Yesterday
The Beatles
The melody came in a dream and when Paul (McCartney obviously!) woke up –– next to the piano –– he thought he had heard the tune elsewhere. The unpolished tune stayed with him for months and it went something like this: “Scrambled eggs/Oh my baby, how I love your legs.” Listen to it online as a duet with Jimmy Fallon.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
The Beatles
John Lennon said no to LSD and yes to his son Julian’s paintings for this song. He said: “I swear to God, or swear to Mao, or to anybody you like, I had no idea it spelled LSD.... Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched some stars in the sky and called it ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’. Simple.” But in a 2004 interview, Paul McCartney said the song is about LSD.
Save The Last Dance For Me
The Drifters
A sad fact: Doc Pomus wrote the song after watching his bride dance with the guests at their wedding because he had polio.
Tutti Frutti
Little Richard
Look beyond “A whop bop-a-lu a whop ba, boom/Tutti frutti, oh Rudy”. The initial draft, according to Billy Connolly’s book Billy Connolly’s Route 66, read: “A wop bop a loo mop, a good goddamn/ Tutti Frutti, loose booty/ If it don’t fit, don’t force it/ You can grease it, make it easy.” Go figure!
Summer Of ’69
Bryan Adams
No, it’s not about 1969 or something equally mundane. It’s a reference to the position, 69. In a 2001 interview, the Canadian singer said: “Some parts [of the song] are autobiographical, but the title comes from the idea of 69 as a metaphor for sex. Most people thought it was about the year 1969.” FYI, in 1969 he was 10 years old. Ahem.
Marilyn Monroe sang it for President John F. Kennedy in 1962
Happy Birthday To You
Patty Hill and Mildred J Hill
You didn’t see this one coming! The birthday song that everyone sings has its roots (additional lyrics were written over the years) in Good Morning To All (published in the 1890s), by the Hill sisters. Warner/ Chappell, the publishing arm of the Warner Music Group, claims ownership of Happy Birthday To You and one is supposed to pay royalties for singing it! The case is being heard in American courts. So kids, be aware, be very aware when you sing it.
Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance)
Green Day
Promoted on radio as Time Of Your Life, it was written after its lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong was dumped by his girlfriend who then moved to Ecuador.
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Simon and Garfunkel
So, who is the “silver girl” mentioned in the lyrics. Paul Simon said in an interview: “My girlfriend (Peggy Harper; the two married in 1969 and divorced in 1975) at the time was particularly saddened upon finding a few grey hairs in her brush, lamenting that she was getting older. I wrote that lyric as a tribute and inside joke to her. I don’t know how the heroin connection rumour got started. The song is basically about friendship.”
Like A Virgin
Madonna
The song’s lyricist Billy Steinberg has told Los Angeles Times: “I wasn’t just trying to get that racy word ‘virgin’ in a lyric. I was saying... that I may not really be a virgin –– I’ve been battered romantically and emotionally like many people –– but I’m starting a new relationship and it just feels so good….”
I Shot The Sheriff
Bob Marley
According to his lover Esther Anderson in the documentary Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend,
Bob Marley was an opponent of birth control and didn’t like the doctor who prescribed it. The doctor is the sheriff.
I Will Always Love You
Dolly Parton
It’s Parton’s way of parting with her long-term mentor Porter Wagoner and finding success on her own.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Nirvana
Kurt Cobain’s friend Kathleen Hanna, who was then a member of Bikini Kill, wrote on the singer’s wall, “Kurt smells like teen spirit”. Teen Spirit was a deo for women. The Nirvana frontman, unaware of the reference, came up with the song.
Born In The USA
Bruce Springsteen
Ronald Reagan, referring to the song during the 1984 Presidential campaign, told a gathering in New Jersey: “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.” The rock star denied it and said the song is about the “spiritual crisis” of “a working-class man”.
