Jay-Z was going to ask Mary J. Blige to duet on "Empire State of Mind," but he decided on Alicia Keys when he heard the piano stabs on the track.
The R.E.M. song "Don't Go Back To Rockville" is about Mike Mills' girlfriend at the University of Georgia, who had to go back to Rockville, Maryland, for the summer.
Justin Timberlake originally wrote "Gone" for Michael Jackson, but his team turned it down, so 'N Sync cut it instead.
Before recording "Boom Clap" herself, Charli XCX offered the song to Hilary Duff. However, the singer's people turned down the tune declaring it wasn't "cool enough for Hilary."
Mariah Carey and P. Diddy show up in the Mary J. Blige "No More Drama" video, since they were going through Shakespeare-level drama.
"All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow started with the first line from an obscure poem called "Fun" that read, "All I wanna do is have some fun."
With his X-wife Exene, John fronts the band X and writes their songs.
The 10 biggest "retirement tours" that didn't take.
Into the vaults for this talk with Bolton from the '80s when he was a focused on writing songs for other artists.
Rick Astley on "Never Gonna Give You Up," "Cry For Help," and his remarkable resurgence that gave him another #1 UK album.
Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai were two of Graham's co-writers for some '80s rock classics.
Fagen talks about how the Steely Dan songwriting strategy has changed over the years, and explains why you don't hear many covers of their songs.