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.

Blue October - The Feel Again (Stay)

The Any Man in America album chronicles the dissolution of vocalist Justin Furstenfeld's marriage and separation from his daughter. The singer explained: "I decided to document everything. If I messed up along the way, I'd tell that too. I called the album my 'Audio Journal' as I was writing. I didn't want the music to just be about me though. I wanted it to help other fathers in America who might be going through the same thing."

 

The video for this song directed by Merritt Fields was posted by Blue October on June 9, 2011 on YouTube. Due to the overwhelming positive response to the clip by fans, the band released the song on iTunes five days later just in time for Father's Day.

 

 

Pulp - Your Sister's Clothes

This was one of four songs featured on The Sisters EP, released in May 1994 as the final single release off of the album His 'N' Hers, and it featured the lead single "Babies" and three songs that missed the cut off the original album: the present song, "Seconds" and title track "His 'n' Hers." Its position of #19 in the UK Singles Chart was at the time the band's highest charting, before it was blown out of the water by the various singles off follow-up album Different Class.

 

"Your Sister's Clothes" is actually a sequel to "Babies," with the younger sister from the first song (whom the narrator would spy on whilst she had sex and went out with her elder sister) gaining revenge for the events of that song four years later by stealing/wearing her sister's clothes (hence the title).

 

 

Blink-182 - After Midnight

Much like their hit single "I Miss You," the lyrics were handled by both Hoppus and DeLonge. "Tom and I divided the responsibility of writing the lyrics — Tom did the verses and I did the chorus — and we didn't necessarily know what the other was writing about, but it fit together pretty well," Hoppus explained to MTV News.

DeLonge threw in some lyrical references to "I Miss You" in his verses. He explained to MTV News: "I threw in a little homage to 'I Miss You,' because, specifically on this song, I remember Travis saying that we should have something in the category of 'I Miss You' [on this album], and that's when he showed us the beat. So when we wrote that, I remember that was in my mind."

 

 

Barenaked Ladies - One Week

The reason why many of the lyrics are just a hotchpotch of cultural references is that the song was written as a freestyle. Singer-guitarist Ed Robertson explained to Billboard magazine: "I wrote the chorus structure of the song, but I couldn't figure out the verses at all. I got together with [singer] Steve [Page] a bunch of times and said 'I have this idea for a song, and I couldn't figure out where to go with it.' And finally Steve said to me at some point, 'Just freestyle it! Just do what you do onstage every night. It's gonna be great.'"

"There were some extra verses and stuff," he added. "I just culled it down to what I thought were my favorite lines. But it was written as a freestyle."

Fittingly, this song spent one week at #1 in the US.

Whiskeytown - Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight

A great song from Whiskeytown, with awsome lyrics. Excuse me... Enjoy!

Pulp - My Legendary Girlfriend

This song originally went under the working title "Barry White Beat," and was more of a band collaboration than most Pulp songs, which would usually be an original idea by Jarvis Cocker presented to the band and worked on by everyone else.

Whiskeytown - 16 Days

Whiskeytown's 1997 major-label debut, Strangers Almanac, helped to establish Adams' reputation as a songwriter.
The band cycled through numerous members throughout the next year, including Brad Rice and Steven Terry, both of whom were involved in the recording of Almanac but left later that year.
Despite the band's internal strife, Almanac was a successful album with critics, with the tracks "16 Days" and the Replacements-esque "Yesterday's News" receiving significant radio play. The positive reviews came from increasingly mainstream publications such as Rolling Stone, who claimed at the time, "If there's to be a nirvana among the bands that are imprecisely dubbed alternative country, look to Whiskeytown.

 

Whiskeytown - Jacksonville Skyline

Whiskeytown began in 1994 in Raleigh, North Carolina. After performing punk rock with a band called The Patty Duke Syndrome, Adams found inspiration in the country-rock of Gram Parsons, and started a band with violinist Caitlin Cary, drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, bassist Steve Grothman and guitarist Phil Wandscher.

Pulp - Razzmatazz

Just around the start of the 1990s (after over a decade in the game), Pulp finally began to garner commercial and critical attention. In this time, they endured multiple lineup changes - with Jarvis Cocker being the one constant. "Razzmatazz" was the band's final single on Gift Records before making the major-label move to Island for their next album His 'n' Hers. Whilst it failed to chart, it gained much critical acclaim - a further sign of the mounting momentum behind the band.

P!nk - Raise Your Glass

Pink explained to Alex James on the UK-based radio show In:Demand that this song is a celebration for those who feel left out from the popular crowd. "I had been on the road for two years and I hadn't written anything and I wanted to write a song about underdogs.
Instead of going and becoming a cover girl and endorsement girl and popular girl and having #1s, I kind of just hit the road and pounded the pavement - and became a touring artist," she said. "You don't have to be popular when you're a touring artist, you just have to be good, and this is just a celebration and a thank you."

Trace Adkins - You're Gonna Miss This

The video for this Country ballad was shot by Peter Zavadil in Adkins' hometown of Sarepta, Louisiana. Zavadil told NWLA News: "The idea of this song is, cherish the moments of your life. It's a powerful song - a great thing. He (Adkins) has a powerful voice, but he sings this song with a tone of he's been there, and he's sincere."