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Song Stories

“At Home He's a Tourist”

Gang of Four | 1979

The socially conscious post-punk group generated what the members referred to as "the perfect existential squall." "No assemblage, pro-tools confection, just the strings being hit and screaming in pain as they're bashed and cajoled into a beautiful anti-solo that is all about the now and not about the maybe," the band's singer Jon King said in 2009. "We thought this song was a mutant disco thing, at a time when it was not down to like dance music, when funk and rock had to be kept in separate rooms for fear of miscegenation." In the decades to follow, the Gang of Four influenced countless bands with their prescient political dance-rock sound.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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