The Beatles' MP3s: iTunes, McCartney Reportedly Strike $400 Million Deal

After slowly acquiring the rights to all four Beatles' solo careers, Apple and iTunes are poised to finally get the proper Beatles catalog, PC World reports. One major hurdle was cleared this weekend, as Paul McCartney reportedly agreed to a $400 million agreement with Apple to distribute the Beatles' back catalog on iTunes, with Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison also getting a cut. No date has been set for the digital release of the albums, but we recommend they make it tomorrow during American Idol, as the final twelve contestants will take part in "Beatles Week."

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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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