his song? Not much, really.
The man who brought us "Red Skies" and "Saved By Zero" is now an organic farmer in France.
