Lou Reed's 11-minute "Street Hassle" features a spoken part by Bruce Springsteen.
Kacey Musgraves offered "Follow Your Arrow" to her friend Katy Perry, but Perry thought Musgraves should record the song herself, telling Kacey it seemed "like something that you would totally say."
"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.
Billy Idol's "Eyes Without A Face" has a gruesome inspiration. It's based on a 1959 French movie about a surgeon who abducts young women and removes their facial features.
The Rick James song "Cold Blooded" is about Linda Blair from The Exorcist, his girlfriend at the time. In James' lingo, "cold blooded" means sexy, not cruel.
"Louie Louie" was first recorded in 1955 by an R&B singer named Richard Berry, and his lyrics are easy to understand. When The Kingsmen recorded the hit version, their lyrics were indecipherable.
P.F. was a teenager writing hits and playing on tracks for Jan & Dean when he wrote a #1 hit that got him blackballed.
On the "schizoid element" of his lyrics, and a famous line from "Everything Zen."
How Bing Crosby, Les Paul, a US Army Signal Corps Officer, and the Nazis helped shape rock and Roll.
Can you name Def Leppard's only #1 hit in America? Get rocked with this adrenalized quiz.
Since emerging from MySpace with her hit "Bubbly," Colbie has become a top songwriter, even crafting a hit with Taylor Swift.
Can you be married in one country but not another? Only if you're part of a gay couple. One of the first famous singers to come out as a lesbian, Janis wrote a song about it.