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Song Stories

“Yonkers”

Tyler, the Creator | 2011
Tyler, the Creator opens his debut album with “Yonkers,” a disturbed confessional told through his alter ego Wolf Haley. The head of the Odd Future collective fantasizes about stabbing Bruno Mars in his “goddamn esophagus” among other deviant acts of vengeance. “That’s me and him going at it in my head,” Tyler told the Swedish Web site PSL about the song’s tussle with his alter ego. “Every line that I say is like contradicting itself.” The song capped off a year of hype after Odd Future’s self-produced mix tapes hit the Internet and the artist was criticized for misogynist and homophobic lyrics.
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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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