BACKSTORIES OF FAMOUS SONGS

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‘Go Your Own Way’ – Fleetwood Mac

Lindsey Buckingham, the lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist of Fleetwood Mac from 1975 to 1987 and 1997 to 2018, wrote this as a message to band member Stevie Nicks following their breakup. It bitterly describes their split, with the most obvious line being, "Packing up, shacking up is all you want to do," and concluding that he is better off without her, she can go her own way as far as he's concerned. Stevie insisted she never shacked up with anyone when they were going out, and wanted Lindsey to take out the line, but he refused. Stevie Nicks told Q magazine June 2009: "It was certainly a message within a song. And not a very nice one at that."

Stevie Nicks got equal time on the Rumours album with "Dreams," her message to Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks is more delicate in her approach, but just as biting, telling him what will happen when she goes her own way:

Listen carefully to the sound

Of your loneliness

Like a heartbeat drives you mad

In the stillness of remembering what you had

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‘Uptown Girl’ – Billy Joel

Written by Billy Joel, the lyrics describe a working-class "downtown man" attempting to woo a wealthy "uptown girl". According to an interview with Howard Stern, Joel had originally titled the song "Uptown Girls", and it was conceived on an occasion when he was surrounded by Christie Brinkley, Whitney Houston, and his then-girlfriend Elle Macpherson. According to numerous interviews with Joel, the song was initially written about his relationship with Macpherson, but it ended up also becoming about his soon-to-be wife, Brinkley, both women being two of the most famous supermodels of the 1980s. Joel said that the song was inspired by the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

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‘Blue Suede Shoes’ – Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley

Blue Suede Shoes" is a rock and roll standard written and first recorded by American singer, songwriter and guitarist Carl Perkins in 1955. Elvis Presley recorded "Blue Suede Shoes" in 1956, it was also recorded by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, among many others.

Blue suede shoes were a luxury item in the South, a stylish footwear for a night out. You had to be careful with them, however, because suede isn't easy to clean.

Perkins never owned a pair, but Johnny Cash told him a story about someone who did. As Cash told it, he and Perkins were performing at a show in Amory, Mississippi along with Elvis Presley. When Presley was on stage, Cash told Perkins a story from his days serving in the Air Force in Germany. Cash's sergeant, a black guy named C.V. White, would wear his military best when he was allowed off base, and at one point said to Johnny, "don't step on my blue suede shoes." The shoes were really just Air Force-issued black, but white would say, "Tonight they're blue suede."

The story Perkins told is that later on, he was playing at a high school sorority dance when he came across a guy who wasn't paying much attention to his date, but kept telling everyone not to stop on his "suedes," meaning his blues suede shoes. At 3 a.m. that night, Perkins woke up and wrote the lyrics based on what happened that night and the story he heard from Cash. He couldn't find any paper, so he wrote it on a potato sack.

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‘’Rolling In the Deep’ - Adele

The song was written in a single afternoon by Adele and Paul Epworth, an English record producer, songwriter and musician, following Adele's breakup with her boyfriend. According to Adele: "It was my reaction to being told my life was going to be lonely and boring and rubbish, and that I was a weak person if I didn't stay in the relationship. I was very insulted, and wrote that as a sort of fuck you." "It's me saying, 'Get the fuck out of my house instead of me begging him to come back."

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‘Street Fighting Man’ – The Rolling Stones

Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

"Street Fighting Man" was originally written with an entirely different set of lyrics. Growing violence at political events throughout 1968 inspired Mick Jagger to alter the song to directly address such topics. With its release coming after a highly politically charged and publicised summer of violence, and the release of the Beatles' "Revolution", a song with similar themes, "Street Fighting Man" sparked controversy in the United States upon release, with many radio stations boycotting the song and refusing to play it.

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‘Song For Guy’ – Elton John

Guy Burchett was a messenger for Elton's label, Rocket Records. According to reviewer Claude Bernadin, Elton wrote and recorded this piece on the afternoon of Sunday, August 18, 1978. He had felt it was a song about death, and only learned the next day that Guy had been killed that very afternoon in a motorcycle accident.

“As I was writing this song one Sunday, I imagined myself floating into space and looking down at my own body. I was imagining myself dying. Morbidly obsessed with these thoughts, I wrote this song about death. The next day I was told that Guy [Burchett], our 17-year-old messenger boy, had been tragically killed on his motorcycle the day before. Guy died on the day I wrote this song.”

— Elton John, from the sleeve notes of the 7-inch single.

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'You Oughta Know' - Alanis Morissette

This 1995 song is believed to be about Dave Coulier, best known as Uncle Joey from Full House. He said the lyric, "I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner" was what confirmed his suspicion that he was the inspiration for the song. "We had already broken up … She called and I said, 'Hey, you know, I'm right in the middle of dinner. Can I just call you right back?' When I heard the line, it was like, uhhh-ohhh!"

Morissette has never publicly identified anyone as the ex-boyfriend portrayed in the song. In 2008, she said, “Well, I've never talked about who my songs were about and I won't, because when I write them they're written for the sake of personal expression. So with all due respect to whoever may see themselves in my songs, and it happens all the time, I never really comment on it because I write these songs for myself, not other people.”

In the 2021 documentary Jagged, Morissette denied the song is about Coulier.

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'Money for Nothing' - Dire Straits

This song is about rock star excess and the easy life it brings compared with real work. Mark Knopfler wrote it after overhearing delivery men in a New York department store complain about their jobs while watching an MTV rock video. He wrote the song in the store sitting at a kitchen display they had set up. Many of the lyrics were things they actually said.

In the book I Want My MTV, various people who worked at the network explain that Dire Straits' manager asked the network what they could do to get on the network and break through in America. Their answer was: write a hit song and let one of the top directors make a video. Mark Knopfler took the directive to write an "MTVable song" quite literally, using the network's tagline in the lyrics. The song ended up sounding like an indictment of MTV, but Les Garland, who ran the network, made it clear that they loved the song and were flattered by it - hearing "I Want My MTV" on the radio was fantastic publicity even if there were some unfavorable implications in the lyrics.

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‘That’ll Be The Day’ – Buddy Holly

Holly had been kicking around his home town in Lubbock, Texas trying to write a hit song for his small rockabilly band since he had attended an Elvis Presley gig at his High School some time in 1955. His band in those days consisted of him on lead vocals and guitar, Jerry Allison on the drums and Joe B. Maudlin on upright bass. He and Jerry decided to get together and go see The Searchers, a Western movie starring John Wayne. In the movie, Wayne keeps replying, "That'll be the day," every time another character in the film predicts or proclaims something will happen when he felt it was not likely to happen. The phrase stuck in Jerry's mind, and when they were hanging out at Jerry's house one night, Buddy looked at Jerry and said that it sure would be nice if they could record a hit song. Jerry replied with, "That'll be the day," imitating John Wayne in the film.