Legal Ticker: Beyonce, R. Kelly, Chris Brown and More All Have Their Day in Court

• Beyoncé won a copyright infringement case against Jennifer Armour, who claimed she had written B's hit "Baby Boy" and submitted it to Matthew Knowles.
• Bluesman Syl Johnson is suing Michael Jackson, Will Smith, KRS-One & Boogie Down Productions and the estate of Tupac Shakur, alleging that all the artists sampled his 1967 "Different Strokes" (not the TV theme).
• Suge Knight claims a Los Angeles judge was duped into filing a $130 million default ruling against him after a jailed drug dealer and his wife claimed false ownership in Death Row Records.
• In response to Ne-Yo's lawsuit alleging that he was fired from his joint tour with R. Kelly for "upstaging" the singer, Kelly's people responded that Ne-Yo is only suing the tour promoter, and not R.
• Chris Brown and his tour promoter are being sued by a concert set designer seeking $1 million for breach of contract and "unjust enrichment" for overtime wages he says he did not receive.

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  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
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  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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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