Songs with interesting backstories

Chip Taylor, future uncle of Angelina Jolie, was in a low-rent studio cutting some song demos when he saw his time was almost up, and he realized he had another demo to make -- for a song he hadn't even written yet.

He'd been commissioned by the manager of a band called The Wild Ones to write a song for them to record as a single -- but hadn't written anything yet.

"Keep rolling the tape!" he yelled to the engineer, and began to improvise a song. He strummed two simple chords and spoke-sang: "Wild One... No, that's a Bobby Rydell song... Wild... Wild... What goes with Wild?... Wild... Wild Thing, that's it... Wild Thing, you're my everything... No not that... You make my heart sing... You make everything... You make everything groovy... Yeah, that'll sound hip" and kept improvising for a couple of minutes.

When the session was over, he told the crew, "Yeah, I know it stinks, but I promised I'd send them something, so send it to them."

Patsy Cline's Faded Love

In what was to be her final recording sessions (a three-day period between February 4th and 7th of 1963), Cline laid down a dozen tracks. The first song she completed on the 4th was the Bob Wills swing standard, only she did it in her own torchy style, on which she was incomparable. Her emotional rendering of “Faded Love” is a haunting one, especially the finish of the song when it seems that she’s about to break down at the end, pausing and taking a deep, audible breath before singing the last note. Many thought the track was ruined, but producer Bradley did not ask for a re-take, a prophetic decision considering the plane crash that took Patsy’s life a month and a day after she recorded “Faded Love.” In the weeks that followed Patsy’s death, her distraught husband Charlie would constantly listen to her take that breath at the end of “Faded Love” and exclaim, “She’s not dead! Here she is living, breathing!”

Nirvana You Know You're Right

The last recording before Kurt's death

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Unreleased for years, the song eventually became the center of a legal dispute between Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, and surviving Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, with each party wanting it for a different release. It was also the subject of a high-profile Internet leak, which led to the song being put into heavy rotation on radio stations around the world before its official release, despite cease and desist orders from Nirvana's record company, Geffen Records.

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In May 2020, American director Cameron Crowe revealed in an interview with Stereogum that he had hidden the studio recording of "You Know You're Right," given to him by Love, in his film Vanilla Sky, which was released almost a year prior to the song's official release. "We couldn’t credit it in the movie and it was actually illegal," Crowe explained, "but Courtney Love gave it to us. She said, 'This is the only Nirvana song that’s never been released. Hide it in your movie somewhere.

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Boomtown Rats

I Don’t Like Mondays

I like how Tenth Avenue Freezeout is loosely telling the story of the E Street band and Clarence Clemons eventually coming on board.. Bad Scooter, being The Boss...

Rupert Holmes - Escape

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The song speaks, in three verses and three choruses, of a man who is bored with his current relationship because it has become routine and he desires some variety. One day, he reads the personal advertisements in the newspaper and spots an ad that catches his attention: a woman seeking a man who, among other little things, must like piña coladas (hence it being known as "the piña colada" song.) Intrigued, he takes out an ad in reply and arranges to meet the woman "at a bar called O'Malley's", only to find upon the meeting that the woman is actually his current partner. The song ends on an upbeat note, showing the two lovers realized they have more in common than they had suspected and that they do not have to look any further than each other for what they seek in a relationship.

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Rupert Holmes - Escape

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Ive often thought of this song with amusement.
Both cheaters could be mad but neither have the right. Haha!

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What interesting backstories have you heard?

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we never did find out why billie joe mccallister jumped off the tallahatchie bridge

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we never did find out why billie joe mccallister jumped off the tallahatchie bridge

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And, if you've ever traveled over a bridge that crossed the Tallahatchie, the only way you could hurt or kill yourself by jumping would be if you hit land . . . . Head first.

Decoration Day