Willa Ford came up with her hit "I Wanna Be Bad" when her record company told her to tone down her music in a effort to differentiate her from Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who were in their "bad girl" eras.
Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" deals with police brutality in the Trenchtown section of Jamaica, where he grew up. He felt that police assumed young men in the area were all criminals.
"We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Postal Service sounds happy and fun, but it's a very bleak song about a nuclear winter. Lead singer Ben Gibbard wrote the lyric while ruminating over 9/11.
Adele's "Someone Like You" is the first song with just piano and voice to hit #1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which started in 1958.
The rockabilly sound was big in the late 1950s, when Buddy Holly was popular. One of the biggest hits in that genre was the #1 "Party Doll" by Buddy Knox, which used a cardboard box filled with cotton as the drums.
The hit duet "Somewhere Out There" was written for an animated film about a family of immigrant mice who lose one of their young.
Rufus Wainwright on "Hallelujah," his album Unfollow The Rules, and getting into his "lyric trance" on 12-hour walks.
Rosanne talks about the journey that inspired her songs on her album The River & the Thread, including a stop at the Tallahatchie Bridge.
Was a Beatles song a TV theme? And who came up with those Fresh Prince and Sopranos songs?
The country hitmaker talks about his debut album, A Rock, and how a nursery rhyme inspired his hit single "One Beer."
Cain talks about the divine inspirations for "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Faithfully."
Richie talks about the impact of "Amazed," and how his 4-year-old son inspired another Lonestar hit.