Kenny Loggins co-wrote the Doobie Brothers hit "What a Fool Believes," which is about a guy who just can't accept that an affair from long ago was meaningless to her.
"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" is about a guy Jim Croce met in the National Guard, which Jim joined to keep him out of Vietnam. Leroy went AWOL, but got caught when he tried to pick up his paycheck.
"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour incorporates speeches by John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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.
R.E.M. got the title "Shiny Happy People" from a Chinese propaganda poster.
Paul McCartney wrote "Ebony and Ivory," his duet with Stevie Wonder, after a tiff with his wife Linda. "It was like, 'Why can't we get it together- our piano can,'" he explained.
Dean wrote the screenplay and lyrics to all the songs in Footloose. His other hits include "Fame" and "All The Man That I Need."
Since emerging from MySpace with her hit "Bubbly," Colbie has become a top songwriter, even crafting a hit with Taylor Swift.
From the lake in "Roundabout" to Sister Bluebird in "Starship Trooper," Jon Anderson talks about how nature and spirituality play into his lyrics for Yes.
Country songs with titles so bizarre they can't possibly be real... or can they?
When he was asked to write a song for the Singles soundtrack, Mark thought the Seattle grunge scene was already overblown, so that's what he wrote about.
On Glen's résumé: hit songwriter, Facebook dominator, and member of Styx.