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32 Trivia Tidbits About the Music Industry That Will Burrow Into Your Brain Like a Catchy Earworm

You can bop your head to these music facts

32 Trivia Tidbits About the Music Industry That Will Burrow Into Your Brain Like a Catchy Earworm

September 20, 2024

We tried something a little different today. We wrote each of these music facts like the bars in a song. If you meet us halfway by getting a beat going in your head, these things can really pop. It’ll be like we’re jamming from afar.

Actually, we just realized that none of them rhyme. So this list will be more like coffeehouse beat poetry. Our next list will rhyme, though. We swear.

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32

London Calling by The Clash The 1979 song is about climate change. The lyrics were inspired after the band read an article about the flooding of the Thames River. CRACKED.COM — Source

31

According to Bob Marley's girlfriend, I Shot the Sheriff was inspired by their fights over birth control. The Sheriff was the doctor who prescribed her the Pill. Sheriff John Brown always hated me, For what, / don't know. Every time / plant a seed, Не said Kill it before it grow. CRACKED.COM — Source

30

Poker Face by Lady Gaga The singer revealed the song is surprisingly about her bisexuality. The lyrics are about her hooking up with a man but fantasizing about being with a woman. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

311 is an Omaha police code for indecent exposure. The guitarist got arrested for skinny dippinng, so they used the citation code as a band name. CRACKED.COM — Source

28

CRACKED COM TICKET TO RIDE According to John Lennon, the ticket to ride was actually a card indicating a clean bill of health... ...carried by Hamburg prostitutes in the 1960s. .... TICKET — Source

27

Pen Cap Chew CRACKED.COM Better known as Nirvana, Pen Cap Chew was one of their few non-poop-themed options: they also nearly went by Skid Row and Fecal Matter a.k.a. Brown Towel. — Source

26

Screaming Abdabs CRACKED.COM Before they became Pink Floyd, they named themselves after an obscure bit of British slang that more or less translates to the heebie-jeebies. — Source

25

On A Friday CRACKED.COM Before they were Radiohead, they were just a few lads who would reserve their high school's band room every friday. — Source

24

Mookie Blaylock PJ MC CRACKED.COM Before they even had a name picked out, Pearl Jam snagged a spot supporting Alice In Chains on tour. Jeff Ament had just gotten Mookie Blaylock in a deck of NBA player cards, and thought it sounded like a cool band name. — Source

23

The Village Idiots N MUSI AN MUSIC AI 2 CRACKED.COM The dudes in Nickelback were courting criticism before they even had the chance to suck. They eventually changed it to reflect Mike Kroeger's experience working at Starbucks, giving people a nickel back. — Source

22

Cold Turkey By John Lennon/The Beatles Plastic Ono Band COLD TURKEY Don't worry Kyoko Mummy's only looking for a hand in the snow After Cold Turkey was rejected by The Beatles, John Lennon decided to use it as a single for his new Plastic Ono Band project. The song, which deals with the songwriter's experience with heroin addiction and features Eric Clapton on guitar, charted well. With his solo project doing well and The Beatles drifting apart, Lennon left the band in 1970. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

The Only Boy Living in New York By Simon and Garfunkel Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water Paul Simon wrote the song about Art Garfunkel after his longtime songwriting partner left to film Catch 22, leaving Simon to finish their 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water. The Tom mentioned in the lyrics is a reference to Tom and Jerry, the duo's original stage name. The album would prove to be the folk songwriting duo's last. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

Solsbury Hill By Peter Gabriel/Genesis Tensions were high between then Genesis RO frontman Peter Gabriel and his bandmates when the group ended their tour supporting The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 1975. Wanting both an escape from the tension and more creative freedom, Gabriel left the band, expressing his feelings into his debut solo single Solsbury Hill. Drummer Phil Collins would ascend to Gabriel's place, but the two remained friends. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

We All Go Back to Where We Belong By R.E.M. WHERE TO WE R.E.M WE GO BELONG BACK AL Less fed up with each other and more with the music industry in general, R.E.M. decided to call it quits in 2011. Their last single served as both a reflection on their career and an airing of their music industry grievances. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Life is Wild By The Clash THE CLASH THE CLASH BAR ARO CUT THE CRAP You could really pick any song off the punk legend's abysmal 1985 album Cut the Crap, but the final track feels the most fitting. With Mick Jones fired, Joe Strummer took full creative control of the album, but disowned it shortly after release. The band dissolved soon afterward. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

Cannonball By The Breeders/Pixies theBreeders cannonball After learning that Frank Black had scuttled the band via fax in 1993, Pixies bassist Kim Deal focused all of her attention to The Breeders. They released Last Splash that same year, which went platinum, and the triumphant single Cannonball became the best song The Pixies never wrote. Deal would return to Pixies when they reunited in 2004, but would leave again in 2013. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

CRACKED.COM Macarena was the result of a sudden outburst. One night, Antonio Romero Monge of the duo Los del Rio watched a great performance from one of their dancers, and called to her (in Spanish) Diana, give joy and good things to your body! Los del Rio used that as a refrain and wrote a song around it, Macarena. — Source

15

Ed Sheeran wrote Afire Love for his grandfather, who never really knew the singer due to Alzheimer's disease. Не began writing the song two weeks before his grandfather passed away. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around comes from a dream about Queen Elizabeth. In the dream, Cash went into Buckingham Palace and saw Queen Elizabeth sitting on the floor, and she told him, Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind. After the dream had haunted him for years, he thought Maybe it's biblical. So he looked through the Bible and found imagery of thorn trees and whirlwinds, and started writing a song about them. CRACKED.COM — Source

13

CRACKED CON Crying in the Club Sia got the idea for Camilla Cabello's Crying In The Club when she was on her way to the toilet while writing a demo with producer Benny Blanco. — Source

12

Sam Smith sang Stay With Me all by himself -- no choir. Не got the choir effect by layering his voice (while standing in different spots) about 20 times, and what we hear is the finished demo. The song was written in 34 minutes and recorded in a single take, but it wasn't until he'd added the harmonies that he felt like the whole song suddenly made sense. CRACKED COM — Source

11

Bad was originally going to be a collaboration between Michael Jackson and Prince. Producer Quincy Jones says it was his idea to put the two rivals together, and turn that antagonistic energy into pop gold. Apparently it was a hard pass, for Prince. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Michael Jackson was Kanye West's biggest inspiration for his album CRACKED.COM Heartbreaks And 808s. K E WE When Kanye played Heartless to Jackson, he complimented him (without knowing it was him singing on the track), and that made Kanye way more confident about his singing. — Source

9

Heart ICE-T METALLICA Kirk Hammett ganked part of the solo from Enter Sandman from Heart's Magic Man. But I didn't get it from Heart's version, explained Hammett. I CRACKED.COM got it from a cut off Ice-T's Power album, where he used it as a sample. The guitarist said he kept hearing the lick and thought, I have to snake this! — Source

8

CRACKED.COM Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water recounts a real tragedy. The story in the lyrics actually happened - the band was in Montreux, Switzerland, when some stupid with a flare gun burned down the casino where they were supposed to record an album using a mobile studio. DIDUD — Source

7

Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline is named after JFK's daughter. Diamond needed a three-syllable name to fit the song he was writing. Then he remembered a photo of 7-year-old Caroline Kennedy he had seen in a magazine. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

5

The Beach Boys' Never Learn Not to Love was written by Charles Manson. Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson was close with Manson, until the band reworked and recorded one of his songs without crediting him. Manson was furious. Considering the Family's victims were murdered over much less that that, the Boys got off easy. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

CRACKED.COM Dolly Parton's Jolene was a real woman. Parton kept teasing her husband about a red-headed bank teller who gave him a lot of attention. (Her name wasn't Jolene, though t that name came from a little girl Parton met while signing autographs.) — Source

3

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah became big because of Shrek. The song went mostly underappreciated for years, even as other artists kept covering it, until a version of it was used in a movie about an ogre, a princess, and a donkey. Then it started popping up everywhere. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

CRACKED.COM Keith Richards literally composed (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction in his sleep. Richards woke up in the middle of the night, recorded about 30 seconds of the song on a tape recorder, and then fell back asleep. In the morning he didn't remember any of it, until he played the recording. — Source

1

CRACKED.COM Billie Jean almost got Michael Jackson killed. Jackson was so absorbed in the song, working on it in his head while driving, that he didn't notice his car was on fire. Someone on a bike had to point it out to him. — Source

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