How the Song Came to Be
Those Soul-Tastic James Brown Song Titles
Over 4 decades between his first and last chart entries, the “Godfather of Soul” helped define the times during the ’60s and ’70s
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The Inspiration For Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’
Every rock fan knows the classic riff but what exactly is Deep Purple’s best known song about? We take you behind the scenes in 1971.
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The Kinks’ ‘Celluloid Heroes’: Everybody’s a Star…
“Everybody’s a dreamer, and everybody’s a star,” Ray Davies sang. But it was never quite that simple. Watch a stellar performance of this Kinks Klassik.
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Donovan on ‘Season of the Witch’: ‘The Spookiness Was Real’
“The darkness was coming down. The darkness was the freedoms that I spoke of, that opened the doors. That spookiness in the record was real.”
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The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s Incendiary ‘Fire’
He took the title of his one hit seriously, even putting flaming items on his head while he performed. But he never made the charts again after his 1968 smash.
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Barry McGuire vs. Barry Sadler: When the News Hit #1
One chart-topper listed complaints about the inequities and horrors of the day, while the other was a patriotic paean to the Army’s elite special forces.
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Gotta Bludgeon: The Delightfully Punishing, Hell-for-Leather Second Take of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’
Close your eyes and it’s not hard to picture George Martin in the control booth, thinking, “What on earth are we doing tonight?”
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The Important Half: John Lennon, ‘Julia’ and Singing to Reach
“The song, inspired by John’s late mother, “is brave, because in the delivery we hear a singer willing to be transported.”
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Ray Charles: ‘What’d I Say’—An Accidental Classic
A consummate, road-tested professional, he sat down at his Wurlitzer electric piano and improvised a blues-based boogie-woogie riff.
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Shining a Light on the Origin and Impact of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
“I said to Leonard, ‘This is the one. This is what we’ve been waiting for. This might be your best record.'”–Producer/songwriter/performer John Lissauer
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