Sarah McLachlan's "Possession" contains passages from letters a stalker sent her. He sued her for $250,000 and committed suicide before the trial.
Rihanna was Pitbull's first choice to sing on "Timber," but she wasn't available at the time so he enlisted his RCA labelmate Kesha instead.
It really was so easy for Linda Ronstadt to score a hit with her Buddy Holly cover of "It's So Easy." She would sometimes change the lyric to: "It's so easy to have a hit, all you have to do is recycle it."
ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson conceived "Dancing Queen" as a dance song with the working title "Boogaloo," drawing inspiration from the 1974 George McCrae disco hit "Rock Your Baby." Their manager Stig Anderson came up with the title "Dancing Queen."
"Cotton Eye Joe" is a folk song dating to the 1800s, but it became a hit when a Swedish act called Rednex did a psychokinetic version in 1994.
Feist's "1234" is "about lost love, and the hope to recapture what you once had," but it's best known for the Sesame Street version about counting to four.
Wolfgang Van Halen breaks down the songs on his debut album, Mammoth WVH, and names the definitive Van Halen songs from the Sammy and Dave eras.
The lead singer/lyricist of The Beach Boys talks about coming up with the words for "Good Vibrations," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Kokomo" and other classic songs.
In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.
Howard explains his positive songwriting method and how uplifting songs can carry a deeper message.
What happens when Kurt Cobain, Iron Maiden and Johnny Lydon are told to lip-synch? Some hilarious "performances."
Was Long Tall Sally a cross-dresser? Did he really set his piano on fire? See if you know the real stories about one of rock's greatest innovators.