Ramones | Ramones (debut album) Twenty Minutes, Twenty Songs Sire Records president Seymour Stein was home sick when the Ramones played their showcase, so he booked a rehearsal room the next day. They ripped through twenty songs in twenty minutes and he signed them on the spot, to make the $6,400 album that blew apart […]
The Ramones Spent $6,400 to Change Everything Read More »
Adele | Rolling in the Deep The Take You Can’t Redo The biggest song of 2011 uses a vocal from a three-hour demo session, one that Rick Rubin and a stacked band at Shangri-La Studios couldn’t beat, no matter how hard they tried. The biggest song of 2011, Grammy Record of the Year, Song of
The Demo That Beat Rick Rubin Read More »
Phil Collins | In the Air Tonight The Wait The most famous drum moment in pop history works because of three and a half minutes of near-silence before it, a song built entirely out of what’s missing. You already know what’s coming. That’s the whole point. Put on “In the Air Tonight” right now, the
The Sound of Nothing: How Absence Built a Classic Read More »
Leonard Cohen | Hallelujah The Floor of the Royalton Leonard Cohen spent five years writing Hallelujah, banging his head on a hotel floor in despair, and then his label rejected it. How it got from there to everywhere is one of popular music’s strangest accidents. Here’s the image. It’s sometime in the early 1980s, and
80 Verses, One Rejection, and a Slow Miracle Read More »
ABBA | Arrival (album) Muzak to Masterpiece When Arrival came out in 1977, Rolling Stone called it Muzak and Christgau gave it a C. In 2024, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry alongside Biggie and Green Day. The public never needed convincing, the album outsold Dark Side of the Moon
ABBA’s Arrival Proved Every Critic Wrong Read More »
Britney Spears | Toxic Three Rejections and a Masterpiece Rolling Stone’s #9 song of the 21st century was turned down by Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, and nearly killed by Britney’s own label, and yet it became the consensus greatest pop single of its generation. Rolling Stone’s ninth-greatest song of the twenty-first century was turned down
Nobody Wanted “Toxic” (Then It Won Everything) Read More »
Backstreet Boys | I Want It That Way The Riddle Everyone Knows Everyone knows the lyrics to “I Want It That Way.” Nobody knows what they mean, including the Backstreet Boys. Somehow that’s the whole point. Ed Sheeran put it best: “You can’t be in a bar, a couple of beers in, and ‘I Want
The Song That Makes No Sense Changed Everything Read More »
Taylor Swift | Love Story Twenty Minutes on a Bedroom Floor A 17-year-old Taylor Swift got sent to her room after her parents vetoed a boyfriend, grabbed a guitar, and came back with a song that rewrites the ending of Romeo and Juliet through a single key change. Here’s the scene. It’s sometime in early
Taylor Swift Rewrote Shakespeare with a Key Change Read More »
Stevie Wonder | Songs in the Key of Life The Cowboy Who Almost Left Stevie Wonder showed up to his record-breaking Motown contract signing dressed as a cowboy, just months after publicly announcing he was quitting music and moving to Ghana. Songs in the Key of Life is what poured out when he changed his
Stevie Wonder Almost Quit. Then He Made History. Read More »
Prince | Purple Rain The Song That Scared Stevie Nicks Prince sent Stevie Nicks a ten-minute instrumental cassette hoping she’d write lyrics for it. She sent it back, saying it scared her, that it was too much for one person. She turned out to be right, but not in the way either of them expected.
Prince Wrote a Country Song. It Became Purple Rain. Read More »
