128 STORIES · TAGGED
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…
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. …
TOTO · 1982
The most famous song about Africa was written by a Los Angeles session musician who had never set foot on the continent. It is really a song…
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…
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…
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…
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 · 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 …
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…
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS · 1983
"Buffalo Soldier" sounds like a sunny singalong, but it is a quiet history lesson about Black American cavalrymen who were taken from Africa…
BOB MARLEY · 1983
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
The sunniest-sounding song in Bob Marley's catalogue is about a Black man taken out of Africa, handed a US Army uniform, and sent west to de…
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 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…
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…
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS · 1980
Behind the bounciest dance-floor groove Bob Marley ever cut sits a stern sermon: stop letting other people define you, stop judging, and ask…
BOB MARLEY · 1980
It plays like the happiest song at every beach bar on earth, but "Could You Be Loved" is a confrontation — a dying man asking whether you ha…
OZZY OSBOURNE · 1980
Behind the most famous stadium riff in rock sits a nervous Cold War protest song, written by a fired singer and his new band, about a world …
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…
PIXIES · 1989
"Debaser" is a two-and-a-half-minute love letter to a 1929 surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou, in which a razor slices an eyeball. Black Fran…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1988
"Dirty Diana" is Michael Jackson's snarling, guitar-soaked confession about the predatory groupie culture that surrounded him at the height …
SIMPLE MINDS · 1985
The defining anthem of 1980s teen cinema was written by outsiders, turned down by several stars, and recorded by a Glasgow band who reported…
CROWDED HOUSE · 1986
It is usually filed as a wistful breakup ballad, but "Don't Dream It's Over" is really a stubborn refusal to give up, written by a broke and…
JOURNEY · 1981
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA
The most-sung chorus in American rock began as something a worried father said down a payphone line to his broke, failing son in Los Angeles…
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…
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…
THE POLICE · 1983
ORACABESSA, JAMAICA
The most requested first-dance song of the 1980s is not a love song at all — Sting wrote it in the wreckage of his first marriage as the voi…
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…
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…
SURVIVOR · 1982
The world's most famous workout anthem was really written about a champion who had gone soft, not a fighter at his peak. It was built, beat …
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…
PUBLIC ENEMY · 1989
BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN, USA
"Fight the Power" was written to order for a Spike Lee film about one scorching day on a Brooklyn block, yet it became something far larger:…
EUROPE · 1986
The most famous stadium fanfare of the 1980s is actually a sci-fi farewell song about humanity abandoning Earth for Venus, written around a …
CYNDI LAUPER · 1983
It was written by a man as a cheeky boast about chasing girls, and Cyndi Lauper flipped it into the opposite: a declaration that women deser…
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 …
WHITNEY HOUSTON · 1986
The most famous song about self-respect in pop history was not written as an anthem at all. It began life as the love theme for a Muhammad A…
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…
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…
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…
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…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
The most anticipated album in pop history was launched not with a dance floor bomb but with the plainest love song Michael Jackson ever wrot…
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…
WHITNEY HOUSTON · 1987
The most euphoric-sounding record of the 1980s is actually a song about being alone. Everything that matters sits in the part of the title p…
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…
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 —…
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…
R.E.M. · 1987
ATHENS, GEORGIA, USA
The most famous apocalypse song in American rock reportedly began as a dream about a party where every guest shared the same initials, and i…
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…
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…
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 …
DAVID BOWIE · 1983
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The biggest, shiniest hit of David Bowie's career is a song about dread, not joy: a dance-floor command built on the fairy tale of red shoes…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1987
MONROVIA, LIBERIA
"Liberian Girl" is Michael Jackson's dreamiest love song to a woman he imagines rather than describes, and its famous African opening is sun…
MADONNA · 1989
"Like a Prayer" is a song that deliberately blurs the line between spiritual ecstasy and physical desire, written by a lapsed Catholic who h…
MADONNA · 1984
"Like a Virgin" was written by a man about the relief of finding real love after heartbreak, and it was never really about sex at all. Madon…
BON JOVI · 1986
WOODBRIDGE, NEW JERSEY, USA
The biggest arena anthem of the 1980s is really a recession song about two broke young people in a shuttered industrial town, and the band a…
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…
METALLICA · 1986
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
The most famous thrash metal song ever written is not about war, Satan, or politics — it is a first-person monologue delivered by a drug, br…
MADONNA · 1984
"Material Girl" is not Madonna's confession of greed. It is a wink, a piece of role-play written by two men and performed by a woman who und…
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…
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…
METALLICA · 1988
Metallica's breakthrough ballad-turned-assault is not a straightforward anti-war anthem but a horror story about consciousness with nowhere …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1988
LOS ANGELES, USA
The most tender song in the Guns N' Roses catalogue is not really a love song at all — it is a plea for time, written by a guitarist whose r…
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…
QUEEN · 1984
Queen's shimmering synth anthem is a eulogy for radio written by a drummer who had just watched MTV eat the thing he loved — and its revenge…
BOB MARLEY · 1980
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
"Redemption Song" is not a reggae song at all — it is one man, one acoustic guitar, and no band, written while Bob Marley reportedly already…
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…
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…
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…
TOTO · 1982
"Rosanna" borrows the name of a real Hollywood actress, Rosanna Arquette, who was then dating Toto's keyboard player, but the heartbreak in …
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 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…
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…
THE ROLLING STONES · 1981
BOULOGNE-BILLANCOURT, PARIS, FRANCE
The most explosive guitar riff of the Rolling Stones' later career spent roughly three years rotting in a tape box, mislabelled as a failed …
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…
GUNS N' ROSES · 1987
The most recognisable guitar riff in American rock began as a joke — a finger-twisting warm-up exercise Slash was goofing around with and re…
EURYTHMICS · 1983
It sounds like a cool, glossy synth-pop anthem about desire, but it was born from a broken relationship, a dead-end band, and a bout of real…
SOFT CELL · 1981
The synth-pop anthem everyone thinks of as an early-eighties original is actually a forgotten 1964 American soul B-side, rescued by English …
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 …
A-HA · 1985
Behind the giddy synth riff, "Take On Me" is a shy, almost desperate plea from someone who knows the odds are against him and asks anyway. I…
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…
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…
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…
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…
ABBA · 1980
A man wrote a breakup song in one late-night burst, and his ex-wife stood at the microphone and sang it to the world. Björn Ulvaeus insists …
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…
CYNDI LAUPER · 1984
"Time After Time" is not a dreamy romance written in a moment of bliss. It was a last-minute song, put together under deadline pressure and …
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…
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…
CYNDI LAUPER · 1986
"True Colors" was not written for Cyndi Lauper, and it did not start as a pride anthem. It began as a songwriter's quiet tribute to his own …
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…
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…
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 …
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…
RUN-DMC FT. AEROSMITH · 1986
On the surface it is a cheeky tale of a teenage boy's clumsy sexual awakening, but the 1986 version became something far bigger: the record …
RUN-DMC · 1986
The record that knocked down the wall between rock and rap was made by two MCs who reportedly could not stand the lyrics they were rapping, …
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 …
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…
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…
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…
PIXIES · 1988
The song most people hear as a hymn to madness, alienation and collapsing skyscrapers reportedly started with something much smaller and str…
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…
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 …
JOHN LENNON · 1980
It sounds like a straightforward love song to Yoko Ono, but "Woman" is really an apology from a man who had publicly admitted to being viole…
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…
BEASTIE BOYS · 1986
The ultimate frat-party anthem was written as a joke about frat-party anthems. Beastie Boys meant it as a sneering parody of dumb, beer-soak…
AC/DC · 1980
The happiest, cheekiest party song in the AC/DC catalogue was written by a grieving band five months after their singer drank himself to dea…