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How Dionne Warwick Made ‘Heartbreaker’: The Hit She Didn’t Like, and Cried All the Way to the Bank
The partnership began with a job interview of sorts. Clive Davis had spent three years rebuilding Warwick at Arista: he had signed her in 1979, paired her with Barry Manilow as producer, and watched the resulting album Dionne go platinum and its signature ballad, “I’ll Never Love This Way Again”, carry her to the Grammy…
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How Dolly Parton Made ‘Coat of Many Colors’: The Rag Coat Her Mother Sewed Into a Signature Song
Dolly Parton has written thousands of songs, and she has never hesitated when asked to name her favorite. It is not the plea of Jolene, or the goodbye that became I Will Always Love You. It is a three-minute song about a winter coat sewn from rags — a coat her mother made because the…
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How Diana Ross Made ‘Chain Reaction’: The Supremes Record the Bee Gees Were Afraid to Play Her
By 1985, the Bee Gees had become the most bankable ghostwriters in pop. Frozen out of American radio by the anti-disco backlash, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had reinvented themselves as a songwriting and production service for other people’s voices: Barbra Streisand’s Guilty, Dionne Warwick’s Heartbreaker, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s “Islands in the Stream”.…
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How Deep Purple Made ‘Woman from Tokyo’: The Love Song to a Country They Had Never Seen
In July 1972, Deep Purple were installed in a rented villa outside Rome, supposedly to record the follow-up to Machine Head, and by almost every account the sessions were a shambles. The band had been touring almost without pause for two years. They were exhausted, several of them had been ill, and the two men…
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How Dan Fogelberg Made ‘Run for the Roses’: The Two-Day Song That Became the Kentucky Derby’s Anthem
In the spring of 1980, ABC Sports had a problem of tone. The network was preparing its telecast of the 106th Kentucky Derby, and it wanted a song — something that could carry the romance of the race into American living rooms on the night before the gates opened. The call went to Dan Fogelberg,…
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How Dean Martin Made ‘Ain’t That a Kick in the Head’: The Movie Throwaway That Became His Signature Swing
Some signature songs announce themselves. Ain’t That a Kick in the Head crept in. It was written to order for a Las Vegas heist movie, sung by Dean Martin in the film almost as an aside, released as a single that went nowhere in the summer of 1960 — and then simply refused to go…
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How Cyndi Lauper Made ‘I Drove All Night’: The Orbison Song She Drove to the Top Ten First
On paper, it was a mismatch. The song had been written for the most dramatic voice in American pop — Roy Orbison, all opera and heartbreak — and Orbison had already recorded it, two years earlier, in a home studio in California. But Orbison was gone, his version sat unreleased, and when I Drove All…
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How David Bowie Made ‘Let’s Dance’: The Folk Song Nile Rodgers Turned Into His Biggest Hit
When David Bowie first played Let’s Dance for Nile Rodgers, it did not sound like a hit, and it certainly did not sound like a dance record. The two men were at Bowie’s home in Switzerland in late 1982, and Bowie sat down with a twelve-string guitar that had only six strings on it and…
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How Connie Francis Made ‘Stupid Cupid’: The Song Neil Sedaka Was Afraid to Play Her
In the spring of 1958, Connie Francis — born Concetta Franconero in Newark, New Jersey — had finally done the impossible, and it had bought her almost no safety at all. After nearly three years of failed singles for MGM — a run so discouraging that the label had nearly let her go — her…
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How Chic Made ‘I Want Your Love’: The Dream Melody That Nearly Belonged to Sister Sledge
In the winter of 1978, Chic were the most elegant hit machine in disco. Their second album, C’est Chic, contained Le Freak, the biggest-selling single in Atlantic Records’ history, and the world’s dancefloors had surrendered. Yet when musicians argue about the band’s finest record, many of them walk straight past the hit and choose the…