-
The Six-Pack on Abington Hill: The True Christmas Eve Story Behind Dan Fogelberg’s ‘Same Old Lang Syne’
The Six-Pack on Abington Hill: The True Christmas Eve Story Behind Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” It was Christmas Eve, 1975, in Peoria, Illinois, and the snow was falling. Dan Fogelberg was twenty-four years old, home for the holidays, and he had been sent out on the most ordinary errand in the world: his…
-
The Second Hand Unwinds: How Cyndi Lauper Wrote \”Time After Time\” at the Last Minute
The Second Hand Unwinds: How Cyndi Lauper Wrote “Time After Time” at the Last Minute It is one of the most beloved ballads ever recorded — a song about devotion so steady it feels like gravity — and it almost didn’t exist. When Cyndi Lauper walked into the studio in the spring of 1983 to…
-
The Night the Tapes Kept Rolling: How the Commodores Accidentally Built a \”Brick House\
The Night the Tapes Kept Rolling: How the Commodores Accidentally Built a “Brick House” The year was 1977, and disco was tightening its grip on American radio — polished, four-on-the-floor, metronomic. Motown, the label that had built an empire on the sound of young America, was watching the ground shift under its feet, still hungry…
-
The Night a Shy Texan Won Everything: Christopher Cross, ‘Sailing,’ and the Greatest Grammy Sweep Ever
The Night a Shy Texan Won Everything: Christopher Cross, “Sailing,” and the Greatest Grammy Sweep Ever It was supposed to be someone else’s night. On the evening of February 25, 1981, the music industry’s brightest stars filed into Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the 23rd Annual Grammy Awards, hosted by Paul…
-
‘I Think It Was the Fourth of July’: Chicago, Central Park, and the Perfect Summer Song
“I Think It Was the Fourth of July”: Chicago, Central Park, and the Perfect Summer Song It opens with the most famous hedge in pop music. Not a declaration — a memory, half-caught, offered with a shrug: Saturday in the park, I think it was the Fourth of July. Then the piano comes rolling in,…
-
The Night Disco Died and the Bassline That Wouldn’t: How Chic’s ‘Good Times’ Built Hip-Hop
The Night Disco Died and the Bassline That Wouldn’t: How Chic’s “Good Times” Built Hip-Hop On the night of July 12, 1979, disco was publicly executed. At Comiskey Park in Chicago, between games of a White Sox doubleheader, a local radio DJ named Steve Dahl staged “Disco Demolition Night”: fans who brought a disco record…
-
The Song She Almost Couldn’t Sing: How ‘I’m Every Woman’ Set Chaka Khan Free
The Song She Almost Couldn’t Sing: How “I’m Every Woman” Set Chaka Khan Free In 1978, Chaka Khan was the most famous woman in funk and, privately, one of the most restless. She was twenty-five years old, the incandescent center of Rufus — the Chicago band whose multiracial, genre-blurring attack had carried her voice to…
-
How a 40-Year-Old Hymn Became Cat Stevens’ Defining Song — and the £10 Session Man Who Nearly Went Uncredited
How a 40-Year-Old Hymn Became Cat Stevens’ Defining Song — and the £10 Session Man Who Nearly Went Uncredited In the winter of 1971, Cat Stevens was browsing in a bookshop when he found the words that would change his career. He had been going through a fallow spell — “a bit of a dry…
-
Sleep With You Again: How the Carpenters Turned a Groupie’s Lament Into ‘Superstar’
“Sleep With You Again”: How the Carpenters Turned a Groupie’s Lament Into “Superstar” It was late on the night of February 15, 1971, and Richard Carpenter had just come home from the studio. He did what musicians do at the end of a long day: he turned on the television. Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show was…
-
Three Weeks, Twelve Songs, One Window Seat: How Carole King Made ‘Tapestry’
Three Weeks, Twelve Songs, One Window Seat: How Carole King Made “Tapestry” There is a photograph that has sold tens of millions of albums. It shows a woman sitting barefoot on a window seat in her own living room, holding a piece of needlework she stitched herself, her cat at her feet, looking straight into…