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You Probably Think This Song Is About You: Carly Simon, ‘You’re So Vain,’ and the 50-Year Mystery
You Probably Think This Song Is About You: Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain,” and the 50-Year Mystery The party was at her sister’s apartment, and the man walked in wearing a scarf so long it seemed to trail his own legend behind him. He crossed to the mirror the instant he entered — there is…
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The Accidental Smash: How Boz Scaggs’ ‘Lowdown’ Seduced a Cleveland DJ and Won a Grammy
The Accidental Smash: How Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown” Seduced a Cleveland DJ and Won a Grammy Some time in the summer of 1976, a disc jockey at an R&B station in Cleveland did something DJs almost never do anymore: he played an album cut. Not a single — just a track he liked, lifted straight off…
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The Basement Tapes That Fooled a Record Label: How Tom Scholz Built ‘More Than a Feeling’
The Basement Tapes That Fooled a Record Label: How Tom Scholz Built “More Than a Feeling” In 1975, Tom Scholz was 28 years old, working days as a senior product-design engineer at the Polaroid Corporation, and spending his nights in the basement of his rented house in Watertown, Massachusetts, building a rock record almost entirely…
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Turn Around, Bright Eyes: The Vampire Love Song That Became Bonnie Tyler’s \”Total Eclipse of the Heart\
Turn Around, Bright Eyes: The Vampire Love Song That Became Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Bonnie Tyler — born Gaynor Hopkins — died on July 8, 2026, at the age of 75, in a hospital in Portugal following emergency intestinal surgery and weeks in an induced coma. Her family said they were heartbroken;…
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Livin’ on a Prayer: The Song Jon Bon Jovi Wanted to Throw Away — and the Talk Box That Saved It
Livin’ on a Prayer: The Song Jon Bon Jovi Wanted to Throw Away — and the Talk Box That Saved It In 1986, Jon Bon Jovi hated his own song. He’d written it with his guitarist and a professional songwriter in a basement in New Jersey — a room next to the laundry, where the…
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Voice, Guitar, and Truth: How a Dying Bob Marley Wrote ‘Redemption Song’
Voice, Guitar, and Truth: How a Dying Bob Marley Wrote “Redemption Song” On the night of September 23, 1980, at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a thin and visibly weary Bob Marley walked to the front of the stage, sat down on a stool, and did something he had almost never done in his…
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Heart of Glass: How Blondie Betrayed Punk and Conquered the World
Heart of Glass: How Blondie Betrayed Punk and Conquered the World On April 28, 1979, a song by a band from New York’s punk underground reached number one on the American pop chart. It was built on a drum machine, shimmered with synthesizers, and throbbed with a four-on-the-floor beat straight out of the discos that…
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Three Queens, One Song: How Billy Ocean’s \”Caribbean Queen\” Conquered the World
Three Queens, One Song: How Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” Conquered the World In the autumn of 1984, American radio belonged to a song with an identity crisis. It had been born in New York, raised in London, and released under three different names on three different continents. In Britain it had flopped. In America it…
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Bill Martin and the Nine O’Clock Crowd: The True Story of Billy Joel’s \”Piano Man\
Bill Martin and the Nine O’Clock Crowd: The True Story of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” Every Billy Joel concert ends the same way. The houselights are up, the band has played its last encore, and tens of thousands of people — people who have come to hear “Uptown Girl” and “We Didn’t Start the Fire”…
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The Song That Waited Seven Years: How \”Wind Beneath My Wings\” Found Bette Midler and Broke America’s Heart
The Song That Waited Seven Years: How “Wind Beneath My Wings” Found Bette Midler and Broke America’s Heart There is a moment near the end of the film Beaches that has undone audiences for nearly four decades. Two women stand in a cemetery. One of them is dead — Hillary Whitney Essex, the San Francisco…