“Dream On” has a particular trick. It doesn’t begin enormous. It earns enormous. Piano. Voice. Slow build. More guitar. More tension. Then Steven Tyler finally explodes. If that’s the part you love, simply searching for…
Tag: music
If you’re British, you may immediately answer: Toploader. Wrong. If you know older American music, you might answer: King Harvest. Closer. But still not technically the original. “Dancing in the Moonlight” was written by Sherman…
“I don’t want you back. I just don’t want anybody else to have you.” That is essentially “Somebody Else”. The 1975 took one of the ugliest and most honest emotions after a breakup and turned…
“Landslide” is about change. But the change wasn’t abstract. Stevie Nicks wrote it while seriously considering whether to abandon her dream of becoming a professional musician. Her album with Lindsey Buckingham had failed commercially. Money…
“Hallelujah” is religious. And sexual. And romantic. And broken. And hopeful. That’s why trying to explain it as simply: a song about God doesn’t really work. Leonard Cohen used biblical imagery to explore something much…
“The Night We Met” is about wishing you could return to the beginning of a relationship before everything went wrong. Not necessarily because you want to relive it. Perhaps because you wish you could avoid…
“Iris” is essentially about wanting another person to see who you really are, even if revealing yourself makes you vulnerable. Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik wrote it for the 1998 film City of Angels.…
Sinéad O’Connor did not write “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Prince did. But even Prince wasn’t technically the first artist to release it commercially. The first released version appeared in 1985 on the only album by…
“I’d Rather Go Blind” is about knowing the person you love is leaving you for somebody else and finding the reality so painful that you would rather not see it happen. But the story behind…
“Dreams” is Stevie Nicks’ side of a breakup. Specifically: her breakup with Lindsey Buckingham. The extraordinary thing is that Buckingham was standing inside the same band while she sang it. Even more extraordinary: he was…
