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Song Stories

“Shout At the Devil”

Motley Crue | 1983

Heavy metal came under fire for supposed satanic messages during the Eighties, and while Mötley Crüe's title track from their 1983 album, Shout at the Devil, seemed to be about standing up to Beelzebub, it was originally titled "Shout With the Devil" -- reflecting Nikki Sixx's interest in black magic at the time. But after a spooky encounter at Sixx's apartment, A&R man Tom Zutaut set the band straight. "I swear to God I saw this with my own eyes, a knife and fork rose off the table and stuck into the ceiling just above where I was sitting," he recalled. "I looked at Nikki and freaked out. 'There is no more "Shout With the Devil." If you keep shouting with the devil, you're going to get killed.'" 

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Song Stories

“He Will Break Your Heart”

Jerry Butler | 1960

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."

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