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Sweet Caroline: The Secret Kennedy Girl and the Song That Belongs to Boston
“Sweet Caroline”: The Secret Kennedy Girl and the Song That Belongs to Boston It happens at every Boston Red Sox home game, in the middle of the eighth inning, as regular as the tide. The music starts — that bright, unmistakable intro — and 37,000 people rise as one. They sing every word. They punch…
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Like a Rolling Stone: Six Minutes That Broke Every Rule in the Book
“Like a Rolling Stone”: Six Minutes That Broke Every Rule in the Book It was late on a summer night in 1965, and the most exclusive dance floor in Manhattan was losing its mind over a record that didn’t officially exist. The club was Arthur, a newly opened discotheque in Midtown packed with celebrities, models,…
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Born in the U.S.A.: The Protest Song America Mistook for an Anthem
“Born in the U.S.A.”: The Protest Song America Mistook for an Anthem On the evening of September 19, 1984, Ronald Reagan stood before a cheering crowd in Hammonton, New Jersey, and borrowed somebody else’s glory. The presidential campaign was in full swing, and Reagan’s speechwriters had spotted an opportunity: the biggest rock star in America,…
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Respect: The Valentine’s Day Session That Changed Everything
Respect: The Valentine’s Day Session That Changed Everything On Valentine’s Day, 1967 — February 14, a Tuesday — Aretha Franklin walked into Atlantic Studios in New York City, sat down at the piano, and asked her producer a question: “What’s the next song?” The engineer, Tom Dowd, told her the plan. Aretha started singing it…
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I’m Coming Out: The Anthem Diana Ross Was Afraid to Release
I’m Coming Out: The Anthem Diana Ross Was Afraid to Release The idea was born in a bathroom. Not a metaphorical bathroom — an actual restroom, in an actual nightclub, on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, sometime in 1979. Nile Rodgers, the guitarist and co-founder of Chic, had gone club-hopping near Studio 54 and wandered into…
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Billie Jean: The 29 Seconds That Almost Never Happened
Billie Jean: The 29 Seconds That Almost Never Happened Twenty-nine seconds. That is how long the drums and bass of “Billie Jean” play before Michael Jackson’s voice enters — twenty-nine seconds of kick, snare, and the most famous bassline in pop history, circling like a shark in dark water. It is one of the most…
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What’s Going On: The Song Motown Tried to Kill
What’s Going On: The Song Motown Tried to Kill The tear gas was still hanging in the air over Berkeley, California, on the afternoon of May 15, 1969, when the Four Tops’ tour bus rolled into town. Renaldo “Obie” Benson, the group’s bass singer, looked out the window and saw something that would not leave…
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Memories, Not Daydreams: The Battles Behind Barbra Streisand’s ‘The Way We Were’
Memories, Not Daydreams: The Battles Behind Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were” Before Barbra Streisand sings a single word, you hear five humming notes. Just her voice, unaccompanied, drifting like someone thinking out loud — and then the strings enter, and the most famous opening line in the history of movie songs: “Memories light the…
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The Goodbye That Became an Anthem: Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’
The Goodbye That Became an Anthem: Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” The morning she ended the most important professional relationship of her life, Dolly Parton did what she had always done: she picked up a guitar. She walked into Porter Wagoner’s office in Nashville, asked the most powerful man in her world to…
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The Riff of the Century: How Stevie Wonder Turned a Drum Beat Into ‘Superstition’
The Riff of the Century: How Stevie Wonder Turned a Drum Beat Into “Superstition” The drummer was terrible. That was the joke of it — the man sitting behind the kit at Electric Lady Studios in New York that afternoon in 1972 was one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, and he could barely…