Shirley Bassey Takes Over Party-Starting Duties From Pink

Shirley Bassey is best known for having recorded three of the most beloved James Bond theme songs ever: "Goldfinger," "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Moonraker" (vote for your favorite Bond theme here). But the seventy-year-old Welsh diva is enjoying a career resurgence thanks in part to British department store Marks & Spencer, which commissioned Bassey to cover Pink's tune "Get the Party Started" for a Bond-themed commercial last Christmas. This led to a new album, Get the Party Started, which was released on June 25 in the U.K. Check out this hilarious, over-the-top video for the lead single.

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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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