181 STORIES · TAGGED
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1973
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
The Stones' most tender ballad was reportedly written by Keith Richards on an acoustic guitar while he was drying out in a Swiss clinic, and…
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…
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 …
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…
LED ZEPPELIN · 1971
HEADLEY, HAMPSHIRE, UK
The swaggering riff that opens Led Zeppelin's fourth album was engineered on purpose to be impossible to dance to, and it is named after an …
SANTANA · 1970
The song the world hears as the ultimate Latin-rock anthem was written two years earlier by a shy English blues guitarist, Peter Green of Fl…
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…
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…
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…
EARTH WIND & FIRE · 1979
Beneath its glittering horns and party-starting strings, "Boogie Wonderland" is a song about people who go dancing because they are hurting,…
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…
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 …
PINK FLOYD · 1973
LONDON, UK
It sounds like the most relaxing song ever recorded, but "Breathe" is a warning: a set of instructions handed to someone at the start of lif…
SIMON & GARFUNKEL · 1970
The most comforting song in the American songbook was written by a man who was quietly falling out with his best friend, and handed to that …
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…
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…
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…
DAVID BOWIE · 1972
LONDON, UK
The song now treated as David Bowie's personal manifesto was, by his own reported account, closer to a throwaway cabaret pastiche, and it fl…
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-…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
LIPPS INC. · 1979
MINNEAPOLIS, USA
Behind the most relentlessly cheerful disco riff ever pressed to vinyl is a restless homesick-in-reverse confession: a Minneapolis songwrite…
FLEETWOOD MAC · 1976
It sounds like a joyful, fist-pumping anthem of freedom, but "Go Your Own Way" is really Lindsey Buckingham's bitter, wounded goodbye to Ste…
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…
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…
ANTÔNIO CARLOS JOBIM · 1972
It sounds like a breezy list of random things, a stick, a stone, a road, but "Águas de Março" is the end-of-summer floods in Rio turned into…
PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS · 1973
"Helen Wheels" is not about a woman at all. It is a love song to Paul McCartney's battered Land Rover and to the long drive from his remote …
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…
STEVIE WONDER · 1973
"Higher Ground" is a funk song about reincarnation and getting another chance at life. Stevie Wonder wrote it in a few hours, and a few mont…
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…
AC/DC · 1979
FREMANTLE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIA
The song that got AC/DC branded as satanists is actually a complaint about their job: the endless, grinding, sleep-deprived slog of touring.…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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 …
GLORIA GAYNOR · 1978
The biggest breakup anthem in pop history started life as a throwaway B-side, sung by a woman in a back brace who had just been dropped into…
STEVIE WONDER · 1976
Beneath one of the funkiest grooves ever recorded is a grown man confessing that he misses being a naughty kid: the scoldings, the petty cri…
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,…
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…
STEVIE WONDER · 1976
The song couples sway to at weddings is not a love song to a woman at all. It is a father's giddy announcement about his newborn daughter, A…
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…
BOB DYLAN · 1973
It is not a general-purpose hymn about mortality — Dylan wrote it as a specific death scene for a Sam Peckinpah western, the dying words of …
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…
THE BEATLES · 1970
LONDON, UK
The world hears a hymn, but Paul McCartney wrote it after dreaming about his mother Mary, who had died of cancer when he was fourteen. The m…
MARVIN GAYE · 1973
The most famous seduction song ever recorded reportedly began life as a song about spiritual recovery and getting on with living, and Marvin…
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…
STEVIE WONDER · 1973
NEW YORK CITY, USA
Behind a funky groove, "Living for the City" is a seven-minute short film for the ears: it follows a Black family's hard-won dignity in Miss…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS · 1973
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA
The most famous train in soul music started life as a plane to Houston, inspired by a casual phone call with a young Farrah Fawcett. In Glad…
ABBA · 1976
It sounds like a cheerful anthem to getting rich, but "Money, Money, Money" is really a minor-key lament about a woman trapped in drudgery, …
PINK FLOYD · 1973
"Money" is not a protest song against greed so much as a piece of ventriloquism, with Roger Waters sneering in the voice of the man who alre…
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…
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…
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…
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…
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS · 1974
TRENCHTOWN, KINGSTON, JAMAICA
It is not a breakup song and it is not about avoiding women. "No Woman No Cry" is a man comforting the woman he loves, telling her not to we…
BOB MARLEY · 1975
TRENCH TOWN, KINGSTON, JAMAICA
It is not a shrug about avoiding women, and it is not really a love song either. "No Woman, No Cry" is Bob Marley sitting with someone in gr…
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…
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS · 1977
"One Love" sounds like a sunny invitation to hold hands, but it was written by a young man from a violent Kingston ghetto and re-recorded in…
BOB MARLEY · 1977
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
The world's gentlest peace anthem was written in a city where political gunmen were killing each other in the streets, and its most famous v…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
THE SUGARHILL GANG · 1979
ENGLEWOOD, NEW JERSEY, USA
The record that introduced hip-hop to the world was made by three men who were mostly unknown on the Bronx scene, assembled in a hurry by 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…
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…
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…
LYNN ANDERSON · 1970
"Rose Garden" sounds like a sunny love song, but it is really a polite refusal to sell fairy tales: the singer tells her partner that life t…
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…
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 …
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…
JAMES BROWN · 1970
Despite the title, "Sex Machine" is less a song about sex than a song about a band: it is the sound of James Brown rebuilding his group from…
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…
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 —…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1979
The most devastating ballad Michael Jackson ever sang was not his song, was not written for him, and was never meant to end in tears — Quinc…
PINK FLOYD · 1975
ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, LONDON, UK
Pink Floyd's 26-minute elegy is a letter to Syd Barrett, the founder they had quietly edged out seven years earlier. The eeriest part of the…
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…
STEVIE WONDER · 1976
"Sir Duke" sounds like a pure party record, but it is really a thank-you letter from one generation of Black American genius to another: a e…
DEEP PURPLE · 1972
MONTREUX, SWITZERLAND
The most famous riff in rock is attached to a piece of straight news reporting: on 4 December 1971 a concert hall on Lake Geneva burned down…
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…
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…
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…
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…
BEE GEES · 1977
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
Beneath the glitter and the strut, "Stayin' Alive" is a song about scraping by: a working-class man in a broke, battered 1970s New York usin…
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 …
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 …
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…
ABBA · 1977
Behind one of the most joyful choruses in pop sits a song about being second choice, a cheerful, almost shameless pitch from someone who kno…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS · 1977
The world's gentlest reassurance song was written by a man who had just been shot in his own home. "Three Little Birds" isn't naive cheerful…
BOB MARLEY · 1977
KINGSTON (56 HOPE ROAD), JAMAICA
The sunniest song in the Bob Marley catalogue was written and released by a man who had recently been shot in his own home and was living in…
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 …
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."…
AC/DC · 1975
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
"T.N.T." sounds like pure swaggering nonsense, but it is really Bon Scott's criminal record set to a two-chord stomp — a man who had been wr…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
MARVIN GAYE · 1971
The most famous protest song in soul history isn't angry. It is a worried, tender conversation with a family and a country, sparked by a rio…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
VILLAGE PEOPLE · 1978
On its face, "Y.M.C.A." is a cheerful invitation to a young man down on his luck to find a bed, a meal and some friends at the local Christi…
AL STEWART · 1976
The most seductive soft-rock hit of 1976 did not begin as a song about an exotic romance at all. It started life as a portrait of a collapsi…
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…
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…
DAVID BOWIE · 1972
LONDON, UK
The most famous song about a rock star is not sung by the rock star. It is told by one of his sidemen, in the past tense, with envy curdling…