"Hot n Cold" by Katy Perry is about a real guy - an ex who would seem really interested at times but would then just disappear.
The setting for the Queensrÿche song "Jet City Woman" is Seattle, the "jet city."
The guy who wrote Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart" owns a collection of famous baseballs, including the one that went through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series.
In Gary Numan's "Cars," the message is that cars lead to a mechanical society devoid of personal interaction. This didn't stop automakers from using it in commercials. Both Nissan and Oldsmobile have used it in ads.
"Walking on a Thin Line" by Huey Lewis and the News is about an American soldier who is trained as a sniper in the Vietnam War. It was written for a documentary on the war.
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is based on billboards John Lennon and Yoko Ono posted two years earlier declaring "War Is Over! If You Want It."
U2, Carly Simon, Joanna Newsom, Brian Wilson and Fiona Apple have all gone to Van Dyke Parks to make their songs exceptional.
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.
He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."
Soul music legend Bill Withers on how life experience and the company you keep leads to classic songs like "Lean On Me."
One of the first successful female singer-songwriters, Janis had her first hit in 1967 at age 15.
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.