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How ABBA Created “Dancing Queen”: The Story Behind the Masterpiece
It started with a nonsense word. In a Stockholm suburb, on a warm August day in 1975, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson walked into Glen Studios with three melodies and three placeholder titles. One of them was called “Boogaloo.” Nobody in the room — not the songwriters, not the session musicians, not the engineer —…
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The Pointer Sisters: Three Generations, One Harmony
Ruth Pointer is 78 years old, and she is still singing. Think about what that sentence carries. She is the eldest of four sisters who defied a preacher father, conquered Nashville, taught America to count on “Sesame Street,” and became pop royalty in the 1980s. She has buried her father, her mother, and all three…
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How the Pointer Sisters Set “Fire” to the Charts: The Springsteen Song That Was Meant for Elvis
Some hits are written. This one was redirected by fate — twice. “Fire,” the 1978 smash that carried the Pointer Sisters to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, began as a love letter from Bruce Springsteen to his idol Elvis Presley. The demo was mailed to Graceland. The King died before it arrived. What…
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Phil Collins: The Father Behind the Fame
Phil Collins has been called the busiest man in pop, the defining voice of the eighties, the drummer who fell into history. But the story he tells on himself — in his memoir, in his songs, in the quiet of his later years — is simpler and sadder: a man who was brilliant at being…
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“No Jacket Required”: How Phil Collins Made the Biggest Album of 1985
In February 1985, Phil Collins released his third solo album. It had a close-up of his face on the cover, a made-up word for a lead single, and no particular concept beyond one man’s determination to make the pop music he loved. It went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year, sell…
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Smokey Robinson: The Man Behind the Velvet
For sixty years, Smokey Robinson has been the smoothest man in soul music — the velvet tenor, the poet’s pen, the vice president’s polish. But the life behind the voice is anything but smooth. It’s a story of a boy who lost his mother at ten and was raised in a house with ten cousins,…
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“My Girl”: How Smokey Robinson Wrote the Perfect Song and Gave It Away
Smokey Robinson calls it his “international anthem” — the most well-known tune he ever wrote, the one that has, in his words, “stood the test of time.” He wrote it about his wife. He meant it for his own group. And then he gave it to five other guys, because he heard something in one…
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Patti LaBelle: The Fire and the Faith Behind the Voice
On stage, Patti LaBelle is a force of nature — the kicked-off shoes, the holy-roller rapture, the four-octave soprano that can shake a chandelier. Off stage, she is something rarer: a woman who has buried nearly everyone she grew up with, raised other people’s children as her own, cooked for kings of rock, and kept…
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Wear Something Silver: The Night Labelle Stormed the Metropolitan Opera House
On October 6, 1974, three Black women from Philadelphia walked into the most exclusive room in American music wearing silver spacesuits — and walked out having changed what that room was for. The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, home of Caruso and Callas, had never hosted a rock concert. It had never hosted a…
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Anne Murray: The Homebody Heart Behind the Hits
For four decades, Anne Murray was the calmest superstar in popular music. No scandals, no reinventions, no meltdowns — just a clear voice, a steady career, and a life lived almost entirely out of the spotlight’s glare. But behind the serene image was a woman who made complicated, courageous choices: a love affair with her…