Bruce, Elton Make Grammy Hall

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Twenty-one recordings ranging from jazz and R&B to pop and rock have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The Recording Academy welcomed albums ranging from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run to Thelonious Monk's The Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1 and 2, and songs from to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" to Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade."

The Grammy Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 to honor recordings of "enduring quality and relevance or historical significance." Chosen by a panel of historians and members of the music industry, the Hall now contains 530 such titles.

The full list of this year's inductees:

Aja, Steely Dan
"Blowin' in the Wind," Peter, Paul and Mary
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
"Both Sides Now," Judy Collins
Chopin: Mazurkas (Complete), Artur Rubinstein, piano
"Days of Wine And Roses," Henry Mancini
"Downtown," Petula Clark
The Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1 and 2, Thelonious Monk
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John
"Hotel California," Eagles
"I Only Have Eyes for You," the Flamingos
"I Shot the Sheriff," Eric Clapton
"It's Too Late," Carole King
"Lady Marmalade," Patti LaBelle
"Proud Mary," Ike and Tina Turner
Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 In A Minor, Op. 99, David Oistrakh; Dimitri Mitropoulos conductor, New York Philharmonic
"Stairway to Heaven," Led Zeppelin
Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon
"Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin' All the Time)," Ethel Waters
"Up-Up and Away," the 5th Dimension

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

More Song Stories entries »

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