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Like a Prayer: The Gospel-Pop Masterpiece, the $5 Million Pepsi Deal, and the Video That Set the Vatican on Fire
Like a Prayer: The Song That Married the Church to the Dance Floor — and Paid for It in Fire On March 2, 1989, a quarter of a billion people watched Madonna celebrate her birthday. The commercial was called “Make a Wish,” and it was the centerpiece of a $5 million endorsement deal with Pepsi…
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The Song He Never Got to Sing Live: How Luther Vandross’s ‘Dance with My Father’ Became His Swan Song
The Song He Never Got to Sing Live: How Luther Vandross’s “Dance with My Father” Became His Swan Song There was an empty space at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards that everyone in the Staples Center could feel. The year was 2004, and the Song of the Year — the night’s biggest songwriting honor —…
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Hello: The Joke That Became Lionel Richie’s Most Beloved Ballad, and the Clay Head That Haunts It
Hello: The Song Lionel Richie Tried to Throw Away, and the Video That Refused to Be Forgotten “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?” Say the words out loud and something happens. The melody arrives uninvited — that gentle piano figure, that aching pause before the question. In 1984, Lionel Richie’s “Hello” was inescapable: six…
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The Kiss-Off She Never Wanted to Sing: How ‘You’re No Good’ Gave Linda Ronstadt Her First Number One
The Kiss-Off She Never Wanted to Sing: How “You’re No Good” Gave Linda Ronstadt Her First Number One On February 15, 1975, Linda Ronstadt did something she had never done before: she reached the very top of the Billboard Hot 100. The song that took her there was a sneering, swaggering kiss-off called “You’re No…
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Three Number Twos and a Tape Nobody Wanted: How Leo Sayer’s ‘When I Need You’ Became a Worldwide Number 1
Three Number Twos and a Tape Nobody Wanted: How Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You” Became a Worldwide Number 1 Leo Sayer had a problem that only a successful artist can have. Between 1973 and 1976, the diminutive singer from Sussex — all curly mane and boundless energy — had landed three singles in the…
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\”Stairway to Heaven\”: The Song That Was Never a Single and Conquered the World Anyway
“Stairway to Heaven”: The Song That Was Never a Single and Conquered the World Anyway On the night of March 5, 1971, in the Ulster Hall in Belfast, Led Zeppelin played a song nobody in the audience had ever heard. It began with a lone acoustic guitar, fingerpicked, delicate — so quiet that the crowd,…
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Celebration: The Quran, a Tour Bus, and the Song That Became America’s Party
Celebration: The Quran, a Tour Bus, and the Song That Became America’s Party It is the most-played party song in human history. Weddings, championships, New Year’s Eve, presidential nominations, the return of hostages from Iran — for forty-five years, whenever humanity has had something to celebrate, it has celebrated to the same three minutes and…
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I Was Made for Lovin’ You: The Night KISS Went Disco and Lived to Tell About It
I Was Made for Lovin’ You: The Night KISS Went Disco and Lived to Tell About It In the spring of 1979, the biggest rock band in America was terrified. KISS — the demons and spacemen in greasepaint, the band that had turned rock concerts into comic-book warfare — was watching its empire crack. Album…
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The Demo Nobody Wanted: How Kim Carnes Turned a 1974 Throwaway into the Biggest Song of 1981
The Demo Nobody Wanted: How Kim Carnes Turned a 1974 Throwaway into the Biggest Song of 1981 In March 1981, Kim Carnes walked into a recording studio and cut a song she had initially rejected — a seven-year-old demo that sounded, in her producer’s memorable phrase, like “a Leon Russell track, with this beer-barrel polka…
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Cut Loose: How Two Men on Painkillers Wrote \”Footloose\” in a Lake Tahoe Hotel Room
Cut Loose: How Two Men on Painkillers Wrote “Footloose” in a Lake Tahoe Hotel Room “Been working so hard, I’m punching my card, eight hours for what? Oh, tell me what I got.” Nobody has ever needed an introduction to “Footloose.” The drums kick in — that relentless, jackhammer groove — and within four seconds…