Eminem and Pink's Fierce 'Recovery' Team-Up Hits Web

The unlikely collaboration between Eminem and Pink on Slim Shady's June 22nd disc Recovery has hit the web early. Fans first got wind of the song when Eminem revealed his track list last week, and the team-up, "Won't Back Down," surfaced early on Rap Radar. Riding a heavy riff that sounds like Deep Purple interpolating the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post," Pink kicks things off by singing the hook before Eminem furiously grabs the microphone. "Shady's got the mass appeal, crank this shit because it's your goddamn jam," Eminem spits. "You said that you wanted your punch lines a little more compact, well I'm that man."

After playing it fairly serious with Recovery's redemptive first single "Not Afraid," the snarky Slim Shady of "We Made You" and "Without Me" returns with an insensitive jab about Michael J. Fox, cracks about swine flu and white trash and a plea to "bring me two extension cords, Imma measure my dick." "Won't Back Down" was produced by DJ Khalil, the beatmaker behind the similarly rock-flavored "Kinda Like a Big Deal" by Clipse featuring Kanye West.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Recovery will also feature a guest spot by Rihanna, who has helped hip-hop tracks by T.I. ("Live Your Life") and Jay-Z ("Run This Town") become chart-toppers. While some fans questioned Em's motives by linking up with two pop singers — perhaps forgetting the formula yielded great results when Eminem and Dido teamed for "Stan" — Eminem discussed the Pink collaboration in an interview with Paris' Skyrock FM while promoting Recovery in Europe. "When I did the song that I did with Pink I laid my parts first and kind of heard her on the record," Eminem said. "I felt like she would smash this record, so I gave her a call and she was with it, so we did it." Pink famously took a page from the book of Shady on her 2006 single "Stupid Girls," which featured a video skewering Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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