Browsing: How the Song Came to Be

For one week only, in the summer of 1972, it was the best-selling, most often played single in the United States of America.

We don’t talk about it as one of the great debut singles, but perhaps that’s because it transcends the normal categories.

Dylan asked her who her new song was about. She told him it was about her ex-husband. It wasn’t, of course. It was about Bob Dylan.

The clean-cut band from Oklahoma chose its name to help stand out from groups that were part of the British Invasion, and scored a catchy single in 1967

The song almost didn’t happen. Michael McDonald’s sister told him it sounded like ‘circus music’ and to forget it. Good thing he didn’t listen to her!

A band records a song about its burning desire to make it to the cover of the leading music magazine. We’ve got the backstory. Do you know who wrote it?

The first single from 1971’s Madman Across the Water is “one of our finest moments lyrically and melodically” and includes Paul Buckmaster’s soaring orchestral arrangements.

This is the first Beatles guitar solo that shreds, and it’s hard to fathom/estimate how many kids decided they wanted to be guitar heroes upon hearing Harrison’s thrilling break.

“The song was something that I wrote watching people in nightclubs. You’d see these dudes go over and start rapping to chicks,” said the band’s Donnie Iris.

They took their band name from a Shakespeare classic, their biggest hit from a real-life incident, and they drove their way up the charts in the year 1970.