
"Paper Planes" was inspired by M.I.A.'s hassles trying to get a visa to enter America.

Britney Spears was just 16 when her first single, "Baby One More Time," was released. She quickly became a top search term on something called The Internet.

"Dark Fantasy" by Kanye West opens with a reinterpretation of Cinderella as read by Nicki Minaj.

The first release of "The Sound Of Silence" was acoustic, and went nowhere. It became Simon & Garfunkel's first hit when a producer at their label overdubbed it with electric instruments.

Robert Smith doesn't license Cure songs for commercials, but he made an exception in 2004 when he let Hewlett-Packard use "Pictures Of You." He needed the money to buy the group's back catalogue.

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.
Songwriters have used cards and card games to make sense of heartache, togetherness, and even Gonorrhea.
Dan cracked the Top 40 with "Ritual," then went to India and spent 2 hours with the Dalai Lama.
P.F. was a teenager writing hits and playing on tracks for Jan & Dean when he wrote a #1 hit that got him blackballed.
Wes Edwards takes us behind the scenes of videos he shot for Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley and Chase Bryant. The train was real - the airplane was not.
Have you got the smarts to know which of these graduation song stories are real?