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Song Stories

“Brimful of Asha”

Cornershop | 1997

Cornershop were not the biggest band to emerge during the Britpop era, but the success of "Brimful of Asha" certainly added some Bollywood swagger to an otherwise totally Anglocentric moment. The subject matter of "Brimful" — film dubbing and Asha Bhosle, India's best-known singer of movie soundtracks — imparted a little something about Indian culture when the song rocketed to Number One in the U.K. and made the Top 20 Modern Rock tracks in the U.S. "I think it's just about everything we've wanted to do within music," said Cornershop founder Tjinder Singh. "To get loads of people of different ages into a song."

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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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