AC/DC - Ride On

It's about the solo...

Cat Stevens - Wild World

Stevens developed a relationship with a young American girl, Patti D'Arbanville, and the two were a pair throughout a period of two years or so. During that time, he wrote several songs about her, including the hit song "Wild World."

The song is in the form of the singer's words to his departing lover, inspired by the end of their romance. Stevens later recalled to Mojo Magazine: "It was one of those chord sequences that's very common in Spanish music. I turned it around and came up with that theme- which is a recurring theme in my work- which is to do with leaving, the sadness of leaving, and the anticipation of what lies beyond."

The Beatles - Hello, Goodbye

Paul McCartney wrote this. His friend Alistair Taylor, who was visiting McCartney, asked Paul one day how he wrote his many songs, and how he came up with his ideas. Paul took him into his dining room to give him a demonstration of his hand-carved harmonium. As an experiment, Paul asked Taylor to shout out the opposite of whatever he sang, such as black and white, yes and no, hello and goodbye, etc. From this, the song was born.

The ending where all The Beatles sing, "Hela, hey, aloha," was improvised in the studio.

Dio - The Last In Line

A tribute to Ronnie James Dio who passed away two days ago.

AC/DC - For Those About To Rock

We salute you!

The name of the album was inspired by a book Angus Young read, entitled For Those About To Die, We Salute You, about Roman gladiators. The gladiators' final words to the emperor were "Ave Caesar morituri te salutant" - or, "Hail Caesar, we who are about to die, salute you."

Accept - Balls To The Wall

"Balls to the Wall" was the lead single from Accept's fifth studio album with the same name.

Asked about the meaning of the song, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann replied:
"We've always been interested in politics and in human rights and things like that, so a lot of the lyrics that we had in those days, and to the end actually, were dealing with human rights, for instance, and that's really what "Balls To The Wall" is all about: 'One day the tortured will stand up and kick some ass!'"

Liquid Tension Experiment - Acid Rain

Liquid Tension Experiment is an instrumental progressive rock/metal band, founded by Dream Theater's drummer Mike Portnoy in 1997.

"Acid Rain", the album's opening track, was in fact the last song to be written and recorded. For this song Petrucci used a seven-string guitar.

Black Sabbath - War Pigs

"War Pigs" is an anti-war song by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath from their 1970 album, Paranoid. The band members wrote the song in protest to the Vietnam War. This is one of many Black Sabbath songs that is often misinterpreted as evil. The song speaks out against the horrors of war.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio

"Ohio" is a protest song written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970, and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

The lyrics help evoke the turbulent mood of horror, outrage and shock in the wake of the shootings, especially the line "four dead in Ohio," repeated throughout the song. "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" refers to the Ohio National Guardsmen who killed the student protesters and Young's attribution of their deaths to the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Crosby once stated that Young keeping Nixon's name in the lyrics was "the bravest thing I ever heard."

Tenacious D - Tribute

"Tribute" is a tribute to "The Greatest Song in the World", which Tenacious D themselves came up with, but have since forgotten.

During earlier performances of this song Kyle Gass played the opening to "Stairway to Heaven". The two songs are both in A minor and have very similar chord progressions, and critics have said the songs sound alike.

Given the "Stairway to Heaven" interlude in the original TV series version, it might be suggesting the best song in the world is indeed that song, but the lyrics make clear that the song Tenacious D is playing sounds nothing like the song they came up with to please the demon (specifically, "This is not / The greatest song in the world, no / This is just a tribute").

In an interview the band claimed that the inspiration from the song came after Jack Black played Metallica's "One" for Kyle Gass, describing it as "the best song in the world", leading to a failed attempt to themselves write an even better song, and a discussion of the meaninglessness of labeling any song that way.

Blue Öyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper

"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is a song by the rock band Blue Öyster Cult from their 1976 album, Agents of Fortune.

The reaper is a reference to the Grim Reaper, a traditional symbol of death in European folklore. Moreover, songs and poetry pairing "Death and the Maiden" date back from before the Middle Ages. Lyrics such as "Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity" have led many listeners to interpret the song to be about a murder-suicide pact, but song-writer and lead-guitarist Dharma says the song is about eternal love, not death.

Bad Company - Bad Company

"Bad Company" is a song from the band Bad Company's album Bad Company. It is one of the few songs where the artist, album and song names are the same (another example is Black Sabbath).

Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist responsible for the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, was quoted as saying as he fled the site of the bombing that he thought of a specific "Bad Company" lyric, "...dirty for dirty," heard towards the end of the song. ;;)

The Wallflowers - One Headlight

a fragmentary story about a former friend and her death, and the singer's emotions in the aftermath. The use of strong words and images and the incomplete story have resulted in many different interpretations of the song, which include suicide, drug abuse, death of a lover, and depression.

Jakob Dylan, the lead singer and songwriter of The Wallflowers, has said that the song is about "the death of ideas" and that the many metaphors and images in the lyrics were not meant to be taken literally.

Iron Maiden - Fear Of The Dark

A classic, written by Steve Harris, bass player and Maiden's main songwriter.

When Iron Maiden plays this song live the crowd sings along and is sometimes even louder than the band itself. A good example is the performance at Rock In Rio when a crowd of 250,000 people sang during the intro, before and after the guitar solo.

Now, this is how they sound live:



You might also like: Iron Maiden - Afraid To Shoot Strangers.

Harry Chapin - Cats In The Cradle

"Cat's in the Cradle" is a 1974 folk rock song by Harry Chapin from the album Verities & Balderdash. As Chapin's only #1 hit song, it became the best known of his work and a staple for folk rock music.

The lyrics to the verses of the song were originally written as a poem by Chapin's wife, Sandy Chapin, who is credited as the song's co-writer.

The song was notably covered by Ugly Kid Joe.

The song is told in first-person by a father who is too busy to spend time with his son. Though the son repeatedly asks him to join in childhood activities, the father always responds with little more than vague promises of spending time together in the future, peppered with images from nursery rhymes. While the son longs to spend time with his father, he continues to admire his father.

The chorus refers to the following nursery rhymes: Hey Diddle Diddle, Little Boy Blue and Man in the Moon.

Ram Jam - Black Betty

"Black Betty" is a 20th century African-American work song often credited to Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter as the author, though the earliest recordings are not by him. Some sources claim it is one of Lead Belly's many adaptations of earlier folk material in this case an 18th century marching cadence about a flint-lock musket.

Many artists covered the song, including: Ram Jam, Manfred Mann, Ministry, Sheryl Crow, Meat Loaf, Soil. The Ram Jam's version is today's song, Black Betty being their best known song

Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son

Just a nice song from the writers of the much more known "Dust In The Wind".

10 Years After - I'd Love To Change The World

Criticising capitalist and socialist greed alike, and calling for social change the song features a speedy, 30-second guitar solo by lead vocalist Alvin Lee. Although "I'd Love To Change The World" was their biggest hit, they rarely played it live.

AC/DC - The Jack

AC/DC takes the music in their songs much more seriously than their lyrics. They often finish songs by writing lyrics that amuse them. This was sometimes referred to as "The Clap," which is slang for Gonorrhea. This song is about venereal disease. The band shared a house in Australia as they were gaining popularity there, and had relations with many of the women who dropped by.

Judas Priest - Diamonds & Rust

Judas Priest's version of yesterday song, in a heavy metal manner, although in the latest years JP performs a more acoustic variant.