112 STORIES · TAGGED
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…
PEARL JAM · 1991
SEATTLE, USA
Eddie Vedder wrote "Alive" as a curse, not an anthem: a half-autobiographical story about a boy who discovers his father was never his fathe…
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…
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…
DAFT PUNK · 1997
PARIS, FRANCE
"Around the World" has only one line of lyric, repeated for seven minutes, and that is not laziness but the whole point: Daft Punk built a d…
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 NOTORIOUS B.I.G. · 1995
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
The smoothest, most charming song on one of rap's darkest albums is also its biggest lie of omission — a 22-year-old former crack dealer fro…
THE VERVE · 1997
Behind its glorious swirl of strings, "Bitter Sweet Symphony" is a song about being trapped in a life of work, money and routine that grinds…
THE VERVE · 1997
HOXTON STREET, LONDON, UK
"Bittersweet Symphony" is a song about being trapped — a man walking a fixed path through a world that bills him for every step — and in the…
SOUNDGARDEN · 1994
SEATTLE, USA
The most famous song Soundgarden ever recorded began with a misheard phrase on a news broadcast, took Chris Cornell reportedly about fifteen…
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…
PEARL JAM · 1991
SEATTLE, USA
"Black" is a first-love wound set to music — the sound of a man realising that the woman who shaped him is going to go on and build a beauti…
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…
BLUR · 1994
MAGALUF, MALLORCA, SPAIN
The song everybody half-remembers as "Boys & Girls" is really Blur's "Girls & Boys," and it isn't a celebration of a party — it's a field re…
2PAC FT. DR. DRE · 1995
LOS ANGELES, USA
On the surface it is the ultimate West Coast party anthem, but "California Love" was really a homecoming record: the first thing Tupac Shaku…
2PAC FT. DR. DRE · 1995
CALIFORNIA, USA
The ultimate West Coast anthem was recorded weeks after 2Pac walked out of a New York prison cell, by a rapper who was born in New York and …
NATALIE MERCHANT · 1995
NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Carnival" sounds like a dreamy ode to the bright lights of New York, but it is really a confession: a woman walks the city as a detached sp…
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…
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 …
2PAC · 1998
The most respectable song in 2Pac's catalogue, the one played in classrooms and reportedly on a Vatican playlist, is a shelved 1992 demo he …
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…
NIRVANA · 1991
The most welcoming song in the Nirvana catalogue is really a song about how impossible it is to be welcomed — an invitation that keeps contr…
PULP · 1995
LONDON, UK
"Common People" is not a celebration of ordinary life but a furious rebuke of "class tourism": a wealthy art student who wants to play at be…
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…
RADIOHEAD · 1992
CHIPPING NORTON, UK
The song that made Radiohead famous was recorded almost by accident — a throwaway the band had been using to warm up, which the producers ta…
2PAC · 1995
The most famous mother's-day song in hip-hop history is not a greeting card. It is a confession written by a man in a prison cell to a mothe…
OASIS · 1995
A song Noel Gallagher admits was half nonsense, built around a name he couldn't think of a rhyme for, somehow became Britain's go-to hymn fo…
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…
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…
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…
METALLICA · 1991
A lullaby turned inside out, "Enter Sandman" was the moment Metallica stopped belonging to the underground and started belonging to everyone…
PEARL JAM · 1991
SEATTLE, USA
The riff everyone air-guitars at weddings and sports bars is actually a portrait of a homeless man freezing on a Seattle sidewalk, unable to…
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…
R.E.M. · 1992
The most emotionally direct song R.E.M. ever released was written mostly by the drummer, deliberately stripped of Michael Stipe's trademark …
RADIOHEAD · 1995
CANARY WHARF, LONDON, UK
Radiohead's most devastating ballad started life as something closer to a joke, and reportedly took shape after Thom Yorke watched Jeff Buck…
UTADA HIKARU · 1999
"First Love" is not a song about falling in love. It is a teenager's eerily mature account of the moment after love ends, when you realise t…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
It sounds like a seduction, but "Give In to Me" is really a cornered man's ultimatum — a snarling hard-rock plea about a lover who hides beh…
GREEN DAY · 1997
The song played at more graduations, weddings and funerals than almost any other American rock record is, underneath, a bitter breakup song …
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 — …
NIRVANA · 1993
CANNON FALLS, MINNESOTA, USA
The most famous love song in the Nirvana catalogue is really a song about being swallowed — a man describing devotion as a container he cann…
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…
THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. · 1997
"Hypnotize" sounds like a carefree victory lap of champagne, speedboats and swagger, but it became a ghostly farewell: Biggie was murdered d…
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…
WHITNEY HOUSTON · 1992
The biggest romantic ballad of the twentieth century was not written as a love song at all — Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as a polite resig…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
"In the Closet" is Michael Jackson's sultriest record — a song about two lovers agreeing to keep their desire completely secret — and the br…
GOO GOO DOLLS · 1998
"Iris" sounds like the ultimate wedding-dance love song, but it was written in a few desperate hours by a songwriter who had nearly given up…
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…
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 …
CELINE DION · 1996
Most people file it as a big, weepy nineties love song, but Jim Steinman wrote it as gothic horror — his attempt to turn Wuthering Heights i…
PEARL JAM · 1991
RICHARDSON, TEXAS, USA
"Jeremy" is about a real fifteen-year-old boy in suburban Dallas who shot himself in front of his English class in January 1991 — and the so…
THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. · 1994
CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
The most famous rags-to-riches record in rap is not really a boast about money — it is a thank-you note, addressed first to the people who s…
THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. · 1994
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
"Juicy" sounds like a victory lap, but it is really a letter written backwards in time: a 21-year-old from Brooklyn telling his broke, hungr…
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 …
SADE · 1993
"Kiss of Life" sounds like a slow-dance seduction, but at its heart it is a song about being rescued. Sade borrows the British name for mout…
NIRVANA · 1991
"Lithium" is not Kurt Cobain's diary entry about his own medication — it is a short story he invented about a man who loses everything and g…
OASIS · 1994
"Live Forever" is not a feel-good singalong about friendship — it is Noel Gallagher's deliberate counter-attack on grunge's self-loathing, w…
R.E.M. · 1991
ATHENS, GEORGIA, USA
It is not about God. The title is an old Southern American expression for losing your temper or reaching the end of your patience, and the s…
LOS DEL RIO · 1993
SEVILLE, SPAIN
The biggest party record of the 1990s is not a party invitation at all — it is a sly little story about a woman whose boyfriend ships off to…
ALICE IN CHAINS · 1990
SEATTLE, USA
The song that made Alice in Chains famous reportedly began with a dinner-table remark about veal calves raised in crates, and Layne Staley t…
SANTANA FT. THE PRODUCT G&B · 1999
SPANISH HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Maria Maria" sounds like a breezy summer love song, but it is really a portrait of a young woman trying to stay beautiful and whole in a ne…
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 …
COUNTING CROWS · 1993
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
"Mr. Jones" sounds like a sunny anthem about wanting to be famous, but it is really a drunken late-night confession from two broke musicians…
CELINE DION · 1997
The most famous love song of the 1990s was made behind the director's back, nearly refused by the singer, and the take that conquered the pl…
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 …
BLIND MELON · 1992
The sunniest-sounding hit of the grunge era is actually a song about clinical depression, written by the band's bass player about a girlfrie…
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…
DR. DRE FT. SNOOP DOGG · 1992
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, USA
It sounds like the laziest, sunniest party record ever made, but "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" was a carefully built declaration of independence…
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 …
RADIOHEAD · 1997
ST CATHERINE'S COURT, BATH, UK
The song that made Radiohead sound like prophets of the digital age started as something much smaller and nastier: a bad night in a Los Ange…
BLUR · 1994
"Parklife" sounds like a cheeky singalong about lazing around in the park, but it is really a sly, affectionate portrait of English routine …
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS · 1992
"Plush" sounds like a lovelorn grunge ballad, but Scott Weiland reportedly built it from a grim newspaper story about a missing woman, then …
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
NIRVANA · 1991
: A scuffed, sarcastic anthem written almost as a joke became the song that detonated mainstream rock and dragged underground culture into t…
SANTANA FT. ROB THOMAS · 1999
"Smooth" sounds like a sultry summer seduction, but at its heart it is a young rock singer's love letter to his Puerto Rican wife, wrapped a…
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…
SANTANA FT. ROB THOMAS · 1999
EAST HARLEM (SPANISH HARLEM), NEW YORK CITY, USA
The biggest hit of Carlos Santana's life began as a sleazy song about a hotel room tryst called "Room 17," was rewritten into a love letter …
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…
BLUR · 1997
The two-minute scream that made Blur famous in America was never meant to be taken seriously — it is widely understood as a cartoon of the l…
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…
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…
MARILYN MANSON · 1995
Marilyn Manson barely changed a word of Eurythmics' 1983 synth-pop hit. He changed the tempo, the texture and the face singing it, and that …
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…
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…
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 …
CELINE DION · 1993
The song that made Celine Dion a superstar in America was already nearly a decade old, written in Germany by an American singer about her se…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS · 1991
LOS ANGELES, USA
"Under the Bridge" is usually filed away as a heroin song, but it is really a lonely sober man's love letter to Los Angeles, the only compan…
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…
MADONNA · 1990
HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Vogue" sounds like a glossy invitation to strike a pose, but underneath it is a tribute to the Black and Latino queer ballroom scene of Har…
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…
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…
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…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 1991
On the surface it is a jealous man demanding to know the name of his rival, but "Who Is It" is really about the far colder discovery underne…
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…
SCORPIONS · 1990
GORKY PARK, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
A German hard rock band with a reputation for leather, volume and lust wrote the gentlest song of their career after a night in Moscow, and …
OASIS · 1995
: "Wonderwall" is the song that turned Oasis from a Manchester guitar band into a generational shorthand, a four-chord acoustic anthem that …
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…