363 / 363 ARTICLES
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS · 1996
CHICAGO, USA
The most beloved song The Smashing Pumpkins ever recorded was nearly thrown off the album — Billy Corgan reportedly wrote the entire lyric o…
TOMMY TUTONE · 1981
A power-pop song built around a fictional girl's phone number scrawled on a bathroom wall became so catchy that it caused real-world chaos f…
NENA · 1983
WEST BERLIN, GERMANY
A bouncy, candy-coloured pop hit that is secretly a chilling Cold War parable — ninety-nine harmless balloons drift over a militarised borde…
THE BEATLES · 1967
LONDON, UK
The closing track of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is less a song than a controlled collision of two pop fragments, a forty-piece or…
THE JACKSON 5 · 1970
DETROIT, USA
"ABC" sounds like a sweet, sugary nursery rhyme about a boy teaching a girl about love, but it's really a precision-engineered hit built by …
NIRVANA · 1989
A pop song hiding inside a noise record, "About a Girl" was Kurt Cobain's quiet confession that he loved The Beatles as much as Black Flag. …
STARLAND VOCAL BAND · 1976
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C., USA
The sunniest, most wholesome-sounding harmony record of America's Bicentennial summer is, top to bottom, a song about having sex in the midd…
BILL WITHERS · 1971
SLAB FORK, USA
— In 1971, a 32-year-old factory worker named Bill Withers, still assembling toilet seats for Boeing 747s, walked into a Los Angeles studio …
FATS DOMINO · 1955
NEW ORLEANS, USA
Behind the sunniest piano triplets in 1950s America sits a song about being betrayed and refusing to beg — a man watching love walk out and …
JIMI HENDRIX · 1968
A Bob Dylan parable, written in a Woodstock farmhouse during a motorcycle-accident convalescence, was transmuted six months later in a Londo…
JANET JACKSON · 2001
Beneath its glittering disco shimmer, "All for You" is the sound of Janet Jackson stepping out of a painful divorce and into her own pleasur…
BILLY JOEL · 1982
ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, USA
"Allentown" is really about Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — Billy Joel borrowed the neighboring town's name because it sang better — and beneath i…
GILBERT O'SULLIVAN · 1972
Behind one of the breeziest melodies of the 1970s hides a song about being jilted at the altar, contemplating suicide, losing both parents, …
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2015
COMPTON, USA
A gospel-grade promise wrapped in West Coast jazz: a young rapper from Compton tells a generation in the middle of an uprising that, somehow…
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS · 1978
"Alternative Ulster" isn't a call to pick a side in Northern Ireland's Troubles — it's a furious refusal to pick either. Written by Belfast …
MARIAH CAREY · 1996
It sounds like the happiest breakup song ever written, and that is exactly the trick — "Always Be My Baby" is about a relationship that has …
BON JOVI · 1994
A power ballad that was nearly discarded before becoming one of the best-selling singles of the 1990s, "Always" captures the moment when Bon…
WILLIE NELSON · 1982
It sounds like the most tender apology in country music, but "Always on My Mind" is really a confession of failure — a man admitting he thou…
TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS · 1976
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA, USA
"American Girl" sounds like a triumphant anthem of freedom, but listen closely and it is a portrait of restless longing — a young woman stan…
DON MCLEAN · 1971
CLEAR LAKE, IOWA, USA
A folk-rock epic stretching past eight and a half minutes, "American Pie" is at once a private elegy for the rock-and-roll dead and a public…
SEX PISTOLS · 1976
LONDON, UK
It sounds like a bomb going off, but "Anarchy in the U.K." is less a political manifesto than a piece of gleeful theatre — a young singer pl…
SEX PISTOLS · 1976
LONDON, UK
— In late 1976, four young men from London detonated a two-and-a-half-minute single that was less a song than a controlled demolition of Bri…
SARAH MCLACHLAN · 1998
"Angel" is not a love song, a lullaby, or a hymn — it's Sarah McLachlan's empathetic portrait of a touring musician who died of a heroin ove…
PINK FLOYD · 1979
A disco-tempo protest song wrapped inside a triple-suite concept album, "Another Brick in the Wall" turned a children's choir into a batteri…
BRITNEY SPEARS · 1998
A seventeen-year-old from Kentwood, Louisiana steps into a Stockholm studio and walks out with the song that ends the twentieth century and …
THE RUTS · 1979
"Babylon's Burning" isn't just a punk anthem about riots — it's a warning siren from a band of white West London punks who learned the word …
AC/DC · 1980
A funeral disguised as a celebration, "Back in Black" is the sound of a band refusing to bury itself alongside its dead singer. Released jus…
PRETENDERS · 1982
It sounds like a bittersweet love song about a photograph, and it began as one — about Ray Davies of the Kinks. Then the Pretenders' guitari…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Bad" sounds like a swaggering boast, but it was reportedly inspired by the true story of a teenager from a rough neighbourhood who went off…
LADY GAGA · 2009
A glittering, gothic dance-pop manifesto disguised as a love song, "Bad Romance" arrived at the end of the 2000s as both the culmination of …
ENRIQUE IGLESIAS · 2014
MADRID, SPAIN
A summer anthem that bridged Madrid, Miami, and Havana, "Bailando" became one of the most-streamed Spanish-language songs of the decade. Its…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1982
LOS ANGELES, USA
Beneath the screaming guitar and the switchblade swagger, "Beat It" is an anti-violence anthem in disguise — a song that tells young men the…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1972
"Ben" is a tender ballad about loyal, unconditional friendship — but the friend in question is a rat. It was the theme song to a horror film…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1982
"Billie Jean" is the story of a man being accused of fathering a child he insists isn't his — a paranoid, defensive groove built on Michael …
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
A swaggering rock-pop hybrid that arrived as the lead single from Dangerous, "Black or White" fused Slash's guitar pyrotechnics with a dance…
THE JACKSONS · 1978
A man who can't stop dancing decides his uncontrollable feet aren't his fault — he pins the whole thing on the irresistible power of "the bo…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A masterclass in self-aware celebrity, "Blank Space" weaponized tabloid mythology by becoming the very monster the press had been drawing fo…
MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND · 1976
ASBURY PARK, NEW JERSEY, USA
It is not a drug anthem and nobody is singing about feminine hygiene products — "Blinded by the Light" is a young Bruce Springsteen's verbos…
RAMONES · 1976
In the summer of 1976, four men in leather jackets and ripped jeans walked into a New York studio and recorded a song so violently simple it…
BOB DYLAN · 1963
A twenty-one-year-old folk singer from Minnesota wrote a song in roughly ten minutes inside a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, and within mont…
EIFFEL 65 · 1999
The most famous part of the song was never meant to be words at all — it was a placeholder scat sung to hold the melody until real lyrics ar…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"Bodies" isn't a political anthem about abortion — it's a horrified, first-person scream inspired by a real fan named Pauline, a deeply trou…
QUEEN · 1975
: A six-minute mock-opera that violated every rule of mid-1970s radio programming and somehow became one of the most beloved singles in popu…
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN · 1984
UNITED STATES, USA
: Bruce Springsteen's 1984 anthem is one of the most misread songs in American popular music — a bleak portrait of a Vietnam veteran abandon…
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN · 1975
ASBURY PARK, NEW JERSEY, USA
In the summer of 1975, a 25-year-old from Freehold, New Jersey gambled his entire career on a single song — a Wall of Sound epic about two k…
GREEN DAY · 2004
A mid-tempo dirge that became the unofficial soundtrack to post-9/11 American adolescence, Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" turned p…
LOOKING GLASS · 1972
Beneath its sunny soft-rock shimmer, "Brandy" is a quietly devastating story about a barmaid who loses the only man she ever loved — not to …
NEIL SEDAKA · 1962
BRILL BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY, USA
One of pop's happiest-sounding records is actually a man begging someone not to leave him — and the nonsense syllables everyone remembers we…
PINK · 2011
A power ballad written for the animated film Happy Feet Two, "Bridge of Light" arrived in late 2011 as a quieter cousin to Pink's blockbuste…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1971
MUSCLE SHOALS, ALABAMA, USA
Beneath one of the most joyous riffs in rock history sits one of its darkest lyrics — a song about slavery, sexual exploitation, and forbidd…
TALKING HEADS · 1983
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The title was not David Byrne's idea and has nothing to do with arson — drummer Chris Frantz brought it back from a Parliament-Funkadelic gi…
THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS · 1966
NEW YORK CITY, USA
It sounds like a sunny postcard from the West Coast, but "California Dreamin'" was actually written in a freezing New York winter by a homes…
DEAD KENNEDYS · 1979
"California Über Alles" isn't an attack on right-wing fascism at all — it's a punk satire aimed squarely at a liberal Democrat, Governor Jer…
THE JACKSONS · 1980
It sounds like a wall-shaking dancefloor anthem, but "Can You Feel It" is really a near-spiritual plea for universal brotherhood — a Jackson…
KYLIE MINOGUE · 2001
Beneath the white hooded jumpsuit and the hypnotic la-la-la hook, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is a song about obsession as a kind of beau…
GRATEFUL DEAD · 1970
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA
The Grateful Dead's most notorious singalong is not a celebration of cocaine but a horror story about it — a warning dressed in a bouncy tun…
OASIS · 1995
Closing out (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, "Champagne Supernova" is the seven-and-a-half-minute hangover at the end of Britpop's most fa…
SIA · 2014
"Chandelier" sounds like the ultimate party anthem, but it's actually a harrowing confession about alcoholism and addiction — Sia's own. The…
ERIC CLAPTON · 1996
A velvet-gloved country-soul ballad written by Nashville songwriters and delivered by the most famous blues guitarist on Earth, "Change the …
JIMMY BUFFETT · 1978
CANE GARDEN BAY, TORTOLA, BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
The most famous song ever written about a hamburger is not a celebration of paradise at all — it's the story of a man stranded in one, half-…
SEMISONIC · 1998
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
Everyone thinks it's a song about getting kicked out of a bar at last call — but Semisonic's frontman wrote it about being born. It's a lull…
ERIC CLAPTON · 1977
A swaggering, deceptively simple blues-rock riff that has been mistaken for a celebration of drug culture for nearly half a century. Origina…
DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS · 1982
BIRMINGHAM, UK
Beneath the most joyful sing-along of the early '80s sits something far more frank: it's a song about two working-class teenagers, half-suff…
THE BEATLES · 1969
A swampy, slurred incantation that opens the last album The Beatles ever recorded together, "Come Together" began life as a campaign jingle …
PINK FLOYD · 1979
A six-minute meditation on dissociation disguised as a stadium rock anthem, "Comfortably Numb" arrived in late 1979 as the emotional pivot o…
THE CLASH · 1977
"Complete Control" is The Clash biting the hand that fed them — a furious, joyous protest song aimed directly at their own record label, CBS…
K.D. LANG · 1992
The song that made k.d. lang a global star was born out of an unrequited love for a married woman who did not love her back, and it was writ…
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND · 1996
The dreamy wedding-dance staple is actually, by Dave Matthews's own admission, a song sung from the perspective of a voyeur — a confession o…
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN · 1984
A reluctantly written pop song that became the biggest hit of Bruce Springsteen's career, "Dancing in the Dark" is a study in how exhaustion…
THE JACKSON 5 · 1974
On the surface "Dancing Machine" is a sleek love letter to a woman who moves like she's got circuits inside her — but it's really the sound …
ABBA · 1976
ABBA's "Dancing Queen" (1976) sounds like pure euphoria, but underneath the shimmer lies a quietly melancholic portrait of a young woman's f…
THE FOUR SEASONS · 1975
The most euphoric party record of 1976 started life as a song about the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 — and the ecstatic lead vocal everyone…
LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE · 2017
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
En enero de 2017, una canción grabada en un estudio modesto de San Juan rompió todos los récords de la industria musical global. "Despacito"…
EAGLES · 1973
: "Desperado" is a piano ballad masquerading as a cowboy song — a meditation on emotional isolation written by two young Californians who ba…
KISS · 1976
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA
It sounds like the ultimate party anthem, but "Detroit Rock City" is actually a story about a fan who dies in a head-on car crash on the way…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1988
"Dirty Diana" is Michael Jackson's snarling, guitar-soaked confession about the predatory groupie culture that surrounded him at the height …
PETER FRAMPTON · 1976
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
The most famous question in 1970s rock is not a philosophical challenge at all — by most accounts it started as a hungover joke between exha…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1991
A power ballad written years before it was released, "Don't Cry" arrived as the emotional centerpiece of Guns N' Roses' twin 1991 epics, Use…
BLUE ÖYSTER CULT · 1976
LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK, USA
It sounds like a creepy ode to death, but it was written by a man staring down his own mortality as a love song about devotion outlasting th…
OASIS · 1995
MANCHESTER, UK
A piano figure borrowed from Lennon, a chorus built for a stadium, and a sentiment lifted from a half-remembered Kerouac line: this is the s…
NO DOUBT · 1996
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA, USA
"Don't Speak" sounds like a generic breakup ballad, but it is really a painfully specific song about Gwen Stefani being dumped by her own ba…
QUEEN · 1978
: A breathless three-and-a-half-minute eruption of piano, falsetto, and cosmic metaphor, Queen's 1978 single was initially dismissed as fill…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1979
A trembling, almost-whispered invocation explodes into a four-on-the-floor groove that effectively announces Michael Jackson's reinvention a…
THE HUMAN LEAGUE · 1981
SHEFFIELD, UK
It sounds like a lovers' duet, but it's actually a courtroom — two people giving irreconcilable testimony about the same breakup, with a man…
DOLLY PARTON · 1970
DOVER, TENNESSEE, USA
It sounds like a waiting-for-my-love ballad, but "Down From Dover" is a young unmarried woman's account of being cast out by her family, wor…
MEN AT WORK · 1981
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
The song the whole world treats as Australia's unofficial national anthem is actually a sly protest about Australia losing its soul — a warn…
GARY WRIGHT · 1975
It sounds like a soft-focus seduction or a drug trip, but "Dream Weaver" is a prayer — Gary Wright built it around a phrase he found in the …
FLEETWOOD MAC · 1977
SAUSALITO, CALIFORNIA, USA
"Dreams" is Stevie Nicks' eerily calm goodbye letter to Lindsey Buckingham, written in about ten minutes while the band was falling apart in…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1995
A six-and-a-half-minute operatic lament that became Michael Jackson's biggest-selling single in the United Kingdom, "Earth Song" is less a p…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"EMI" is the Sex Pistols' gleeful revenge song against the record label that signed them, panicked, and paid them to go away — making it pos…
METALLICA · 1991
A lullaby turned inside out, "Enter Sandman" was the moment Metallica stopped belonging to the underground and started belonging to everyone…
RUPERT HOLMES · 1979
The breeziest-sounding hit of 1979 is actually a story about two bored partners who each try to cheat on the other through a newspaper perso…
BUZZCOCKS · 1978
Punk's most perfect pop song was reportedly inspired by a line from the musical Guys and Dolls — and Pete Shelley wrote it about a man, slip…
THE POLICE · 1981
A glittering, almost embarrassingly earnest love song wedged into one of the most cerebral rock catalogs of the early eighties, "Every Littl…
BACKSTREET BOYS · 1997
A Halloween-coded dance-pop juggernaut engineered in Stockholm, sold first to Europe, and rerouted back to America as a declaration of conqu…
TEARS FOR FEARS · 1985
BATH, UK
It sounds like a sun-bleached pop anthem you'd put your hands in the air to, but it's actually a cold-eyed warning about power, control, and…
METALLICA · 1984
A landmark ballad nested inside a thrash metal record, "Fade to Black" was Metallica's first slow song and arguably the moment the genre lea…
THE POGUES FEAT. KIRSTY MACCOLL · 1987
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The most beloved Christmas song in Britain and Ireland is not really a Christmas song at all — it's a brutal, tender argument between two br…
JOURNEY · 1983
A power ballad written on a tour bus at three in the morning, "Faithfully" is one of the strangest love songs in arena-rock history: a medit…
TRACY CHAPMAN · 1988
CLEVELAND, OHIO, USA
"Fast Car" sounds like a love song about young escape, but it is really a portrait of how poverty repeats itself across generations — and ho…
NINA SIMONE · 1965
TRYON, USA
"Feeling Good" was born not as a Nina Simone song but as a Broadway show tune written by two white Englishmen in 1964. Simone's 1965 recordi…
ABBA · 1976
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
A song that began as a Swedish-language ballad about heartbreak in a Stockholm suburb somehow became a global meditation on revolution, regr…
COLDPLAY · 2005
A slow-building hymn for the moment after collapse, "Fix You" arrived in 2005 as the emotional centerpiece of Coldplay's third album, writte…
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL · 1969
"Fortunate Son" is not an anti-soldier song and not even, strictly speaking, an anti-war song — it's a furious, two-minute class protest wri…
LYNYRD SKYNYRD · 1973
Released in 1973 on Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album, "Free Bird" began as a tender goodbye and ended as a nine-minute guitar inferno. It is par…
GRATEFUL DEAD · 1970
It sounds like a cheerful bluegrass romp, but it's the confession of a man being hunted by the law, by two women, and by a devil who is less…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1969
A storm-warning of a song that opens The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed with one of the most ominous guitar figures in rock history. Released …
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"God Save the Queen" isn't really an attack on Elizabeth II the person — it's a furious distress flare fired by a generation of working-clas…
DRAKE · 2018
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a million-dollar music video budget into a gift to strangers in Miami, and somehow the song attached to it becomes th…
THE JAM · 1980
"Going Underground" is a furious refusal — a 25-year-old Paul Weller telling Cold War Britain that he'd rather vanish from public life than …
FLEETWOOD MAC · 1977
SAUSALITO, CALIFORNIA, USA
The most gorgeous song on the best-selling break-up album of all time is a cocaine song in disguise, sung by a woman watching herself become…
CHIC · 1979
NEW YORK, USA
A glittering disco anthem recorded in Manhattan at the peak of the genre's commercial reign, "Good Times" sounds like a celebration but read…
THE BEACH BOYS · 1966
HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, USA
It sounds like a sun-drenched love song, but "Good Vibrations" is really Brian Wilson's attempt to bottle a feeling he learned from his moth…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A devastatingly catchy ballad about asymmetric love, "Grenade" arrived in late 2010 as Bruno Mars's calling card — a song that hides operati…
DOLLY PARTON · 1982
LA GRANGE, TEXAS, USA
It sounds like a gentle holiday hymn, but "Hard Candy Christmas" is really a song about unemployed sex workers walking out of a shuttered Te…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
"Heal the World" sounds like a sweet children's lullaby, but Michael Jackson called it the song he was most proud of in his entire career — …
ADELE · 2015
A piano ballad disguised as a phone call, "Hello" arrived in October 2015 and shattered streaming records before its parent album, 25, even …
DOLLY PARTON · 1977
It sounds like the happiest reunion in country-pop history, but it is really a song about relapse — a woman watching herself surrender, agai…
DAVID BOWIE · 1977
BERLIN, GERMANY
A six-minute anthem about two lovers kissing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, "Heroes" was never a hit upon release — it limped to number 2…
JIMI HENDRIX · 1966
A slow-burning murder ballad delivered with a feline calm that hides a gathering storm, "Hey Joe" introduced Jimi Hendrix to British audienc…
THE BEATLES · 1968
: Written by Paul McCartney as a private consolation for John Lennon's young son Julian during his parents' divorce, "Hey Jude" became the l…
PLAIN WHITE T'S · 2006
NEW YORK CITY, USA
It is a real love letter to a real woman the singer barely knew — a track-and-field runner named Delilah DiCrescenzo — written about a long-…
RADIOHEAD · 1995
A reluctant ballad from a band already plotting its escape from the very sound that made it famous, "High and Dry" is Radiohead's most acces…
STEVE WINWOOD · 1986
"Higher Love" sounds like the most confident record of 1986, but it was written by a man who had spent years alone in a Gloucestershire farm…
DEEP PURPLE · 1972
A song born backstage on a tour bus in 1971 became the opening salvo of one of hard rock's most consequential albums. "Highway Star" is less…
DEAD KENNEDYS · 1980
"Holiday in Cambodia" isn't really about Cambodia at all — it's a savage takedown of privileged, self-congratulating young Americans, sarcas…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
Despite its breezy travel-brochure title, "Holidays in the Sun" is a panic attack set to marching boots — Johnny Rotten staring at the Berli…
EAGLES · 1976
CALIFORNIA, USA
: "Hotel California" is the Eagles' six-and-a-half-minute parable about the seductive rot at the heart of the American Dream, dressed up as …
DRAKE · 2015
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a regretful late-night phone call into one of the decade's most parodied dance moves, and somehow also into a treatis…
BEE GEES · 1977
MIAMI, USA
A ballad written in a French château but recorded in Miami, "How Deep Is Your Love" became the quiet heart of the Saturday Night Fever pheno…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1983
LOS ANGELES, USA
"Human Nature" is Michael Jackson's tender confession that wanting things — the city, the night, the touch of another person — is not a sin …
THE HUMAN LEAGUE · 1986
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
It sounds like a tender apology from a man who strayed while away from home, but the real payload arrives in the spoken middle section, when…
THE KILLERS · 2008
A glittering, synth-soaked existential crisis disguised as a stadium anthem, "Human" asks one of pop music's most ridiculed and most endurin…
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2017
COMPTON, USA
A two-and-a-half-minute earthquake from Compton: a piano stab, a sneer at industry vanity, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning album's opening salv…
JOHNNY CASH · 2002
A 69-year-old Johnny Cash, his body failing and his wife of 35 years months from death, recorded a cover of a Nine Inch Nails industrial dir…
THE BOOMTOWN RATS · 1979
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, USA
The breezy piano anthem that millions hum on their way to work is actually about a 16-year-old girl who opened fire on a San Diego elementar…
THE CLASH · 1979
The Clash's most famous anthem of rebellion isn't a Clash song at all — it's a 1959 tune written by a Texan in Buddy Holly's old band, which…
MODERN ENGLISH · 1982
The breeziest love song of the MTV era is actually about two people making love as a nuclear bomb falls — a Cold War apocalypse anthem disgu…
RAMONES · 1978
The Ramones' most joyous-sounding anthem is actually a cry of exhaustion — Joey Ramone wrote it about being burned out, injured, and trapped…
BACKSTREET BOYS · 1999
A song whose lyrics make no logical sense and yet, somehow, articulate the precise emotional grammar of a generation. Released in the spring…
THE JACKSON 5 · 1969
DETROIT, USA
It sounds like a sugary kid's tune, but "I Want You Back" is the desperate, fast-talking apology of someone who threw away love out of pride…
DOLLY PARTON · 1974
The greatest love ballad of the twentieth century isn't about romance at all — Dolly Parton wrote it as a resignation letter to her boss, a …
CHICAGO · 1976
NEDERLAND, COLORADO, USA
The softest, most romantic record Chicago ever made was reportedly a last-minute filler track written to plug a hole in an album — and it be…
THE JACKSON 5 · 1970
Sung by an 11-year-old Michael Jackson, "I'll Be There" was Motown's deliberate pivot away from bubblegum pop into grown-up devotion — a son…
JOHN LENNON · 1971
: "Imagine" is the song that turned a former Beatle into a secular saint — a piano hymn that proposes the dissolution of nations, religions,…
PHIL COLLINS · 1981
Despite the most famous urban legend in pop history, this is not a song about a man who watched someone drown. It is the raw, half-improvise…
THE JAM · 1977
"In the City" sounds like a punk anthem, but it's really a love letter from a suburban teenager to London itself — a declaration that the yo…
PETER GABRIEL · 1986
The world's favourite boombox-under-the-window love song was reportedly written to be deliberately ambiguous about who is being adored — a l…
GENESIS · 1986
CHIDDINGFOLD, SURREY, UK
Genesis' only American number one began as an accident — a throwaway phrase Phil Collins sang over a riff Mike Rutherford was idly playing —…
ALANIS MORISSETTE · 1996
A breezy pop-rock hit about life's cruel little coincidences became famous for an accidental joke: most of the bad-luck scenarios it lists a…
BEYONCÉ · 2006
A breakup anthem disguised as a logistical instruction manual, "Irreplaceable" turned the choreography of removing an unfaithful partner fro…
KENNY ROGERS AND DOLLY PARTON · 1983
The most beloved country duet of all time is not a country song at all. It was written by the Bee Gees as an R&B number, reportedly with Mar…
LENNY KRAVITZ · 1991
Lenny Kravitz's silkiest, most romantic single was reportedly written while his marriage to actress Lisa Bonet was falling apart — it isn't …
BON JOVI · 2000
A defibrillator paddle pressed against the chest of a band the world had nearly written off, "It's My Life" was Bon Jovi's brazen leap from …
RICK SPRINGFIELD · 1981
"Jessie's Girl" isn't a love song — it's a confession of jealousy about a real woman Rick Springfield met in a Pasadena stained-glass class,…
VAN HALEN · 1984
: "Jump" was the sound of a hard rock band trading their guitars for synthesizers and accidentally inventing the template for mainstream eig…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A debut single engineered with the precision of a Brill Building factory and the warmth of a Stevie Wonder ballad, "Just the Way You Are" an…
RADIOHEAD · 1997
A surreal anthem of bureaucratic dread disguised as a piano ballad, "Karma Police" turned an inside joke from a Radiohead tour bus into one …
LED ZEPPELIN · 1975
: "Kashmir" is the eight-and-a-half-minute centerpiece of Led Zeppelin's 1975 double album Physical Graffiti, a song the band itself often c…
QUEEN · 1974
: "Killer Queen" was the song that turned Queen from a promising glam-rock curiosity into a band that could write hits on their own terms. F…
ROBERTA FLACK · 1973
It sounds like a love song, but nobody in it is in love — it is about sitting in an audience and realising a total stranger on stage has jus…
PRINCE · 1986
"Kiss" was written off as a scrappy throwaway, handed to a side project, and rebuilt by someone else — until Prince heard the result, took i…
THE BEACH BOYS · 1988
ISLAMORADA, FLORIDA KEYS, USA
"Kokomo" is a love song to a tropical paradise that doesn't exist — written without Brian Wilson, by a band twenty years past its prime, for…
GENESIS · 1986
It looks like a global anti-war anthem, but "Land of Confusion" started as Mike Rutherford's private worry about the world his children woul…
DONNA SUMMER · 1978
"Last Dance" sounds like a desperate plea for romance, but it was written for a forgettable disco movie in a single overnight burst, became …
DEREK AND THE DOMINOS · 1970
A seven-minute eruption of unrequited love disguised as a blues-rock epic, "Layla" is the sound of Eric Clapton burning down the temple of h…
CHIC · 1978
NEW YORK, USA
A four-on-the-floor revenge fantasy disguised as a party anthem. Born from a humiliating night when Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were tu…
BILL WITHERS · 1972
SLAB FORK, USA
: In 1972, a former Navy mechanic and aircraft-toilet assembler named Bill Withers sat at a Wurlitzer piano in Los Angeles and channeled the…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1989
On the surface "Leave Me Alone" sounds like a kiss-off to a clingy lover, but it is really Michael Jackson firing back at the tabloid press …
DUA LIPA · 2020
LONDON, UK
— When Dua Lipa released "Levitating" in the spring of 2020, the world was locked inside. The song's funk-pop pulse and disco-revival sparkl…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"Liar" isn't an abstract rant against politicians or the press — it's widely understood to be Johnny Rotten's venomous, point-blank characte…
DAVID BOWIE · 1971
A cinematic ballad disguised as a glam-rock aria, "Life on Mars?" is David Bowie's most theatrical kiss-off to the dreary realities of 1970s…
DOLLY PARTON · 2001
It sounds like a 200-year-old mountain ballad carried over from Britain and Ireland, but Dolly Parton wrote it herself — a deliberate act of…
THE CLASH · 1979
LONDON, UK
— In December 1979, The Clash released a song that sounded less like a punk anthem and more like a transmission from a city on the edge of c…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2008
A teenage country singer rewrites Shakespeare with a happy ending, accidentally inventing the template for modern pop crossover in the proce…
THE BEATLES · 1967
A track that crystallized the psychedelic imagination of 1967 even as its authors insisted it was nothing of the sort. Born from a child's d…
ABBA · 1975
— Released in 1975 as the lead single from ABBA's self-titled third album, "Mamma Mia" is a glittering pop confection about the helpless gra…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
The most famous protest song Michael Jackson ever sang wasn't actually written by him — and its radical message is that changing the world s…
JIMMY BUFFETT · 1977
KEY WEST, FLORIDA, USA
It sounds like a postcard from paradise, but "Margaritaville" is really a quiet song about a man drinking his way through a broken heart — a…
SANTANA FT. THE PRODUCT G&B · 1999
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
A late-career miracle from a guitarist many had written off, "Maria Maria" fused West Side Story romance with Spanish Harlem rhythm and Bay …
DOLLY PARTON · 1977
Tucked inside Dolly Parton's glossiest, most commercial pop album is a bleak Appalachian death ballad about an abandoned little girl and her…
THE POLICE · 1979
A castaway on a remote island hurls a sealed plea into the surf, only to discover, a year later, that he is one of millions of lonely souls …
BOSTON · 1976
WATERTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
The arena-rock anthem that launched a thousand air-guitar solos was actually built in a basement by a meticulous MIT-trained engineer, and b…
STYX · 1983
It sounds like a goofy robot novelty hit, but "Mr. Roboto" is actually a track from a full-blown sci-fi rock opera about a rock star who esc…
THE TEMPTATIONS · 1964
— In December 1964, in a Detroit studio owned by a former boxer turned mogul, a self-taught songwriter named Smokey Robinson handed a lovesi…
MITSKI · 2023
It sounds like a tender moonlit love song, but it is really a song about dying — a woman taking inventory of everything she owns, finding th…
SID VICIOUS · 1978
Sid Vicious's "My Way" isn't a cover — it's an assassination. By dragging Frank Sinatra's dignified deathbed anthem through the gutter, a 20…
THE DAMNED · 1977
"Neat Neat Neat" is two minutes and forty seconds of nihilist street poetry disguised as a rock and roll song — a snapshot of broke, restles…
THE JACKSON 5 · 1971
It sounds like a tender teen-pop ballad, but "Never Can Say Goodbye" is really a portrait of someone trapped in a relationship they keep try…
RICK ASTLEY · 1987
The internet's favorite punchline started life as a deadly serious promise of loyalty — written by Britain's most ruthless hit factory and s…
THE DAMNED · 1976
"New Rose" — widely celebrated as the first UK punk single ever released — isn't a song of rage at all. Beneath the fastest, loudest racket …
BEE GEES · 1977
MIAMI, USA
Recorded in a converted French chateau and finished in a Miami beachside studio, "Night Fever" became the velvet-edged heartbeat of the disc…
BOB SEGER · 1976
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, USA
It sounds like a nostalgic song about teenage sex in the back of a car, and for two-thirds of its length it is. Then it turns into something…
BLACKSTREET · 1996
"No Diggity" is a smooth, swaggering ode to a woman who has her own money, her own mind, and zero need for any man — and one of its biggest …
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"No Feelings" isn't a love song gone wrong — it's a savage satire of narcissism, sung in the voice of a character so in love with himself th…
RADIOHEAD · 1997
A lullaby sung from inside a sealed-off life. Radiohead's "No Surprises," released as the third single from OK Computer in 1997, dresses des…
METALLICA · 1991
A late-night phone call between a homesick frontman and his girlfriend became, almost by accident, the most tender song ever written by a th…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1991
A nearly nine-minute orchestral power ballad released at the peak of hair-metal's last gasp, "November Rain" is the song where Axl Rose stop…
BOBBIE GENTRY · 1967
TALLAHATCHIE RIVER, MISSISSIPPI, USA
"Ode to Billie Joe" isn't really about what got thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge — Bobbie Gentry always insisted that's a red herring. The…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1979
"Off the Wall" is Michael Jackson's joyful manifesto of liberation — the moment a young man who had been a working entertainer since childho…
X-RAY SPEX · 1977
Despite the leather-and-chains title, "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" was never about kink — it's a 19-year-old mixed-race woman from south London de…
LIL NAS X · 2019
ATLANTA, USA
A 19-year-old kid from Atlanta bought a $30 beat online, recorded a song about horses in a closet, and rewrote the rulebook of American popu…
MURRAY HEAD · 1984
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The decade's most famous song about Bangkok is actually a song about chess — sung in character by an arrogant grandmaster who finds the city…
U2 · 1991
A song often mistaken for a wedding hymn is, on closer listening, an argument between two people who can no longer pretend. Born during the …
BRITNEY SPEARS · 2000
A red latex catsuit, a Mars expedition, and a recovered necklace from the bottom of the ocean: in the spring of 2000, Britney Spears release…
JOURNEY · 1981
"Open Arms" is the power ballad that arguably invented the modern power ballad — a slow-burning, piano-led plea written by Steve Perry and J…
SANTANA · 1970
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
A cha-cha-chá written by a Cuban bandleader in 1963 New York, reborn seven years later in a San Francisco recording studio as a psychedelic …
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1983
LOS ANGELES, USA
It sounds like Michael Jackson at his most carefree, but "P.Y.T." was actually a high-precision pop machine engineered by Quincy Jones and a…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1966
A funeral march disguised as a pop single, "Paint It Black" arrived in 1966 as a sitar-laced howl from inside a grieving mind. Written large…
VAN HALEN · 1984
: "Panama" is the most misunderstood track on Van Halen's blockbuster 1984 — a song that sounds like a tropical postcard but is actually abo…
MADONNA · 1986
NEW YORK CITY, USA
It sounds like a bouncy pop anthem, but "Papa Don't Preach" is a teenage girl telling her father she's pregnant and that, against everyone's…
THE TEMPTATIONS · 1972
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA
The most celebrated Temptations record of the 1970s is a song the Temptations themselves reportedly didn't want to make — a cinematic, twelv…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1987
A six-and-a-half-minute fever dream that opens with a wistful acoustic shimmer and ends in a tempo-doubled stampede, Paradise City is Guns N…
LOU REED · 1972
NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Perfect Day" sounds like the gentlest love song Lou Reed ever wrote — and it probably is one — but underneath the sangria and the sunshine …
WILD CHERRY · 1976
STEUBENVILLE, OHIO, USA
"Play That Funky Music" isn't a party anthem someone dreamed up in a studio — it's a hard-rock band's true story of being heckled by a disco…
LADY GAGA · 2008
A synth-pop juggernaut disguised as a casino anthem, "Poker Face" launched Stefani Germanotta into global stardom by smuggling queer bisexua…
GINUWINE · 1996
"Pony" sounds like the smoothest seduction record of the '90s, but its real story is a sonic revolution — a young Timbaland building a slipp…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"Pretty Vacant" isn't a celebration of stupidity — it's a weaponized refusal. The Sex Pistols took the insult Britain hurled at its jobless …
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"Problems" isn't a tantrum — it's a declaration of war on the idea that a working-class kid's frustrations are his fault. The Sex Pistols fl…
PETER, PAUL AND MARY · 1963
Despite half a century of smirking rumors, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" has nothing to do with drugs — it's a heartbreakingly sincere song about…
JIMI HENDRIX · 1967
A two-minute-fifty-second detonation that announced a new vocabulary for the electric guitar, "Purple Haze" arrived in the spring of 1967 as…
PRINCE · 1984
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
The most cathartic ballad of the 1980s is not really a love song, and it was not built in a studio. It is an apology and a plea for forgiven…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1992
On the surface it's a sleek new jack swing groove about a man begging an ex-lover to recall how good things used to be — but it's really a q…
ARETHA FRANKLIN · 1967
MEMPHIS, USA
In 1967, Aretha Franklin took a swaggering Otis Redding blues number about a tired husband begging for some appreciation when he got home, a…
MARK MORRISON · 1996
LEICESTER, UK
It sounds like a swaggering celebration of a player walking back into the room, but "Return of the Mack" is really a revenge anthem about a …
FLEETWOOD MAC · 1976
Stevie Nicks wrote "Rhiannon" after picking up a throwaway paperback novel, having no idea that the name belonged to a genuine Welsh goddess…
JANET JACKSON · 1989
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
Behind its military precision and unstoppable groove, "Rhythm Nation" is a protest song in disguise — Janet Jackson dreaming up a colour-bli…
HALL & OATES · 1976
The most famous song ever written about a spoilt heiress isn't about a woman at all — Daryl Hall reportedly wrote it about his girlfriend's …
GRATEFUL DEAD · 1970
"Ripple" sounds like an ancient hymn, but it is a song about refusing to be a preacher: lyricist Robert Hunter builds a benediction that qui…
THE CLASH · 1982
The Clash's biggest American hit is a satirical fable about a king who bans rock music and a population that refuses to stop dancing — writt…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1979
A glittering bridge between the dying disco era and the synth-driven pop future, "Rock with You" finds a twenty-one-year-old Michael Jackson…
RAMONES · 1977
The sunniest song the Ramones ever recorded was written by the band's darkest member — bassist Dee Dee Ramone, a troubled kid from Queens wh…
DEF LEPPARD · 1987
"Rocket" isn't a song about spaceflight at all — it's a love letter to the glam rock of the band's Sheffield childhood, bolted onto a thunde…
THE POLICE · 1978
PARIS, FRANCE
A reedy tenor voice climbs an impossible interval, a guitar chimes a hollow minor-seventh, and a young trio from London accidentally invents…
NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS · 2015
COTTAGE GROVE, OREGON, USA
The biggest drinking singalong of the 2010s is not a drinking song at all — "S.O.B." is a first-person account of alcohol withdrawal, writte…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1965
A fuzzed-out guitar riff that allegedly came to Keith Richards in a Florida motel half-asleep became the sound of postwar consumer disillusi…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1995
"Scream" is the sound of the most famous man on Earth losing his patience with the press — a furious, industrial-funk duet with his little s…
THE STOOGES · 1973
"Search and Destroy" isn't just a proto-punk rampage — it's a Vietnam-era distress signal from a band left for dead, with Iggy Pop casting h…
TERRY JACKS · 1974
The biggest tearjerker of 1974 began life as a bitter, sarcastic French chanson about a dying man saying goodbye to the wife who cheated on …
THIRD EYE BLIND · 1997
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
It sounds like the sunniest pop song of the late 90s, but "Semi-Charmed Life" is actually a brutally honest portrait of crystal meth addicti…
EARTH WIND & FIRE · 1978
LOS ANGELES, USA
A glittering disco-funk anthem cooked up in a Los Angeles studio in the autumn of 1978, "September" has quietly become one of the most-playe…
ADELE · 2011
A symphonic torch song that turned the private theater of heartbreak into a stadium-sized catharsis, "Set Fire to the Rain" arrived in 2011 …
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A horn-driven pop confection that doubled as Taylor Swift's public divorce papers from Nashville, "Shake It Off" is less a song about haters…
THE JACKSONS · 1979
On the surface it's a pure dance-floor command, but underneath it's a love song dressed up as a party — a man begging a reluctant woman to s…
LADY GAGA & BRADLEY COOPER · 2018
A film song that became a generational anthem, "Shallow" turned a fictional duet between a fading country-rock star and an unknown bar singe…
ED SHEERAN · 2017
"Shape of You" is the song that broke streaming. Released in January 2017 as a surprise double A-side with "Castle on the Hill," it became t…
RAMONES · 1977
Beneath its bubblegum buzz, "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" is Joey Ramone's love letter to the outsider girl who walks away from the mainstream —…
R.E.M. · 1991
ATHENS, GEORGIA, USA
The bubbliest song R.E.M. ever released is widely believed to have taken its title from Chinese state propaganda circulated after the 1989 T…
THE CLASH · 1982
Released in 1982 on Combat Rock, The Clash's most playful single is also their most haunted — a punk-rockabilly hybrid written by a band alr…
PETER FRAMPTON · 1976
It sounds like a spiritual plea, and Bono once told Frampton he heard it as a prayer, but Frampton has said the words were about a real woma…
WINGS · 1976
Paul McCartney was tired of critics calling him a soft-headed sentimentalist, so he wrote the sweetest, sunniest love song he could and made…
SEX PISTOLS · 1979
"Silly Thing" is a Sex Pistols hit recorded after Johnny Rotten had already quit the band — written and sung by drummer Paul Cook and guitar…
BEYONCÉ · 2008
A clipped, hand-clap-driven anthem that arrived disguised as a wedding-reception novelty and turned out to be one of the defining pop record…
OTIS REDDING · 1968
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
Otis Redding's final single, recorded just days before his death in a December 1967 plane crash, became the first posthumous No. 1 in U.S. c…
ADELE · 2012
A torch song dressed as a spy theme, "Skyfall" reframed the James Bond opening sequence as a meditation on collapse, loyalty, and the strang…
PETER GABRIEL · 1986
BATH, UK
Behind the goofy claymation chickens and the brass-band groove, "Sledgehammer" is one of pop's most cheerfully unsubtle sex songs — a former…
NIRVANA · 1991
: A scuffed, sarcastic anthem written almost as a joke became the song that detonated mainstream rock and dragged underground culture into t…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
Behind the slick funk and the gravity-defying lean, "Smooth Criminal" is a frantic crime-scene report about a woman named Annie who has been…
SANTANA FT. ROB THOMAS · 1999
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
A 52-year-old guitar legend, a 27-year-old pop-rock frontman, and a song that nobody quite asked for became the unlikeliest comeback story o…
PETER GABRIEL · 1977
LITTLE SOLSBURY HILL, NEAR BATH, SOMERSET, UK
"Solsbury Hill" sounds like a triumphant anthem, but it's actually Peter Gabriel's resignation letter — a coded account of the night he deci…
OASIS · 1995
Released in April 1995, "Some Might Say" was the first Oasis single to top the UK charts, arriving like a battered chariot at the gates of w…
QUEEN · 1976
: Queen's "Somebody to Love" is a gospel-shaped rock prayer — a single voice multitracked into a choir of one hundred, asking the oldest que…
THE KILLERS · 2004
LAS VEGAS, USA
A neon-lit declaration of identity confusion delivered with dance-punk urgency, "Somebody Told Me" became the Killers' breakout single and a…
ADELE · 2011
A piano, a voice, and a wound that refuses to scab over. "Someone Like You" arrived in 2011 as the closing track of Adele's 21, and within m…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 2026
TL;DR: From "I Want You Back" to "Stranger in Moscow," here is every major song in the Michael Jackson biopic — and the real story behind ea…
SAM & DAVE · 1967
MEMPHIS, USA
In the long, hot summer of 1967, as American cities burned and civil rights anger boiled over, two Black singers from Miami stepped into a M…
DAVID BOWIE · 1969
A folk-acoustic ballad disguised as a science-fiction broadcast, "Space Oddity" arrived just nine days before Apollo 11 lifted off, and it h…
BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS · 1969
Behind the brass-blasting good cheer, "Spinning Wheel" is a hard-earned warning about ego and the cyclical cruelty of fame, written by a Bri…
LED ZEPPELIN · 1971
: Released on Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album in November 1971, "Stairway to Heaven" became the defining rock epic of the 1970s — an ei…
BEN E. KING · 1961
A spiritual rewritten as a love song, "Stand By Me" turned a Baptist hymn's plea for divine presence into a secular meditation on companions…
DAVID BOWIE · 1972
A glittering science-fiction parable disguised as a pop single, "Starman" arrived in the spring of 1972 as the gateway drug to Bowie's Ziggy…
OASIS · 2002
A weary, almost hymnal ballad released into a world still dazed by the events of the previous September, "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" found …
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1995
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
Behind the cold beauty of "Stranger in Moscow" is one of the loneliest songs Michael Jackson ever made — written in a hotel room far from ho…
THE BEATLES · 1967
LIVERPOOL, UK
A hallucinatory dispatch from John Lennon's Liverpool childhood, "Strawberry Fields Forever" turned a Salvation Army orphanage garden into a…
GARBAGE · 1995
MADISON, WISCONSIN, USA
It sounds like a takedown of a vain girl, but "Stupid Girl" is really an attack on a pose — the fashionable 1990s habit of pretending to car…
SEX PISTOLS · 1977
"Submission" is the Sex Pistols' inside joke at their own manager's expense — Malcolm McLaren ordered a kinky bondage anthem to promote his …
BRYAN ADAMS · 1985
Despite its title, "Summer of '69" isn't really about 1969 at all — Bryan Adams was only nine years old that summer. It's a song about the i…
U2 · 1983
DERRY, UK
A martial snare, a chiming guitar figure, and a refusal: this is not a rebel song. With "Sunday Bloody Sunday," U2 took the most loaded poli…
BOBBY HEBB · 1966
"Sunny" sounds like the happiest song of 1966, but it was born from a double tragedy — President Kennedy's assassination and the murder of B…
STEVIE WONDER · 1972
SAGINAW, USA
In 1972, a 22-year-old Stevie Wonder wrestled control of his career from Motown, plugged a brand-new Hohner Clavinet into a fuzz pedal, and …
NEIL DIAMOND · 1969
A three-minute pop confection from a Brill Building graduate trying to outrun his own past, "Sweet Caroline" arrived in the summer of 1969 w…
LYNYRD SKYNYRD · 1974
ALABAMA, USA
A three-chord Southern rock anthem written in 1974 as a pointed reply to Neil Young's "Southern Man" and "Alabama," Lynyrd Skynyrd's signatu…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1968
A swaggering samba-rock confession from the perspective of Satan himself, "Sympathy for the Devil" opened The Rolling Stones' 1968 album Beg…
EAGLES · 1972
WINSLOW, ARIZONA, USA
: "Take It Easy," the Eagles' debut single from May 1972, is the song that essentially invented the country-rock sound of the American 1970s…
JOHN DENVER · 1971
WEST VIRGINIA, USA
— In 1971, a folk singer from Roswell, New Mexico named John Denver released a song about a place he had barely visited, written largely by …
BERLIN · 1986
The Oscar-winning love theme from Top Gun wasn't really a Berlin song at all — it was an Italian-disco architect's studio creation that the …
JOHNNY PAYCHECK · 1977
The most famous quitting song in history is about a man who never actually quits — he only fantasises about it — and the real reason he want…
ERIC CLAPTON · 1992
: "Tears in Heaven" is the song a guitar god wrote when there was nothing else he could do. Built around the unimaginable loss of his four-y…
THE UNDERTONES · 1978
"Teenage Kicks" is a two-and-a-half-minute hymn to adolescent longing recorded by five working-class kids from Derry, Northern Ireland, at t…
DIDO · 1998
"Thank You" is not really a love song about happiness. It is a portrait of a genuinely terrible morning in which almost everything goes wron…
CARLY SIMON · 1971
It sounds like a wedding song and it is actually a quiet horror story about marriage: a woman looks at every married couple she has ever kno…
JANET JACKSON · 1993
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
A superstar known for fierce, militant pop deliberately whispered instead of shouting — turning down the volume to seduce a generation, and …
ED SHEERAN · 2011
LONDON, UK
It sounds like a gentle, fingerpicked love song, but "The A Team" is actually about a young homeless woman trapped in crack cocaine addictio…
SIMON & GARFUNKEL · 1969
NEW YORK CITY, USA
A bruised acoustic epic dressed up as folk modesty, "The Boxer" turned Paul Simon's writerly insecurities into one of the most-recorded Amer…
THIN LIZZY · 1976
DUBLIN, IRELAND
It sounds like a triumphant celebration of the lads rolling back into town, but underneath the swagger it's a sharp, slightly uneasy snapsho…
DON HENLEY · 1984
It sounds like a sun-bleached anthem about young love at the beach, but "The Boys of Summer" is really a middle-aged man's lament for a lost…
DOLLY PARTON · 1968
Barely two minutes long, "The Bridge" is a teenage Dolly Parton's ballad about a pregnant girl abandoned by her lover, returning to the spot…
THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND · 1979
GEORGIA, USA
Beneath the barn-burning fiddle duel sits one of the oldest stories in Western folklore — the deal with the Devil — flipped on its head: a c…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1982
On paper it's a love-triangle duet between Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, two superstars squabbling over one woman — but the real story…
THE ANIMALS · 1964
NEW ORLEANS, USA
It sounds like a young man's confession, but for most of its life this was a woman's song — a ballad about being trapped in a New Orleans br…
VICKI LAWRENCE · 1973
GEORGIA, USA
A comedy sketch actress with no real singing career recorded a Southern Gothic murder ballad her songwriter husband didn't even like — and i…
R.E.M. · 1987
The song millions have dedicated to sweethearts on the radio is, by Michael Stipe's own admission, "incredibly violent" — a cold-blooded por…
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN · 1980
A quiet, devastating ballad about a teenage marriage forced by pregnancy, an economy that takes more than it gives, and the way memory turns…
MEN WITHOUT HATS · 1982
"The Safety Dance" isn't about safety at all — it's a protest anthem written after frontman Ivan Doroschuk was thrown out of a Montreal club…
SIMON & GARFUNKEL · 1964
A folk meditation that was almost stillborn, resurrected eighteen months later by a producer's overdub and a country in mourning. What began…
BRUCE HORNSBY AND THE RANGE · 1986
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA, USA
That gorgeous, gentle piano riff is the sugar coating on a protest song about American racism, welfare-line contempt and the limits of civil…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
Beneath its swaggering, finger-snapping cool, this is Michael Jackson playing a part he almost never let himself play on record — a confiden…
GORDON LIGHTFOOT · 1976
WHITEFISH POINT, MICHIGAN, USA
A Canadian folk singer read a short magazine item about a freighter that vanished on Lake Superior with 29 men aboard, was quietly furious t…
NANCY SINATRA · 1966
LOS ANGELES, USA
It sounds like a flirty pop confection, but "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" is a cold-eyed kiss-off — a woman who has finished forgiving …
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1995
It looks like a stadium-sized protest anthem, but it is really Michael Jackson's raw, wounded howl at every system that judges, brands and d…
ED SHEERAN · 2014
A waltz-time love song dressed in soul-revivalist clothing, "Thinking Out Loud" became the third single from Ed Sheeran's 2014 album x and g…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1982
"Thriller" is a tongue-in-cheek love song disguised as a horror movie — Michael Jackson plays a sweetheart turning monstrous to thrill his d…
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN · 1975
A screen door creaks, a harmonica wheezes, and a piano figure climbs the morning air like a prayer that has not yet decided whether to be a …
AC/DC · 1990
A guitar exercise that mutated into an arena anthem, "Thunderstruck" is AC/DC's improbable second act — the sound of a band that should have…
PINK FLOYD · 1973
A meditation on mortality disguised as a rock song, "Time" stands as the conceptual centerpiece of Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon."…
JANET JACKSON · 1997
It sounds like the happiest dance record of 1997, but "Together Again" is actually a song about grief — Janet Jackson wrote it to mourn frie…
SUZANNE VEGA · 1987
NEW YORK CITY, USA
A young woman sits alone in a New York diner, watching the rain and the strangers around her, narrating ordinary nothing-moments in a flat s…
NATALIE IMBRUGLIA · 1997
The song that made Natalie Imbruglia a global star wasn't hers at all — "Torn" was a four-year-old rock song that had already been recorded …
BONNIE TYLER · 1983
This towering power ballad about devastating, all-consuming love was originally written by Jim Steinman as a gothic vampire love song called…
GRATEFUL DEAD · 1987
SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA, USA
The Grateful Dead's only Top 10 hit is not a sunny anthem at all — it is a battered, exhausted list of everything going wrong, and its famou…
BRITNEY SPEARS · 2003
A three-and-a-half-minute spy-movie fever dream built around a surf-guitar sample from Bollywood, "Toxic" arrived in early 2004 as the secon…
THE CLASH · 1979
The Clash's first American Top 30 hit was a heartbroken soul song hidden as a secret track on London Calling — written overnight by Mick Jon…
GRATEFUL DEAD · 1970
NEW ORLEANS, USA
It sounds like a carefree hippie road anthem, but "Truckin'" is really a tired, funny, faintly bruised diary of life on tour — built around …
OTIS REDDING · 1966
MEMPHIS, USA
A song written in 1932 by three British and Irish tunesmiths as a polite Tin Pan Alley ballad was hauled, three decades later, into a sweaty…
CHUMBAWAMBA · 1997
LEEDS, UK
The bounciest singalong of 1997 was written by a squat-dwelling anarchist collective from Leeds, and it is not a party song at all — it is a…
THE VAPORS · 1980
Despite decades of playground rumors, "Turning Japanese" is not a euphemism for anything rude — it's a frantic, claustrophobic song about ro…
TONI BRAXTON · 1996
The biggest heartbreak ballad of the 1990s was one Toni Braxton reportedly hated on sight and fought against recording — and its author, Dia…
QUEEN & DAVID BOWIE · 1981
: A near-accidental collaboration between two of rock's most theatrical forces, "Under Pressure" became one of the great improvised masterpi…
ALANIS MORISSETTE · 1998
It sounds like a gothic love song from an angel movie, but "Uninvited" is really Alanis Morissette's uneasy letter to fame itself — the terr…
ARETHA FRANKLIN · 1973
It sounds like the gentlest song Aretha Franklin ever sang, but it is really a polite declaration of siege — a woman calmly listing every si…
MARK RONSON FT. BRUNO MARS · 2014
A swaggering, synth-slathered love letter to Minneapolis funk that became the unlikeliest global juggernaut of the streaming era. Beneath it…
ULTRAVOX · 1980
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
"Vienna" isn't really a love letter to the Austrian capital at all — it's a song about a fleeting affair and a haunted memory, written by a …
DON MCLEAN · 1971
A folk ballad written by a young American songwriter reading a paperback biography of Vincent van Gogh on his back porch in the Hudson Valle…
JIMI HENDRIX · 1968
A fifteen-minute studio jam that became the closing statement of the most consequential rock album of the late 1960s, "Voodoo Child" is less…
RUN-DMC FEAT. AEROSMITH · 1986
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The song that "united rap and rock" was a collision nobody in the room actually wanted — Run-DMC reportedly hated the idea, Aerosmith were b…
MARC COHN · 1991
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA
"Walking in Memphis" isn't really a travel song at all — it's the true story of a grieving, creatively blocked Jewish songwriter from Clevel…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1983
Beneath its irresistible groove, this is a furious song about gossip, paranoia, and being talked about behind your back — a young superstar …
SPICE GIRLS · 1996
LONDON, UK
Behind the nonsense-chorus and the giggling is a deceptively pointed manifesto: before a man gets anywhere with you, he has to pass the most…
BON JOVI · 1987
A power ballad disguised as a cowboy song, "Wanted Dead or Alive" is Bon Jovi's most enduring meditation on the loneliness of celebrity, ref…
EDWIN STARR · 1970
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA
The most famous protest song in Motown history was never meant to be a single at all — it was an album-track hand-me-down that The Temptatio…
ABBA · 1974
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
On April 6, 1974, four Swedes in glittering platform boots walked onto the stage of the Brighton Dome and rewrote the rules of European pop.…
QUEEN · 1977
: Released in October 1977 as a double A-side with "We Will Rock You," Queen's stadium anthem arrived at the precise moment punk was suppose…
QUEEN · 1977
: Queen's stomp-stomp-clap anthem was a deliberate experiment in audience participation, written by guitarist Brian May after a transformati…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1987
LOS ANGELES, USA
A snarling postcard from late-Reagan-era Los Angeles, "Welcome to the Jungle" turned a runaway teenager's first night on the Greyhound into …
PET SHOP BOYS · 1985
LONDON, UK
It sounds like a glossy ode to glamorous London nightlife, but "West End Girls" is really a tense, paranoid meditation on class, sex, violen…
SUBLIME · 1996
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, USA
The sunniest sing-along of 1996 is actually a gratitude list written by a man losing a war with heroin — and by the time it reached number o…
MARVIN GAYE · 1971
WASHINGTON DC, USA
— In 1971, Marvin Gaye walked into Hitsville U.S.A. and dismantled the Motown hit factory from the inside. "What's Going On" was never suppo…
PRINCE · 1984
The biggest American single of 1984 is a song about a young man realising, mid-argument, that he has become his parents — and Prince strippe…
U2 · 1987
A six-minute act of architectural longing, the opening track of The Joshua Tree begins not with a song but with a sustained sigh of synthesi…
THE CLASH · 1977
"White Riot" isn't a song about racial conflict — it's the opposite. Written after Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon were caught up in the 1976 …
LED ZEPPELIN · 1969
: "Whole Lotta Love" is the four-and-a-half-minute thunderclap that announced the 1970s before the decade had legally arrived. With its serr…
GLEN CAMPBELL · 1968
WICHITA, KANSAS, USA
"Wichita Lineman" is an unfinished song about a telephone repairman on the Kansas plains that accidentally became one of the most profound l…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
It plays like a love song, but "Will You Be There" is really Michael Jackson at his most spiritually naked — a gospel-soaked prayer asking w…
PINK FLOYD · 1975
A ballad disguised as a sigh, "Wish You Were Here" is Pink Floyd's most quietly devastating song — a letter to a friend who was no longer qu…
U2 · 1987
A slow-burning anthem built on a single, hypnotic bass figure and a guitar that seems to bleed light, "With or Without You" arrived in 1987 …
ERIC CLAPTON · 1977
A languid, slow-burning ballad written while a guitarist waited for his partner to finish getting ready for a party, "Wonderful Tonight" bec…
OASIS · 1995
: "Wonderwall" is the song that turned Oasis from a Manchester guitar band into a generational shorthand, a four-chord acoustic anthem that …
COLDPLAY · 2000
A four-piece band of unassuming London students stumbled into the new millennium with a song that sounded like sunrise filtered through a be…
VILLAGE PEOPLE · 1978
NEW YORK, USA
A glittering disco anthem born from the cruising culture of late-1970s Manhattan, "Y.M.C.A." smuggled queer code into the heart of mainstrea…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1995
A ballad about love surviving physical absence, written by R&B singer R. Kelly out of his own grief — and the first song in history to debut…
BON JOVI · 1986
A power-pop missile disguised as a hard rock anthem, "You Give Love a Bad Name" was the song that detonated arena rock's commercial supernov…
DAVID ALLAN COE · 1975
The song country fans sing louder than any other is a prank — written by two Chicago folk singers who were quietly teasing the genre, sold t…
ELTON JOHN · 1970
PINNER, LONDON, UK
The most famous love song in Elton John's catalogue was written by a teenage lyricist who, by his own account, had barely been in love at al…
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