40 / 40 ARTICLES
BILL WITHERS · 1971
— In 1971, a 32-year-old factory worker named Bill Withers, still assembling toilet seats for Boeing 747s, walked into a Los Angeles studio …
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…
SEX PISTOLS · 1976
— 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…
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…
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…
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…
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"…
NINA SIMONE · 1965
"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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
: In 1972, a former Navy mechanic and aircraft-toilet assembler named Bill Withers sat at a Wurlitzer piano in Los Angeles and channeled the…
DUA LIPA · 2020
— 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…
THE CLASH · 1979
— 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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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 …
ARETHA FRANKLIN · 1967
In 1967, Aretha Franklin took a swaggering Otis Redding blues number about a tired husband begging for some appreciation when he got home, a…
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…
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…
OTIS REDDING · 1968
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…
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…
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…
BEN E. KING · 1961
— In the spring of 1961, a 22-year-old singer named Benjamin Earl Nelson — better known as Ben E. King — walked into a Manhattan studio to r…
STEVIE WONDER · 1972
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 …
LYNYRD SKYNYRD · 1974
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…
JOHN DENVER · 1971
— 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 …
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…
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.…
MARVIN GAYE · 1971
— 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…
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…
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