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Song Stories

“Maggie May”

Rod Stewart | 1971

Rod Stewart plays a schoolboy in love with an older temptress in “Maggie May” (“The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”) — he claimed it was “more or less a true story about the first woman I had sex with.” The song, a last-minute addition to Every Picture Tells a Story, was initially the B side of “Reason to Believe.” Stewart has joked that if a DJ hadn't flipped the single over, he'd have gone back to his old job: digging graves.

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“Cobrastyle”
Robyn | 2008
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“Walk This Way”
Run-D.M.C. | 1986

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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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