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Song Stories

“I Say a Little Prayer”

Dionne Warwick | 1967

The wistful verses in which Dionne Warwick asks for a blessing for someone close to her glide into a jubilant chorus pledging eternal love on this 1967 hit. Warwick later revealed in the liner notes to The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection that she "approached the song from the point of view that it was written, that we were sending a message to our kids in Vietnam." Burt Bacharach, who co-wrote "I Say a Little Prayer" with Hal David, worried, "I thought I blew it. The tempo seemed too fast."

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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