Guns N' Roses - Knockin' On Heaven's Door

This song is written from the perspective of a dying sheriff: "Mama, take this badge off of me/I can't use it anymore/It's gettin' dark, too dark for me to see/I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door." Bob Dylan wrote it for the 1973 western film, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. It plays while Sheriff Colin Baker is dying from his gunshot wounds. Dylan cameos in the movie as the character, Alias.
Guns N' Roses covered this on their 1991 album, Use Your Illusion II. They played it in 1992 at a tribute concert for Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, who had died of AIDS. 72,000 people attended the concert, which was held in London's Wembley Stadium. 

Pulp - Underwear

Pulp are somewhat of an anomaly in modern pop music - it took them a very long time, over 15 years, to really break through and become successful as a band. Having gone through many lineup changes since starting as a university project from frontman Jarvis Cocker in 1978, it was only in the early to mid-1990s that the band finally hit huge commercial success as part of the vanguard of the Britpop movement.

Initially the band started as a project from a 15-year-old Cocker and his friend Peter Dalton, and the name Pulp (taken from a Michael Caine film of the same name) was originally shot down for being too short. At first the band were known as Arabicus - a deliberate misspelling of the Arabicas coffee beans, which Cocker found listed in the Financial Times commodity index. Eventually the name evolved to Arabicus Pulp, then simply Pulp as the name initially dismissed as being too short eventually stuck.

 

 

Guns N' Roses - November Rain

The lyrics and the video are based on a short story by Del James called Without You. The story is part of a collection called The Language Of Fear, which was brought back to market in 2008 after being out of print. The new version of the book contains an intro by Axl Rose, who wrote: "Del James has a personal knowledge of most of the situations he writes about, and has a love of the gutter from having been there." James contributed lyrics to two Guns N' Roses songs: "The Garden" and "Yesterdays," and has directed several music videos.

Chris Isaak - Oh, Pretty Woman

This is a Roy Orbison cover from Chris Isaak. This was Orbison's last big hit. His career faded fast, but was revived in the '80s when prominent musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and George Harrison cited him as an influence and invited him to join various projects. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and joined The Traveling Wilburys with Dylan, Tom Petty, Harrison and Jeff Lynne. As he was enjoying this career revival, he died of a heart attack on December 6, 1988 at age 52.

Goo Goo Dolls - Name

Lead singer John Rzeznik wrote this about his childhood. He sings it to his sisters who raised him; both his parents died when he was young and his father was an alcoholic. The line, "We're grown up orphans who never knew their names" reflects his past

This was the Goo Goo Dolls' first hit. They had released four albums by then and had a large following in upstate New York, but this brought them national fame.

 

 

Chris Isaak - Can't Help Falling In Love

Chris Isaak made a great cover of this awesome love song by Elvis Presley. This song was featured in the 1961 Elvis movie Blue Hawaii. It was written by the songwriter George Weiss, who claimed that neither the movie producers nor Elvis' associates liked the song demo, but Elvis insisted on recording this song for the movie. Weiss, who died in 2010 at age 89, was a military bandleader in World War II.

Bush - The Sound Of Winter

Frontman Gavin Rossdale told Spinner UK about the inspiration for the song: "I think just everyday dark clouds, dark clouds on the horizon. A look. A word. A gesture that can set the train careening off the track. That's what that is on the lyrical side. With the record I was trying to find a balance between Bush's people and also putting a new progression in there. With that song, it was strange because when I started playing the music to it, it all felt very comfortable. It seemed to be a very natural display of something more traditional in my arsenal. That's how that came about and the lyric just fit with that."

Bródy János - Édes életünk

Another hungarian song, a bittersweet piece from János Bródy, titled "Our sweet life".

Brett Anderson

This is the first single from Black Rainbows, the fourth solo album by the English singer-songwriter Brett Anderson, released on 26 September 2011.
Anderson has stated that Black Rainbows will be "restless, noisy and dynamic." and described it as a return to the rock band format.