Aaliyah song facts

I CAN BE by AALIYAH

Aaliyah is an adulterous man's mistress here. She desires to be all the things that the other woman is to him. Bud'da's production combines 2-step and rock elements to emphasize the lyrics about infidelity. "It had such a great melody and I wanted to add something dark to go with it," Bud'da recalled to Fuse TV. "So you've got your sweetness on the top but down below you just have this menacing thing that's just pounding your speakers."

TRY AGAIN by AALIYAH

This was featured in the movie Romeo Must Die. Aaliyah stared in the movie opposite Jet Li. It was her first film role, and a promising start to her acting career. Unfortunately, Aaliyah appeared in just one more movie: Queen of the Damned, which was released after her death.

Timbaland produced this song and wrote it with Stephen Garrett; the pair had previously collaborated on the Ginuwine song "Pony" and on Aaliyah's first hit "Are You That Somebody?," which was used on the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack. Garrett, who was in a group called Playa, died in 2008 from a rare medical condition. He was 33.

The "It's been a long time, we shouldn't have left you... without a dope beat to step to" line is a variation on a lyric from the 1987 Eric B. & Rakim song "I Know You Got Soul," where Rakim raps: "It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you... without a strong rhyme to step to."

This was the first song to top the Hot 100 based on airplay alone, without any sales figures being included. Until December 5, 1998, a song had to be issued as a single to make the chart (which is why songs like "Stairway To Heaven" and "Don't Speak" didn't place). "Try Again" wasn't released as a commercial single until it fell from #1 - if you wanted to own it before then, you had to buy the Romeo Must Die soundtrack.

This won MTV Video Music Awards for Best Female Video and Best Video For A Film.

This got a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. It lost to "He Wasn't Man Enough" by Toni Braxton.

The video features Aaliyah's Romeo Must Die co-star, Jet Li. It was directed by Wayne Isham, whose many credits include "Piece Of Me" by Britney Spears and "All The Right Moves" by OneRepublic.

This was used in a 2013 episode of The Mindy Project in a scene where the character Danny does a dance routine to it as a secret Santa gift for Mindy.

LOOSE RAP by AALIYAH

Aaliyah dismisses here romantic admirers who use trite pickup lines. The lyrics were written by Stephen "Static Major" Garrett from the R&B band Playa, who had a close friendship with the singer. He also shared vocals on the song with Aaliyah.

The song's title came from a slang term used by the producers Eric Seats and Rapture Stewart and Static. "The saying 'loose rap' was something we always used to say in our regular talk," Stewart told Fuse TV. "We were joking around in the studio that day and that track was on, and Static just said it on the hook. A lot of the songs happened like that."

NEVER NO MORE by AALIYAH

Stephen "Static Major" Garrett's lyrics for this song are about an abusive relationship that's seemingly has come to an end. "There's so many people quietly dealing with abuse and it's just an unheard thing," the song's producer Bud'da commented to Fuse TV. "I thought it was pretty upfront for that song and it was bold on her part to do it knowing that she has a great influence."

West Coast producer Bud'da was best known at the time for his work with hip hop artists including Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. For this song he mixed old-school soul, hip-hop sounds and strings. "I wanted to create something that had a soulful feel with the classic instruments. After she laid the vocals, I had the idea to add the live strings and other elements around her voice to emphasize the words," Bud'da explained. "With the topic of the song being about abuse, I wanted you to feel that musically and hear the emotions. I wish everybody could've seen the emotions as well."

ARE YOU THAT SOMEBODY? by AALIYAH

The song finds Aaliyah offering a late-night tryst to a guy she's had her eye on for a while. She insists on discretion however, repeatedly asking him, "Are you responsible?"
Timbaland wrote this song with Stephen "Static Major" Garrett, who co-wrote most of Aaliyah's other hits along with songs for Ginuwine ("So Anxious," "Pony") and his group Playa ("Cheers 2 U," "Don't Stop The Music").

In the December 2008 issue of Vibe magazine, Garrett mentions that Aaliyah did not initially like this song and another Static wrote for her, "Try Again." She recorded them both, though, and they became big hits for her. Aaliyah didn't write songs, but prided herself on being able to interpret them.
Timbaland produced this song, incorporating the clean percussion sound that powered many of his productions. Often working with Missy Elliott and Melvin "Magoo" Barcliff, he became one of the hottest producers of this era, and Aaliyah was one of his biggest stars. She had previously worked with R. Kelly and Jermaine Dupri.

Aaliyah was 19 when this was released in 1998, but she was already a seasoned pro: her first album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, was issued in 1994.

A key component to this song is the baby giggling and cooing in the background. This was a unique production element that played to Aaliyah's nickname: "baby girl," which is how Timbaland addresses her in his rap.

Many rumors floated around as to the identity of the baby (a popular one was that it came from a home video of Aaliyah when she was little), but the "happy baby" came from a CD from a sound effects library.

The same sound was used in Prince's song "Delirious," which in turn was sampled from the 1968 song "Countdown to 6," by Perrey and Kingsley.
This was featured in the movie Dr. Dolittle, starring Eddie Murphy. The soundtrack featured several other Timbaland productions, including "Same Ol' G" by Ginuwine and an All Saints cover of "Lady Marmalade."

He and Stephen Garrett put the song together on very short notice when they got the call to produce a track for the film. Timbaland remembers the gig paying $400,000.

Timbaland did the rap at the end of the song, which has nothing to do with the storyline of the song but serves as effective promotion for him and Aaliyah - by mentioning their names, it ensured that listeners would know the artist and producer when they heard it on the radio. When Timbaland introduces himself as "The man from the big VA," he's referring to his home state of Virginia.
This was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal in 1999.

The video gets very literal with the "watching you like a hawk" line, showing Aaliyah handling the bird. Other than that, most of the clip (directed by Mark Gerard) is comprised of group dance scenes starring Aaliyah's abs.

According to Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, listening to this song convinced him "to pursue a more soulful sound in his music."

Janet Jackson Song Facts

Fair use - (in US copyright law) the doctrine that brief excerpts of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder. If Written and produced by Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, this explicit fantasy narrative was released as the second single from the singer's janet. album in July 1993. It peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 and also topped the Hot Dance Club Play chart. The song also reached the #3 position on the Canadian singles chart. Jackson told Q magazine the song is "about a girl who goes to a club and fantasizes about this guy: serious fantasies about the things she'd do to him if she was his girl - the positions and things like that. But she's not, so she can't, so she gets pretty frustrated in the second verse - without it being too much. It's still within good taste." The song is built on a heavy metal guitar riff that is heard throughout and contains a sample of Diana Ross & The Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together." The song's music video was directed by Dominic Sena, who previously worked with Jackson on visuals for Rhythm Nation 1814. The clip was staged as a futuristic Asian nightclub. The spy cameras monitoring the intimate interactions of patrons within their private boudoirs acted as a metaphor for the single's message of sexual fantasy, desire and voyeurism. It was choreographed by Tina Landon, who previously danced for the singer during the Control and Rhythm Nation era. Looking back at the video in a 2013 interview with Billboard magazine, she said: "I don't think people really realize what we were showing in that video that wasn't available with technology then. The video featured futuristic technology, specifically high definition touch screens. I wanted the actors in the video to use these screens to communicate, and relate with each other in the clubs. Similar to what we all do with our smart phones and tablets today. As I look at our lives now, it seems that life is imitating art. I have seen different elements from all of these videos in lots of artists work and it's a great feeling to know that you have inspired them in such a way." Jackson also made her big screen acting debut in 1993 in John Singleton's Poetic Justice. She credits the role with giving her the confidence to embrace her sexier side on the janet album, particularly on this song. "I knew that I wanted for the album to be about love and all of that, but I don't think I would've taken it to this extent except for the film," she told Us Weekly. "Like the song 'If' - I probably would have never talked about it before the film." (Jackson also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Again," which was used in the closing credits of the movie.) Miss You Much This song was written by the production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They had a lot of success on Jackson's previous album, Control, in 1986 - the breakthrough album that helped Jackson break the pop mold and become a sex icon with a funky edge. This was inspired by a breakup letter Jimmy Jam received from one of his old girlfriends, who signed it with what would become this song title. He thought it would be perfect for Jackson. In the album title Rhythm Nation 1814, the "1814" was the project number assigned to the album on the A&M Records record label; that it shared the same number as the year the US national anthem was written was a coincidence realized and acknowledged by Jackson and producers later on. This was one of seven Top 5 singles from the album. It was the first time any album produced so many hits, although Michael Jackson (Janet's brother) had seven Top 10 hits from his 1983 Thriller album. TIME magazine named this song the second best-selling single of the year (it sold over four million copies), between Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" at number one and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" at number three. Although Jackson didn't receive a songwriting credit for this track, she had some worthwhile ideas, according to Jimmy Jam. He told Idolator: "When we got to Rhythm Nation, I had done the [instrumental] track to 'Miss You Much' and I just pointed at a note on one of the keyboards and she just walked in and hit the key and that became the string part on the song. She had lyric ideas walking into the studio." This song was featured in the movie Ghost Dad, a 1990 comedy starring Bill Cosby. Because her previous album, Control, was released three years earlier, Janet's vocals were a little rusty from the lengthy break, so Jam and Lewis didn't want her to record the lead for this song right away. Jam remembered: "The idea was to do the backgrounds first to get her voice back in tip-top singing shape, because she hadn't sung for probably two years." Someone to Call My Lover This uses the guitar riff from the 1972 America song "Ventura Highway." Jackson wrote it with her producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Lifting a soft-rock hit from the '70s doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for a dance-pop act like Jackson, but Jimmy Jam told us that Janet loves many kinds of music and was always willing to try different ideas. Describing the construction of this song, he said, "For 'Someone to Call My Lover,' she hadn't heard the 'Ventura Highway' sample before. She hadn't heard those songs. So it's kind of fun to come up with stuff like that and play it for her. And she hasn't heard of it, but she still really likes it. So you have something that's going to appeal to people that haven't heard it before, it's going to catch them, but it's also going to catch the people who are nostalgic about it." (Check out our full interview with Jimmy Jam.) This song was used in the animated series Neighbors From Hell on the episode "Country Club Hell" in 2010. Jackson really was looking for someone to call her lover: she had just ended her 10-year marriage to Rene Elizondo Jr. while recording this album. The loop played throughout the chorus was borrowed from the Classical piece "Gymnopédie No. 1" by French composer Erik Satie. Jackson first heard it on a TV commercial when she was a child and never forgot it. Jackson first worked with So So Def producer Jermaine Dupri, who would become her longtime boyfriend, on a remix of this song. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2002, but lost to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like A Bird." No Sleep Janet Jackson's first single in seven years is a steamy tune that lyrically depicts the singer waiting longingly to engage in intimacy with her lover. The release of the song on June 22, 2015 was accompanied by a tweet, "I dedicate this to My Love," referring Jackson's husband, Wissam Al. The song was produced by longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the pair responsible for the definitive Janet Jackson sound since 1986's Control. This was released under Jackson's own record label, Rhythm Nation Records, distributed by BMG Rights Management. The launch of Rhythm Nation made history with the singer becoming the first female African-American recording artist to form her own label. The song was Janet Jackson's 40th Hot 100 hit and her first since "Feedback" peaked at #19 in 2008. A remixed version featuring J. Cole was sent to radio on July 23, 2015. Jackson and the rapper recorded the new tune in a Los Angeles recording studio earlier in the month. Cole gives Janet's late big brother a shout out during his verse when he raps about having "Butterflies like MJ." Control In the title song of her breakthrough album, Janet proclaims her independence for the first time in her life. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to figure out the whole album represents a break from her famous family, including superstar brother Michael and father, Joe, who was primarily interested in being a manager rather than a dad. "'Control' came from the heart," she told the Los Angeles Times. "It was all about stepping out, taking control of your life... a certain point in your life when you ask yourself who you are and what you want to do." The album hooked her up with producers/songwriters Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who helped her create a sexy and funky image. Jam and Lewis went on to write and produce most of her hits, including this one (Janet also has a writing credit on the track). Although Janet wanted a fresh start, she didn't want to forget about her past or her old friends. Ja'net Dubois, her former co-star from the '70s sitcom Good Times (and co-writer of The Jeffersons theme), played her mother in the music video for this song, which opens with a vignette where Janet tells her parents she's moving out. The unique break in this song came about by accident during the production of "Nasty," another hit from the album. Jimmy Jam explained: "When you program drum machines, you program a lot of different patterns in. But the way we do it, we never put the programs in a sequence. We play and change the sequences by hand. So at one point in 'Nasty,' I changed to the wrong sequence and it made this weird drum break. A lot of times when that happens, we leave it and figure out what to do with it musically later. That's what happened on 'Control.' There are two or three breaks where it stops and there's a little 'do-do-do-do-do,' and that was the creation of hitting the wrong drum program at the wrong time. But it worked." Producing the music video for this song was one of the worst experiences in Sharon Oreck's career. Behind the scenes, Janet's soon-to-be-fired manager Joe Jackson was trying to sabotage the project by making wild demands (which were last-ditch efforts to control his daughter). He angrily insisted Janet be insured for $1 million before she was allowed to be lowered onstage via trapeze. Meanwhile, the live footage was being recorded at the Grand Olympics Auditorium in Los Angeles in front of an audience who expected a free Janet Jackson concert, not "50 takes of Janet lip-synching," Oreck remembered. The crowd was disgruntled over that, but nearly rioted when white members of the audience, who had been scattered throughout, were slowly moved to the front. An A&M label representative was able to calm everyone down when he explained the migration wasn't an act of segregation but a trick to make it look like the audience was more diverse. The video later won a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul or Rap Video, but Oreck called it her "worst nightmare." Glee's Dianna Agron, Darren Criss and Kevin McHale covered this song on the season 3 episode "Hold On to Sixteen."

TLC Song Facts

UNPRETTY by TLC

This song talks about girls' inner beauty. The first line (sung by T-Boz), "I wish I could tie you up in my shoes make you feel unpretty too," is talking about the people who say that a person is ugly. Chilli sings about satisfying her boyfriend for what he wants from her. In the video, directed by Paul Hunter, she and her boyfriend are looking at an online web page of a hospital which specializes in breast implants. Her boyfriend would like Chilli to get bigger breasts, but she thinks that she shouldn't. The video continues with more scenes of people compromising their health and principles for the sake of beauty, including a girl who uses bulimia to stay thin.

Dallas Austin, who also wrote and produced the trio's #1 hit "Creep," wrote this song based on a poem T-Boz composed called "Unpretty." He explained to Billboard: "Once I saw the title, I went to my keyboard and guitar and started playing melodies that would complement it. I didn't want it to be aggressive. I wanted it to be friendly - for a song called 'Unpretty' talking about how much you don't like stuff about yourself - so the message would come across to people with those kinds of problems or issues. I thought it would be unique to get it across in a sweet way."

Austin, who had first met the group back in high school long before they were famous, was careful to stay true to the girls' personalities by tailoring the verses for each of them: "When I write for TLC, I write for each one of the members. So when I do a Tionne part, it's different from what Chilli's part would be. When we first did 'Unpretty' it was one of the most exciting records we'd ever done because it was different. And it still stayed along the lines of TLC having messages for people."

This was used on the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in the 1999 episode "Aging, Not So Gracefully."

This earned Grammy Award nominations for Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 2000, but lost both to Santana (for "Smooth" and "Maria Maria," respectively).

AIN'T 2 PROUD 2 BEG by TLC

This was the first Top 40 hit for TLC. It introduced the group and explained who represented each letter: Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas.

This contains samples of "Escape-ism" (James Brown), "Jungle Boogie" (Kool & the Gang), "School Boy Crush" (AWB), "Fly Robin Fly" (Silver Convention), and "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" (Bob James).

The video made sure to introduce each singer. When each girl sang her part, her name flashed on the screen. Like many of their songs, T-Boz sang the lyrics, Left Eye did the rap, and Chilli sang on the chorus.

This is about sex. They made it clear, however, that they advocated safe sex, by prominently displaying condoms. Lopes wore one over her left eye in their early days.

This is not the same song as the Temptations classic of the same name. In that song, a man swallows his pride and begs his girl to come back to him. In this, the girls state that they are not afraid to ask a man for sex.

It took a long time for radio stations to figure out what this song was about, but when they did, a lot of them censored the line, "Two inches or a yard, rock hard or if it's sagging - I ain't too proud to beg." The line was part of Left Eye's rap.

This was written by Dallas Austin, except for Left Eye's rap which, like the majority of what she sang, she wrote herself.

The Ooooooohhh...On the TLC Tip album sold over 3 million copies. Their next one sold 5 million, but TLC still managed to go broke and had to file for bankruptcy in 1995. Their contract paid them only 7% of revenue from album sales, which wasn't enough to cover their expenses when split three ways.

CREEP by TLC

This song is about a woman who is not happy with her man, so she sneaks around ("Creeps") and cheats on him.

This uses a sample from Slick Rick's 1988 song "Hey Young World."

This was written and produced by the Atlanta-based producer Dallas Austin. Though he had already made a name for himself working alongside producers like L.A. Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, and hot acts like Another Bad Creation and Bell Biv DeVoe, "Creep" would be an important song for Austin because it proved he could write from a female perspective.

The trio had mixed feelings about the adulterous relationship portrayed in the lyrics. Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins thought the subject was an important one. She told Billboard: "We thought that was a good relationship to talk about because a lot of people don't admit that's how they feel - that their man's playing on them and they want to be with him so they seek attention elsewhere, but they really want to be with their guy."

But Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, who was on probation for setting her boyfriend's (pro football player Andre Rison) house on fire, didn't like the idea and refused to contribute a rap to the song. Austin remembered: "The reason there's not a rap on it is because Lisa said, 'Dallas, I don't want this to offend people personally. I don't want it to interfere with my relationships. If he thinks I'm doing this, it's going to cause problems and I'm making a record out of it.'"

Left Eye also didn't believe in an eye-for-an-eye when it came to cheating. She threatened to protest the single by wearing black tape over her mouth in the video.

Austin held onto the song for six months because he thought it might be too corny, but when he couldn't get it out of his head, he decided to record it.

This was TLC's first #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. They would have three more: "Waterfalls," "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty."

This won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals in 1996. It was also nominated for Best R&B Song but lost to Stevie Wonder's "For Your Love."

The music video shows the group hanging out in their pajamas while T-Boz gets friendly with a trumpet player (played by former Janet Jackson dancer Omar Lopez). Two other videos were made, but went unreleased, including one that follows Chilli and T-Boz cheating on their boyfriends while Left Eye dances by herself.

TLC performed this on Saturday Night Live on the May 6, 1995 episode hosted by Bob Saget.

This was used in the TV series New York Undercover in the 1995 episode "CAT."

The song was inspired by a situation that T-Boz found herself in. "'Creep,' unfortunately, was one of my true stories," she told Billboard magazine with a laugh. "You're with a guy and he's not showing you attention, so another guy comes along and you're like, 'Hey, if you were where you were supposed to be, he couldn't be showing me attention right now!' I was in the middle of this drama, because the other guy was [my boyfriend's] friend, and my boyfriend was just not getting it together."

T-Boz shared her personal state of affairs with Dallas Austin, whom she grew up with in Atlanta, and Austin in turn penned "Creep."

NO SCRUBS by TLC

This song is about men who have nothing going for them, but hit on women just the same, even resorting to hopeless tactics like hollering at women from the passenger seat of their friend's car. The song vaulted the term "Scrub" into the popular lexicon, and it became a well-used word to describe a worthless man.

Future Real Housewives of Atlanta cast member Kandi Burruss wrote this with help from producer Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs, and Tameka "Tiny" Cottle. Burruss and Cottle were members of the recently disbanded group Xscape, who had a hit in 1993 with "Just Kickin' It," and they had formed their own duo, which they called KAT (Kandi And Tameka). Briggs was an up-and-coming producer at LaFace records, home of TLC, and he had written what would become "No Scrubs," but with completely different lyrics. After meeting Briggs through their manager, Burruss and Cottle asked if they could try writing different lyrics to the song, which they then hoped to record. Burruss got the "No Scrubs" idea after talking about some of her ex-boyfriends - she and her friends used the word "Scrubs" a lot. She and Cottle finished the new lyrics and took them to Briggs, who instead of putting the song together for KAT, brought it to LaFace where the execs decided it would be a great song for TLC. Burruss, who had songwriting aspirations but didn't write in Xscape, was hesitant about giving up the song, but knew it was the right thing to do. It worked out well for her, as even though her singing career wound down, she became a popular songwriter, later teaming up with Briggs to write another man-basher: "Bills, Bills, Bills" for Destiny's Child.

This was the first single released from Fanmail, the followup to TLC's wildly successful second album CrazySexyCool, which sold over 11 million copies. "No Scrubs" kept them in the groove and was a major hit. The song was a no-brainer for radio stations, as it was a fresh sound from an established group that had already made the R&B, Pop and Adult Contemporary charts. A smooth, mid-tempo number with a very memorable title, it found a home on all these formats, as did their next single, "Unpretty."

The word "scrub" has developed many uses, including what you do to rid your computer of viruses or remove items from a budget. "Scrubs" are what hospital workers wear, and a show with that name debuted on NBC in 2001.

The group Sporty Thievz released a response song from the male perspective called "No Pigeons." This renewed the popularity of "No Scrubs" as radio stations played the songs back-to-back.

This song is heavy on the "C" and light on the "T" and "L." It was the first TLC song that Chilli (Rozanda Thomas), sang lead on by herself; T-Boz (Tionne Watkins) did most of their lead vocals to that point. Kevin Briggs is the one who decided she would sing on it, and he worked with her to get the vocal down. He thought her vocal range was right for the track, and liked the idea of having her get her first lead. "We had some resistance from the other girls at one point, but we ended up working it out," said Briggs.

This won Grammys for Best Rhythm & Blues Song and for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance by a Group.

This song is TLC's biggest seller in the UK, selling 553,200 copies.

The futuristic music video, directed by Hype Williams, has the trio performing in space on metallic sets, with multiple wardrobe changes and a dance sequence in front of a TLC logo. The clip won the 1999 MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video.

The vocal melody in Ed Sheeran's 2017 hit "Shape Of You" bears much resemblance to the one used in this song. When Sheeran sings:

Girl, you know I want your love
Your love was handmade for somebody like me

It's pretty close to:

No, I don't want no scrubs
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me

It was close enough that Sheeran added the "No Scrubs" songwriters to the credits of "Shape Of You," likely to avoid a lawsuit.

WATERFALLS by TLC

"Chasing Waterfalls" is TLC's way of expressing how people chase intangible dreams with no thought of the consequences. The first verse is talking about an inner city mother and son relationship. He is chasing "waterfalls" (money and respect by dealing drugs), but his mother knows this cannot end well. The second verse deals with a man's relationship with a woman. His "waterfall" is casual sex - he has a "natural obsession for temptation." This could mean he is cheating on someone or the woman he is seeing is cheating on someone. Either way, he contracts HIV and dies ("three letters took him to his final resting place"). TLC were big on AIDS awareness - Left Eye would often wear condoms attached to her clothes and in her glasses to promote safe sex.

Cee-Lo Green sang backup on this. He's well-known as a songwriter and producer, and as a member of Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley. Cee-Lo recalled to The Guardian newspaper March 22, 2008: "I was working at the same studio and of course I know the girls too, because we were on the same label, so they just asked me. I didn't realize at the time what a big song it was going to be."

The Atlanta production team Organized Noize, who produced the track, wrote this song with Marqueze Etheridge, and TLC's Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes came up with the rap. Lopes was dealing with some personal problems at the time, which are expressed in her rap. She had a very turbulent relationship with the football player Andre Rison, and on June 9, 1994 she burned his new shoes in his bathtub, which set fire to his entire $2 million mansion. She pled guilty to arson, but did reconcile with Rison.

This makes the "songs discussed in movies" list thanks to its use in the 2010 film The Other Guys, where Michael Keaton's character keeps unknowingly quoting TLC songs, starting with this one.

The video won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year in 1995, beating out "Buddy Holly" by Weezer and "Basket Case" by Green Day. The "Waterfalls" clip had lots of fancy computer generated effects, including a lot of water, which was notoriously difficult to render.

The rap lyrics Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes performed on this song were engraved in her casket. Lopes died in a car accident in Honduras in 2002.

Three-piece British girl group Stooshe released a cover of this song for their third single from their self-titled debut album in 2012. "We are huge fans and have met T-Boz, who told us she loved our version," Courtney Rumbold of the trio told The Sun. "It's meeting heroes like that that spurs us on, and we have the most loyal of fans." Their version peaked at #21 on the UK singles chart.

Stooshe managed to secure cameos from TLC's T-Boz and Chilli for their accompanying music video.

T-Boz and Chilli re-recorded the song with Japanese popstar Namie Amuro to mark their twentieth anniversary. The new version of the track was dedicated to their fans in Japan and finds Namie rapping Left Eye's verse almost at a whisper.

Song Facts

Panic! At the Disco "Death of a Bachelor"

This song channels Frank Sinatra, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2015. Panic At The Disco mainman Brendon Urie posted on his Instagram in reference to the song's release.

"I attach his music to so many memories: opening presents on Christmas day, my grandparents teaching the rest of the family to swing dance, watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit with my siblings (Sinatra makes a cameo in the form of a cartoon sword singing 'Witchcraft')."

"His music has been a major player in the soundtrack of my life. So it's only right that I return the favor and/or pay it forward. I wrote a new album this year and even in the few songs that don't sound remotely similar to any of his music I still felt his influence in the writing and the need to relate so personally to each song."

Speaking to Pete Wentz, who was hosting Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio show, Urie half-jokingly said of the song: "It's like if Sinatra and Beyoncé made a song together. It's like some Beyoncé beats with some Sinatra vocals. It's really crazy."

Urie expanded on his jokey declaration that the song is a mash up of Sinatra and Beyoncé. "I wrote the song actually trying to make a Sinatra song ...and then I hit this wall, just writing-wise, where I was getting so frustrated," he explained to The Associated Press. "So I took a break from it and went back to this beat I had worked on like months before and it kind of had this 'Drunk In Love,' Beyoncé-kind of feel. ...It was just like a happy accident."

Brendon Urie got married to Sarah Orzechowski in 2013 and this song also serves as a kiss-off to the single life. "'Death Of A Bachelor' is very important to me," he wrote. "It expresses the bittersweet (but mostly sweet) end of an era. A look back at a part of my life now deceased. An It's A Wonderful Life-esque look into a possibly different future. But mostly an appreciation for the present."

Urie explained to Pete Wentz the background to this song, which details giving up his single life. "You kinda find this person that you connect with and you can kind of throw away your history," he said. "You don't want to just forget about it. You just don't need to look back. You don't regret anything from the past. You don't have any want to go back to a life of being a bachelor."

"You know I met my wife Sarah and I was just like, this is it," Urie added. "I figured out that this is the happiest that I've ever been."

Urie addresses the fact that music fans seem to prefer single celebrities. "You're a rock star. You should be this single dude that goes around and sleeps with a bunch of girls," he said. "That's not really me, you know. This was just my voice, telling exactly how I felt at that time."

Death of a Bachelor became Panic! at the Disco's first #1 album in the States after selling the equivalent of 190,000 units in its first week. The LP surpassed the band's previous best #2 position in the US Billboard Chart, which Pretty.Odd achieved in March 2008.

Muse "Dead Inside"

Muse's seventh album Drones opens with this funky rocker where Matt Bellamy sings about the tumultuous end of a relationship. The song sets up the record's concept concerning the journey of a person who has lost all hope. After being indoctrinated by the system into becoming a human drone, he eventually defects away from this oppressors.

Matt Bellamy explained: "This is where the story of the album begins, where the protagonist loses hope and becomes 'Dead Inside', therefore vulnerable to the dark forces introduced in 'Psycho' and which ensue over the next few songs on the album, before eventually defecting, revolting and overcoming these dark forces later in the story."

Muse performed the song live for the first time during a gig in Brighton on England's south coast on March 23, 2015.

Matt Bellamy separated from his wife, actress Kate Hudson, in 2014 and this song reflects his feelings about their split. He told Q magazine that "Dead Inside" was about, "a relationship ending and a person becoming dead inside themselves."

The song's music video was directed by Robert Hales, who has a MTV Video Music Award on his sideboard for shooting the clip for Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy."

The visual features American contemporary dancer Kathryn McCormick and So You Think You Can Dance finalist Will Wingfield moving in time to the music being performed by the band. Their scenes were choreographed by Tessandra Chavez, the CEO of Unity Dance Ensemble, who is known for her work on the aforementioned So You Think You Can Dance.

Arctic Monkeys "Star Treatment" 

The opening track of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino kicks off a reference to The Strokes' influence on the Arctic Monkey's early work, as frontman Alex Turner recalls his inner turmoil during the band's early days.

I just wanted to be one of The Strokes
Now look at the mess you made me make

Turner explained to Mojo magazine: "That was writing about writing. It was my 8½, the Fellini film - where the director can't seem to make this movie, however hard he tries. I was thinking about that. That's interesting to me. "

Turner went onto admit that he did attempt in vain to replace the Strokes line, knowing people would interpret it as one about him being a rock star. "Did The Strokes line feel too close to home? Yeah, absolutely," he said. "But you can't let that stop you. That whole thing of 'Oh my God, what they gonna think this means? You can't really work like that."

Turner admitted to Pitchfork that he initially envisaged not including the opening lyric about the Strokes on the record.

"When I wrote that line, I imagined I would return to it, and it wouldn't end up on the record," he said. "But when I circled back around to it I felt like it was right where it ought to be because of how it makes me think, 'S--. The last 12 years just flashed by.' There's an honesty and a truth to it. The style of me writing has developed considerably since the first record, but the bluntness of that line - and perhaps some other lyrics on this album - reminds me of the way I wrote in the beginning."

The "Here ain't no place for dolls like you and me," line dates back to around 2009. Turner said: "I even tried to get somebody else to put it in a song, but they didn't like it. Maybe I was saving it because I didn't have the follow-up."

Turner eventually came up with the follow-up lyric he'd been seeking: "Everybody's on a barge floating down the endless stream of great TV."

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino has a loose concept running through it set in a not-so-distant future, where the moon has been colonized and turned into a luxury resort.

Turner and his bandmates take up the role of titular hotel's house band during "Star Treatment." Turner said: "I also sing about the 'martini police' on this song, and there was just something about that melody with those words that amused me; I've begun to wonder if that's the right name for the band that has the residency in the night club in the song. And the melody of that bit reminds me of Toto."

Turner pokes fun at movie snobs when he sings "what do you mean you haven't seen Blade Runner?" He told NME: "I've only seen this happen a couple of times, but it goes beyond: 'What do you mean you've never seen Blade Runner?' and gets to: 'Oh my God, I envy you!'"

Arctic Monkeys played the song live for the first time during a June 7, 2018 show at London's Royal Albert Hall. The track was debuted by the quartet as they returned for a three track encore, which also featured "The View From The Afternoon" and "R U Mine?."

Ask your mates but golden boy's in bad shape

Mojo asked Turner if the Golden Boy really is in a bad shape. He replied: "In the sense that I was lost and didn't really have any ideas about what I was going to do. 'Golden Boy''s a bit of a rob off that Leonard Cohen song 'Dress Rehearsal Rag' ('Where are you golden boy. Where is your famous golden touch?') I must have been playing the album (Songs of Love and Hate) and it kind of got in there."

So what did The Strokes think about being name-checked by Arctic Monkeys on this song? Speaking to NME, The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr admitted that he laughed upon discovering the reference.

"It's more fun for the people who do it! I don't live my life in that, it's something you laugh at more," he said. "Sure it's nice, but I didn't think of it – I thought of it as a way of describe the simplicity of being young."

"It's a thing you want for the simplicity of it, and then you realize it's a lot more complicated," Hammond continued. "It's what a picture looks like – and a perfect way to reference his youth. It's a cool thing and he's a great lyricist."

Radiohead song facts

AIRBAG by RADIOHEAD

This song is about a car crash Thom Yorke was in with his girlfriend in 1987. She suffered whiplash, but he was fine. Says Yorke: "Has an airbag saved my life? Nah... but I tell you something, every time you have a near accident, instead of just sighing and carrying on, you should pull over, get out of the car and run down the street screaming 'I'm BACK! I'm ALIVE! My life has started again today!' In fact, you should do that every time you get out of a car. We're just riding on those things - we're not really in control of them."

Yorke: "So much of the public's perception revolves around illusion. That's what Airbag is about, the illusion of safety. In reality, airbags don't really work, and they go off at random."

Radiohead first began performing this song acoustic, and the working title was "An Airbag Saved My Life," which was a reference to Indeep's 1983 Dance hit "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life."

Guitarist Jonny Greenwood: "'Airbag' is a classic example of Colin and Phil saying, 'Let's make it sound like DJ Shadow.' But unfortunately - or fortunately - it doesn't, because we missed again. It's that thing of lumbering around in the dark, but still being excited by what we do. We're discovering these things for the first time rather than getting the pros in to show us how to do it."

This is the first song on the album OK Computer. The last song on the album, "The Tourist," is about reckless driving, which leads up to a car crash. Therefore, the album ends where it starts and makes a bizarre circle of death.

The original title of the song was "An airbag saved my life." During an XFM Acoustic Session in October 1995, Thom Yorke said this was the title of an article in an AAA magazine that came through the post.

This was built around a looped 3-second sample of drummer Phil Selway, who cited instrumental hip hop producer DJ Shadow as an inspiration. Selway explained to Humo magazine July 22, 1997: "How that man pastes rhythms to each other. The end result sounds a lot different than we intended by the way."

BLACK STAR by RADIOHEAD

Lead singer Thom Yorke: "This is about sex in the morning. It's the best time to have it. Especially if you have brushed your teeth before."

John Leckie, who produced The Bends, was away the day the band recorded this. The result is a more raw and improvised sound then the rest of the album.

According to Q magazine April 2008, this track was initially regarded as B-side material recorded by the studio's assistant engineer Nigel Godrich. However Godrich, who was to become the band's regular producer, bonded with the band and it was promoted onto the album after a playback.

ANYONE CAN PLAY GUITAR by RADIOHEAD

In this song Yorke heaps scorn on desperate wannabes who seek validation via Rock stardom.

According to Q magazine April 2008 everyone in the studio, from band to catering staff was roped in to play guitar. The track was then cut up and added to the arrangement.

This was released as a single prior to "Creep" becoming a hit and failed to chart.

Thom Yorke got the idea for the famous line "I wanna be Jim Morrison" after seeing Oliver Stone's movie The Doors. The line is meant to convey Yorke's dissatisfaction with the mythical status Morrison is given. This was made clear in the band's appearance at the MTV Beach House, where they played this song, and Yorke sang, "Maybe if I grow my hair I can become Jim Morrison," before shouting "Fat! Ugly! Dead!"

Jonny Greenwood played guitar with a paintbrush on this song.

Jonny Greenwood: "I never listened to guitar playing in any band, ever, I still don't, really. Worshiping guitarists is all buying guitar magazines. Anybody can play guitar, but writing songs is a far harder challenge. I'd rather idolize someone like Elvis Costello than I would Steve Vai."

OPTIMISTIC by RADIOHEAD

During live performances, Thom Yorke has sung this version of the chorus:

"You can try the best you can, you can try the best you can. The best you can ain't good enough."

Yorke revealed in 2003 that the song's chorus ("You can try the best you can. You can try the best you can. The best you can is good enough.") came from words of encouragement he received from his partner, Rachel Owen. He was worried that "nothing we'd done was releasable."

PROVE YOURSELF by RADIOHEAD

"Prove Yourself" was originally the lead track on Radiohead's first release in 1992, The Drill EP.

According to Q magazine April 2008, this was championed by Radio 1 DJ Gary Davies, who said: "I didn't know anything about the band - it just sounded great. Years later I bumped into one of the band, can't remember which one, and he said, 'You were the first person to play the record-not John Peel or the Evening Session.' It's very nice that he remembered."

Whitney Houston Song facts

MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE by WHITNEY HOUSTON

This song was co-written and co-produced by Jerry "Wonda" Duplessis, who helmed Fugees' 1996 album The Score and also acted as the group's bass guitarist. Fugees member and Wonda's cousin Wyclef Jean was the other co-writer and co-producer.

Wonda recalled the story of the song in an interview with The Boombox: "It's actually a song that I remember me and Clef cooked the beat for on the bus while we were on tour," he said. "When Whitney showed up, she was with her daughter and I remember when we put her daughter [in front of the mic] and she said, 'Sing Mommy!' She loved it so much, it was like, she'd be like, 'Cue my daughter's voice loud!' We'd turn it up, she'd be like, 'No! Louder! Louder!"'

The tune was a massive hit worldwide, becoming another one of Houston's signature songs. It topped the European Hot 100 Singles Chart for a week and also peaked at #1 in New Zealand.

The song featured backing vocals from The Family Friends Community Choir.

This was sampled by Duke Dumont on his 2014 UK chart-topper "I Got U." He told MTV UK: "With things like that you need to seek permission to use the vocal and Wyclef is kind of quite tough with his music. He doesn't let people use his music for a lot of things but he was willing for us to use the Whitney recording. That was quite nice getting a little bit of respect from his side. So that was a nice touch to it."

EXHALE (SHOOP SHOOP) by WHITNEY HOUSTON

This was featured in the movie Waiting To Exhale, which starred Houston as one of four women struggling to deal with the men in their lives. The song reflects the emotional state of the women in the film.

In the US, this spent 11 weeks at #2 after a single week at #1. It marked the longest consecutive stretches that the same two records have been 1-2 on the chart (this and "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men), and spent the most weeks at #2 after being #1.

According to BBC Radio 2 DJ Paul Gambaccini, the song's writer, Babyface, couldn't call this "The Shoop Shoop Song" as Betty Everett had already recorded a song with that title, so he put "Shoop Shoop" in brackets instead.

Babyface said he included the "Shoop Shoop" part because he couldn't think of any other lyrics. He told Billboard: "It felt like it should groove there. But I knew it couldn't groove without any vocals, so I started humming along with it and that's what happened. The 'shoops' came. But they felt so good, I thought 'Why not?' It doesn't have to mean anything."

This won a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best R&B Song. It was also nominated for Song of the Year, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Actor Forest Whitaker made his directorial debut with the film and also directed the music video, which features close-ups of Houston singing and includes scenes from the movie. Several US theaters used the clip as a trailer to promote the movie.

R&B singer Robin Thicke covered the song in 2012 shortly after Houston's death.

In an interview with Songwriter Universe magazine, Babyface explained his ability to write songs from a female perspective: "When I wrote for female artists, I knew from being in relationships or having my heart broken, what the woman was feeling, because I would be feeling the same emotions. So when I wrote for a female, I could understand how to write from their perspective, because it was from the heart."

HEARTBREAK HOTEL by WHITNEY HOUSTON

Most definitely not to be confused with the classic of the same name made famous by Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel" was written by Kenneth Karlin, Tamara Savage and Carsten Schack. Recorded in September 1998, it was released on the Arista label on December 15. The album version runs to 4 minutes 41 seconds, the radio edit to 4 minutes 8 seconds. Though not a particularly memorable song, it may well become Houston's epitaph, because she died in a Los Angeles hotel room on the eve of the February 2012 Grammy Awards.

The song features R&B vocalists Faith Evans and Kelly Price, who offer empathetic vocals alongside the heartbroken Whitney. Faith Evans is best known to many for her contribution to Puff Daddy's tribute to her late husband, Notorious B.I.G, "I'll Be Missing You." Kelly Price also has a connection with the fallen rapper, having provided the female vocals on Biggie's hit single "Mo Money Mo Problems."

Whitney performed the song with Faith Evans and Kelly Price for the first time live on the November 23, 1998 episode of The Rosie O'Donnell Show.

THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL by WHITNEY HOUSTON

This was written by songwriters Michael Masser and Linda Creed. Linda Creed was recovering from breast cancer when they wrote the song in 1977. Originally recorded by George Benson, his version went to #24 in the US. In 1985, the song was revived by Whitney Houston, and on May 17, 1986, it went to #1 for the first of three weeks.

Creed's cancer claimed her life on April 10, 1986. She was later inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on the strength of this song and the many hits she co-wrote for The Spinners, The Stylistics, and other acts on the Philadelphia International label. Phil Hurtt, who also wrote for the label, told us, "There are thousands of ways to say I Love You, and the difficulty is trying to find a nuance, a new way to say what's been said thousands of times, and Linda Creed is someone who was able to do that."

Masser and Creed wrote this for the 1977 film biography of Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, and the song first appeared on the film's soundtrack recorded by George Benson. Ali played himself in the movie, essentially recreating his defining moments intercut with clips of his actual fights. Ali was the heavyweight champ at the time of the film's release.

Houston's version was originally the B-side of "You Give Good Love" but the amount of airplay it received persuaded Arista to release it as a single

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU by WHITNEY HOUSTON

Dolly Parton wrote this and did the original version in 1974, which went to #1 on the Country chart that year. She recorded another version for the 1982 movie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, which also hit #1 on the Country chart. She wrote the song after the breakup of the musical partnership she had with country singer Porter Wagoner. They were never romantically involved.

The lyrics are sad in the sense that the singer will always love the person she is singing to, yet she knows they are not right for each other and must let him go. It is often misinterpreted as a song about people who will be together forever, and even gets played at some weddings.

This was featured in the movie The Bodyguard, which Houston starred in with Kevin Costner. Houston played a famous singer and Costner her bodyguard. Of course, they fall in love. Costner picked it for the movie.

Whitney originally intended to cover Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" as the lead single from The Bodyguard. However, after she found out the song had been used just one year earlier in the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes, Costner suggested she record Dolly Parton's country hit instead. Houston loved the choice but Clive Davis, the Arista Records boss who acted as mentor for the singer throughout her career, was puzzled by the selection. Costner, who also produced the film, knew it would be perfect for the picture and stuck to his guns. "I said, 'This is a very important song in this movie,'" he recalled to CMT. "I didn't care if it was ever on the radio. I didn't care. I said, 'We're also going to do this a cappella at the beginning. I need it to be a cappella because it shows a measure of how much she digs this guy - that she sings without music.'"

Parton's original version was a country ballad. Houston's recording had more lavish production and became a pop, soul, and adult contemporary hit. The tremendous crossover appeal meant that radio stations of many different formats played the song, giving it a huge audience. It ended up being a groundbreaker, but it was a big risk, as there wasn't much crossover between the country and R&B audiences. "Truth be told, the musical side of her camp was very unsure about this little country song," recalled Kevin Costner.

While she was crushing the convention that a soul singer shouldn't do country, Houston also proved that her fans would accept her in an on-screen interracial romance, which she had with Costner in the movie. In the film, the race issue wasn't mentioned.

This stayed at #1 US for 14 weeks, a record at the time. In 1995, this record was broken by "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, which held the top spot for 16 weeks. "I Will Always Love You" does hold the record for the most weeks at #1 for a song that first appeared on a soundtrack.

For a time, this was second only to "We Are The World" as the biggest-selling single ever. It was bumped to #3 n 1997, when Elton John's new version of "Candle In The Wind" became the biggest.

Houston performed this at the Grammys in 1993. It won for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The song also won the 1992 Soul Train Music Award for R&B Song of the Year.

It did not, however, win an Oscar, since it was not eligible for the Best Original Song award. That award can only go to songs that are written specifically for a film.

According to Kevin Costner, he really wanted Whitney Houston to star in The Bodyguard with him, so much so that he postponed shooting for a year until she was available. Costner was one of the few people in Hollywood who could convince a movie studio to do this; he had lots of sway after his movie Dances with Wolves won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1991.

The Bodyguard is the best-selling soundtrack of all time.

In 2002, while the US was preparing to go to war with Iraq, Saddam Hussein ran TV and radio ads using this song as he prepared to be re-elected. Houston's record label filed a complaint with the Iraqi mission to the United Nations.

Elvis Presley wanted to record this song but demanded half the publishing rights. Dolly Parton refused and was vindicated when years later Whitney Houston's version earned her $6 million. Parton commented to Observer Music Monthly April 2008: "'I think stories like that are the reason why younger female artists say I've influenced them."

In an interview with UK music magazine Q, Dolly Parton said she "was blown away" by Whitney's version. She said: "The way she took that simple song of mine and made it such a mighty thing, it almost became her song. Some writers say, 'Ooh, I hate the way they've done that to my song or that version wasn't what I had in mind.' I just think it's wonderful that people can take a song and do it so many different ways."

David Foster produced this song. When the decision was made to record it for the movie, Foster went to a record store and bought the Linda Ronstadt version so Whitney could learn the song. When he called Dolly Parton to let her know they were using her song, Dolly told him something very important: the Ronstadt version leaves out the last verse ("I wish you joy and happiness..."), which changes the tone of the song. Parton gave him the lyrics and Whitney recorded the full version. Foster had to tell the film's director, Mick Jackson, that he needed an extra 40 seconds of screen time, as it had been placed in the film minus the last verse.

Foster, who has produced Michael Jackson, Celine Dion and Michael Bublé, called it "The love song of the century."

The song returned to the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart following Houston's death. Its comeback was fueled by an enormous resurgence in digital sales in the week after her passing of 195,000, an increase of 6723%, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The song was performed by Amber Riley on the 'Heart' episode of Glee. The tape of the show was delivered to the Fox network the day before the untimely death of Whitney and broadcast four days after her passing. Riley's character Mercedes sings the ballad as part of a plot line revolving around her indecision over two romantic interests.

When this reached #3 in the Hot 100 in 2011, it became the fifth song to become a top 10 hit in two different chart runs. So, what were the other four? They were:

"The Twist" by Chubby Checker - #1 in 1960 and #1 in 1962.

"Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Cryptkickers - #1 in 1962 and #10 in 1973.

"Stand By Me" by Ben E. King - #4 in 1961 and #9 in 1986.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen - #9 in 1976 #2 in 1992.

After Houston died on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" was used in many tributes to the singer, as it was her best-known song. The night after Houston's death, Jennifer Hudson sang a moving rendition in honor of Houston at the Grammy Awards ceremony.

Sia Song Facts

BREATHE ME by SIA

In the video The making of Colour the Small One, Sia says: "'Breathe Me' is about feeling worried, generally anxious. Being overwhelmed by your own inner dialogue and having some sort of conniption fit and potentially doing yourself some harm, then asking for help."

This was used on the last episode of the TV show Six Feet Under during the montage where it reveals what happened in the characters' lives and their deaths.

Sia told ilikemusic.com about recording this track: "It always felt like a good song that one. Sam and Felix had put the drums and bass down, they played it all live together one night after they'd been to dinner, and I was really sick with flu and I walked in the next day and the track was there without me singing on it and it was just so sleek. I don't really listen to my own music. I don't think most people listen to their own music after they've recorded it. Some of my musician friends get really anal and listen to it all the time, analyzing it. But once I've done it, I listen to it once and put it to bed, but with that one I was like, 'yeah! Again! Again!'"

THE GREATEST by SIA (featuring KENDRICK LAMAR )

A single from the deluxe edition of This Is Acting, this is a powerful anthem about refusing to give up. The theme of perseverance and resilience is one that Sia has visited several times previously, including on her This Is Acting track "Unstoppable" and the David Guetta single "Bang My Head."

Sia wrote the song with Greg Kurstin. The American producer's other collaborations with the Australian singer-songwriter include her first US #1 hit "Cheap Thrills."

The song features a Kendrick Lamar guest verse in which the Compton rapper testifies to the wisdom he has gained through his struggles and peoples' criticism of him.

The Stacy Moscatelli-directed music video features Sia's dancing avatar Maddie Ziegler. It omits the Lamar verse and - true to form - the shy songstress herself.

For the single's promotion, Sia shared a picture of herself and Ziegler with rainbow makeup on their faces indicating a pro-LGBT message. The nightclub setting at the end of the video with bullet holes in the back wall, appears to confirm it is a message of encouragement to the gay community in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting, which claimed 49 lives. There are 49 dancers in the clip, including Ziegler, who wears a black wig in place of white.

CHEAP THRILLS by SIA (featuring SEAN PAUL )

This sunny jam finds Sia singing of getting ready to go clubbing:

It's Saturday and it won't be long
Gotta paint my nails, put my high heels on
It's Saturday and I won't be long
Til I hit the dance floor

Like most of the other This is Acting tracks, this was written for another artist but rejected. In this instance, Sia penned the carefree tune with Greg Kurstin ("What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)", "Hello") for Rihanna.

"Her manager said "We want 'Diamonds.'" [Sia wrote "Diamonds" for Rihanna] We need soul. We want some music that has feeling," she recalled to Rolling Stone. "I went to Greg and that's what we came up with. I realized just as soon as I was cutting it that it sounded a little bit too Brit-pop for her. It's more Icona Pop. We did actually send it to her, but they passed on it, and then I just couldn't stop listening to it in the car."

"There's something really uplifting about it that put me in a good mood, and I would just pretend it wasn't me singing [laughs]," Sia continued. "It felt very summer and fun, and I was like, "I'll put that on there."

A remix of the track was released featuring reggae artist Sean Paul. His verse gives the song a whole new dancehall makeover. It was released as This is Acting's second single.

A black-and-white lyric video was released, parodying vintage variety shows with dancing contests. We see a new type of dance break out featuring energetic faceless dancers wearing signature Sia wigs. The visual was directed by Lior Molcho, who also worked on the clip for the This Is Acting lead single "Alive."

Directed by Sia with Daniel Askill, the song's music video is the Australian singer-songwriter's fourth collaboration with Maddie Ziegler. The young dancer previously appeared in Sia's visuals for "Chandelier," "Elastic Heart" and "Big Girls Cry."

The song was Sia's first Hot 100 chart-topper as an artist. She'd previously reached #1 as the writer of Rihanna's "Diamonds."

Sia was 40 years and seven months old when this song topped the chart. It was the first time a woman over 40 had reached the peak position since the 42-year-old Madonna achieved the feat with "Music" back in 2000.

The song was Sean Paul's fourth Hot 100 #1. He previously led with "Get Busy" in 2003, as a featured artist on Beyonce's "Baby Boy" the same year, and "Temperature" in 2006.

Asked by Billboard magazine what his reaction was when Sia first came to him about guesting on this song, Sean Paul replied: "I just thought: 'What a big sound, nice hook and melody she had put down.' I'm a huge fan of her voice. She spans generations. My mum is a big fan of her voice and her songs and writing."

Which song of 2016 had the most people reaching for their phone to find out what on earth it was? According to data released by the music identification app Shazam, "Cheap Thrills" was the year's most Shazamed song.

THE GIRL YOU LOST TO COCAINE by SIA

In this moral fable the narrator finally walks away from her needy friend, as she was tired of the friend using her as a crutch.

Sia told Stereo Subversion that although Some People Have Real Problems was an easy album to write for, "The Girl You Lost" took longer to pen than the other tracks. She explained: "It's like a bath. It's a big bath. I can sit down with my friends and play three chords or whatever or we'll hunt around and find the right three chords. Then they'll tell me what the song's about. Usually a sentence or a feeling will come or I can even just say to the person I'm with to tell me what it's about and give me a theme. Then eight minutes later, there it is. 'Academia' took eight minutes. 'Little Black Sandals' was five minutes. Then there are other songs that might take longer. 'The Girl You Lost to Cocaine' took a bit longer, but I don't remember why. I think I listened to it too much. It's different every time, but usually if it's a good one, it's like a bath."

A remix by Dutch DJ Sander van Doorn reached the Top 20 of the Netherlands charts. Van Doorn told UK dance DJ Dave Pearce how he came to work with Sia: "I got a promo from her with the Stonebridge remix and liked the track so much that I signed it to my label Doorn records for the BeNeLux. I also decided to do my own remix and that's how it came about!"

Sia told glasswerk.co.uk about the album title: "It's a note to self that when we're all complaining about our rich people's problems like a bitter latte or sh--ty traffic, there are people with no rice or maybe a lung missing who aren't complaining, if you get me."

CHANDELIER by SIA

This swooping serenade about a party girl's life was the first solo single by Sia in four years, following the release of her 2010 studio album We Are Born. (She did contribute "Elastic Heart" to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack in 2013 with Diplo and The Weeknd). Between the two releases, the Australian singer-songwriter "retired" and began co-writing hit songs for the likes of Rihanna ("Diamonds"), David Guetta ("Titanium") and Flo Rida "Wild Ones"). Speaking with Billboard magazine, Sia discussed her decision to remain out of the spotlight. "I don't care about commercial success," she said. "I get to do what I love and communicate whatever I want."

The song stemmed from an impromptu jam session between Sia and pop producer Jesse Shatkin. "I usually think, 'Oh this would work for Rihanna, or this would be a good one for B or Katy,'" Sia said to Ryan Seacrest. "But this time I was like, 'Uh oh I think I just wrote a full-blown pop song for myself by accident!'"

Shatkin and Sia came up with the song whilst working with hit producer Greg Kurstin (Pink, Kesha, Kelly Clarkson). "At some point, Greg had to run out, and me and Sia were in his live room with his piano and drum set and just kind of jammed for a second," Shatkin recalled to MuuMuse. "Greg has a marimba, so I was playing marimba - some weird notes - and Sia was playing the piano."

"She records everything on her phone, so we just kind of figured out a chord progression together," Shatkin continued. "She sent it to me on a voice note, and I turned it into a track. She already had the melody instinctively while she was writing the chords. We were real excited that she wanted to do this for her record, and then Greg added his production. I was really proud of it."

Kurstin explained his contribution to Rock Genius: "'Chandelier' was written by Sia and Jesse Shatkin," he said. "Sia brought it in for me to work on and tie into the other songs on the record. I added some acoustic piano, Mellotron and live drums over the track. I left most of Jesse's production; which was awesome."

The song's music video features a dance performance from a Sia-wigged Maddie Ziegler. The 11-year-old star of Lifetime's Dance Moms was personally asked to be in the clip by the singer. Sia co-directed the visual with Daniel Askill, who previously helmed the visual for her hit single "Breathe Me."

Speaking with Dazed, Sia explained the blonde bob worn by her in the 1000 Forms of Fear artwork and by Maddie Ziegler in the music video is a layer of protection from the outside world. "I already have a much larger concept for this album and for how I'm going to present it and that was: I don't want to be famous," she said. "If Amy Winehouse was a beehive then I guess I'm a blonde bob. I thought 'well if that's my brand, how can I avoid having to use my face to sell something', so my intention was to create a blonde bob brand."

The song is a rejoinder to all those pop tunes that celebrate the non-stop party. It is rooted in the now-sober Sia's past struggles with alcoholism. "That's why 'Chandelier' was interesting to me. I wrote the song because there's so many party-girl anthems in pop," she told NPR. "And I thought it'd be interesting to do a different take on that."

Sia and Greg Kurstin wrote this very quickly. "'Chandelier' took like four minutes to write the chords, then like 12-15 minutes to write the lyrics," she told NPR. "Probably 10 or 15 minutes to cut the vocals."

1000 Forms Of Fear topped the US albums chart. Sia's previous best was 2008's Some People Have Real Problems, which peaked at #26. In addition to reaching #1 on the Billboard list, the LP reached the summit on the iTunes albums chart in 47 countries.

The song was a wordwide hit, topping the singles charts in France, Israel and Poland.

This song featured in a 2014 Saturday Night Live skit where Jim Carrey and Kate McKinnon each show up to a Halloween office gathering dressed as "the child dancer from Sia's 'Chandelier' music video." The sketch resolves with the pair dancing to the song throughout the entire studio.

Billboard magazine chose this as their Best Song of 2014. They said: "The towering YOLO anthem 'Chandelier' took months to reach the Top 10 of the Hot 100 chart, but pop purveyors embraced its sentiment and Sia's performance almost immediately, turning the camera-shy Australian into an American star."

Sia concealed her face during performances of this song. When she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, she sang it with her face obscured by her wig while a mine acted out the song next to her. On The Graham Norton Show, she faced a wall while the dancer Denna Thomsen performed. Sia's faceless appearances were her reaction to the soul-sucking nature of fame and predatory, vapid celebrity journalism.

This was nominated for Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Music Video and Best Pop Solo Performance, but didn't win any as Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" took the first two and Pharrell Williams' "Happy" the later two.

Sia did perform the song, however, singing it while facing a wall in a set that resembled the music video, while Kristen Wiig and Maddie Ziegler did the interpretive dance.

The video was choreographed by Ryan Heffington, who also did Sia's "Elastic Heart" clip. Speaking with Bullett magazine, he explained: "The song is about addiction, yet the video concept is more abstract than just this. What I find important is that this piece of art has so many interpretations. I don't think I could (or in fact want to) create such definition of the plot, it lives much more vibrant if I do not."

He added: "Early on I requested the architectural detailing of the character's living space and what furniture would inhabit it. Like any of our dwellings we spend an absorbent amount of time in, all material components becomes part of the physical dialogue between us and these objects - walls, furniture, hallways. Although muddled in color and sparse in content, it was a choice to have the environment be rich in means of activity for the character. How often do children find a pile of dirt and a hose the most enthralling playmates? Yes, she may be isolated from other humans or environments, but seemingly rich in imagination with the ability to utilize fantasy to entertain herself via exploring new physical conversations with what simply existed before her eyes."

The 5th Dimension Song Facts

AQUARIUS/LET THE SUNSHINE IN by THE 5TH DIMENSION

This was written for the rock opera Hair, where it became an anthem for young people who grew their hair out and protested the US government. In the book By the Time We Got to Woodstock: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Revolution of 1969, Bruce Pollock writes:

Among the many people calling the publisher in 1968 for a lock of Hair's mystique was the L.A. producer Bones Howe, who'd been working with the 5th Dimension since engineering "Up-Up and Away" for their first album in 1967. He'd produced hits for the Turtles ("It Ain't Me Babe") and the Association ("Windy"); he'd been a personal guest of Lou Adler at the Monterey Pop Festival where he was perhaps the only West Coast guy in attendance to appreciate Laura Nyro's gruesome performance. Later he delivered Laura's "Stoned Soul Picnic" to the 5th Dimension, for which it was their biggest R&B hit. He was shuttling back and forth between his home in L.A. and the studio in New York working on the vocals for the Stoned Soul Picnic album when the group told him they wanted to do "Aquarius."

"The thing that bothered me about it was that there'd been other releases of 'Aquarius,'" said Bones, "and none had done anything, so I was concerned about what we would do that would be any different. I went to see the show and there's a place where they do "The Flesh Failures" and at the end of the song is just a three bar repeated thing of 'Let the sunshine in' where Ragni was swinging across the stage on a chandelier and there was all kinds of craziness going on. That really stayed with me and I came out of the theater saying, I wonder if I could stick that on the end of 'Aquarius' and make that the ending. So I went back to the hotel and I called the publisher. I mean you don't mess with the music from a Broadway show. I started my professional career in 1956 and I knew a lot about what you can and what you can't do with songs. I said, look the 5th Dimension would like to record 'Aquarius,' but I'd like to make it a medley and I'd like to use the last three bars of 'The Flesh Failures' and I don't want to do it without permission. So he said okay, you can go ahead and do it."

The next problem was to go ahead and do it. "The record was plotted in the fall of '68 and more or less finished in January of '69," Bones said. "I had to do a lot of work with my vocal arranger, Bob Alsivar. Because they couldn't sing both songs in the same key, we had to do a modulation; we figured out how I was going to do the instrumental arrangement so we could change keys. The record itself is the result of a conglomeration of things. I began as a jazz musician and I know the standard repertoire pretty well. I kept thinking about a song called 'Lost in the Stars' and trying to find something to give you that kind of impression. I described it to Bill Holman and he wrote that beautiful woodwinds and strings part that's in the intro. We did the track in L.A. and the vocals in Las Vegas where the 5th Dimension were opening for Frank Sinatra. We were working in that studio in Las Vegas where you used to have to stop when the train went by. Once when we were doing practice runs while the train passed Billy started that riff at the end 'oh let the sunshine…' so I said, wait, let me put that on a separate track at the end. There were a lot of happy accidents making the record."

That the Age of Aquarius (harmony, understanding, sympathy, trust, mystic crystals, revelations) announced to mainstream America by the song had already irrevocably given way to Richard Nixon's vision of law and order troubled Bones Howe not in the least. "I was in my thirties then; I was never part of that culture," he said. "But I made records they liked. I spent my life in the studio. Sometimes I went to the Trip and the Crescendo and all of those places on Sunset Strip because I worked with so many of those people. I was the engineer on 'Eve of Destruction' when the Mamas and Papas came to sing backup vocals. I was there the first night they were there and did their first three albums."

The 5th Dimension was a highly popular ensemble group during the late '60s and early '70s. It originally consisted of Billy Davis, Jr., Marilyn McCoo, Lamonte McLemore, and Ron Townson, who were quickly joined by Florence LaRue. They at first called themselves the Versatiles, and owed their rise to Motown Records and Johnny Rivers, who had just started his own record company. This song turned out to be their biggest hit, staying at #1 for six weeks. The 5th Dimension performed several more hits over the years until 1975, when Davis and McCoo got married and left the group. The original group reunited in 1990 for a tour, capitalizing on the growing nostalgia for the music of its era.

The Age of Aquarius is when the sun is in the constellation Aquarius during the springtime. The next time that this will happen is 2448. We are currently in the age of Pisces.

This song won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1970. It was the second time the group won the Record of the Year, two years previously they won the award for "Up-Up and Away."

This appeared in the movie Forrest Gump, and has a big part in the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin, where at the end of the movie the cast performs the song in Hippie costumes to celebrate the de-flowering of the virgin.

In he movie Apollo 13, there are some scenes where the astronauts are filming live feeds from space from inside the spaceship for viewing on television (the live feeds were commonly featured on network TV in the early days of space flight). In the movie, the astronauts play Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" as the background music and theme song for the TV appearances. Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell has since stated that the real song used as the "Theme Song" was "Aquarius," as Aquarius was the name of the Lunar Landing Module that ultimately served as the crew's lifeboat when the mission went awry.

Ex-Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty used the "Let the sunshine in" refrain as the chorus for "Fort Hood," a song from his 2008 album Golden Delicious.

ONE LESS BELL TO ANSWER by THE 5TH DIMENSION

This Burt Bacharach/Hal David song was originally written for Keely Smith (Louis Prima's ex-singing partner) but she never recorded it.

Hal David on how he came up with the lyrics for this song: "I paid attention to what people said. One time I was at a dinner party when it was announced someone wasn't turning up, and the hostess said: 'that's one less bell to answer'. I went home and wrote 'One Less Bell To Answer' - 'one less spells the answer. One less egg to fry.'" (From the Independent newspaper May 9, 2008)

This song is about losing your love, and the sadness that follows the loss. The lead vocals were by Marilyn McCoo, who was the 5th Dimension's featured vocalist at the time. She sings that she should be happy that her man is gone but all she does is cry - no more laughter.

In November of 1970, the group were guests on the television series with Robert Wagner called It Takes A Thief and performed both "Puppet Man" and "One Less Bell to Answer" on the show.

UP-UP AND AWAY by THE 5TH DIMENSION

Jimmy Webb wrote this song. He was a prolific songwriter who wrote "MacArthur Park," as well as many of Glen Campbell's hits. In our interview with Jimmy Webb, he said of recording this song, "It was the greatest experience of my life in a way, because it was the first time I had been really set free. I had been working in the studio with Johnny Rivers and Mark Gordon co-producing, and I was just kind of a gopher. I went around and did everything. I did rhythm parts for my songs. But I had a good friend in Marty Paich, and he was teaching me the basics - I guess you would say the fundamentals of orchestration. And finally when we got in to do (second album) Magic Garden with Bones Howe that was the first album that I was ever given complete freedom to do my own orchestration. And it turned out great."

Webb was inspired by a balloon that his friend William F. Williams flew on promotions for radio station KMEN. Both men thought the song could be used in a planned documentary, which never panned out. This song, more than any other, is associated with hot air ballooning.

This song was first released by a Los Angeles Pop group called The Sunshine Company (best known for their #36 charting "Back On The Street Again"), who included it on their 1967 debut album in a version that used the "Up, Up and Away" saying from a Superman broadcast at the end. Around this time, the song was also recorded by Linda Kaye Henning, star of the TV show Petticoat Junction, with The Sunshine Company singing backup. This version was not released until November 2011 when it appeared on the album The Girls From Petticoat Junction. Later that year The 5th Dimension issued the song as a single, and it became their second Top 40 hit after the #16 "Go Where You Wanna Go."

This won four Grammy awards: Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, Other Pop/Rock&Roll/ Contemporary Awards or Instrumental, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo of The 5th Dimension got married in 1969. In 2004, they released a book called Up, Up, and Away: How We Found Love, Faith, and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World.

Bones Howe was the engineer on this track. Over the next few years, he produced most of their hits.

According to the Grammy Foundation's January 23, 2014 A Song is Born show, the tune initially met some resistance at radio, especially in Jimmy Webb's hometown of Oklahoma City, as programmers thought it was about drugs.

Desmond Carrington presented a music programme on BBC Radio for 36 years.

When Desmond Carrington launched his BBC Radio music program All Time Greats (later re-named Desmond Carrington: The Music Goes Round) on October 4, 1981, the first song he played was "Up-Up and Away." It was also the first song he played on October 28, 2016, the last time he presented the show before retiring at the age of 90.

SWEET BLINDNESS by THE 5TH DIMENSION

This is another one of the 5th Dimension's hits that was written and originally performed by Laura Nyro. When she sang it in concert, Nyro would introduce it as "A little drinking song I wrote."

The 5th Dimension sang an abridged version of this song with Frank Sinatra on one of his television specials in the 1960's. Marilyn and Florence looked right at Sinatra and smiled during the line "You're a good lookin' riverboat."

STONED SOUL PICNIC by THE 5TH DIMENSION

The members of the 5th Dimension loved this song and were shocked to find out it was written by a Caucasian 20-year-old girl from New York City named Laura Nyro. After this song became a hit, they recorded several other Nyro songs, including "Sweet Blindness," "Blowin' Away" and "Save The Country."

Bones Howe, who engineered the 5th Dimension track "Up-Up and Away," became the group's producer and introduced them to this song. Howe explained in the book By the Time We Got to Woodstock: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Revolution of 1969: "Laura (Nyro) was a good friend and I used to visit her in New York whenever I was there and she made me tuna fish sandwiches. She was great and I was a huge fan and I recorded enough of her songs so that there could be a 5th Dimension album of all Laura Nyro songs. I believe she was really an important songwriter and brought poetry to her work that kept it from being just pop. But she went where she went and the world didn't follow."

"Stoned" doesn't always mean getting high on marijuana. In this case, it refers to drinking alcohol and having a good time at a glorious picnic - Nyro mentions wine and moonshine in the lyrics as the beverages of choice. Two years earlier, Ray Charles released "Let's Go Get Stoned," which was also about alcohol.

Nelly Song facts

GRILLZ by NELLY

This song is about the cosmetic dentistry that many rappers get to show off their wealth. This dental work is called a "Grill" because it makes their mouth resemble the grill of a car. Grills became popular among the "Dirty South" rappers in the '90s.

A breakdown of some of the lyrical references:
"I'm changin' grillz everyday, like Jay change clothes" - Jay-Z's 2003 track "Change Clothes.

"VVS studded, you can tell when they cut it" - a high quality diamond (Very, Very Slightly Included)

"Poten' oil" - poten' - A drink popularized in Houston made from cough syrup.

"Call me George Foreman 'cause I'm sellin' everybody grillz" - Former boxing champ George Foreman endorsed a line of indoor cooking grills.

"You can catch me in my Too Short drop" - The rapper Too Short's 1995 song "Top Down."

"Got a Bill in my mouth like I'm Hillary Rodham" - Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton.

'Tippin' on some 4's" - Mike Jones' 2005 song "Still Tippin.'"

The song features Paul Wall and Ali & Gipp and was produced by Jermaine Dupri.

Nelly told the story of the song in a 2010 interview with XXL magazine: "I called JD like, 'Yo, what chu doin', I'm gonna come down and f--k around with you for a couple days'…We just sat in there and we tried to think about it and we ain't come up with nothing. So he was like, 'I'll tell you what, let's go to Magic City.' So we just sitting there chillin', doing Magic City s--t and we got to drinking, and the more I got to drinking–I forgot who was playing, but it was somethin' that just set me off–and I was like [(humming) smile for me daddy/I wanna see your grill] and I just kept sayin' it, sayin' it, sayin' it, and I was like, 'Oh, s--t' and I was in his ear, and I was like, 'Shawty, I got it,' and he was like, 'Aaahhhh!' And he was like, 'Let's go,' and we was out. We packed that s--t up and went back to the studio, you know what I'm sayin'… us and half the muthaf--kin' club! …We went back to the studio and we hammered that s--t out, and I was like, 'Yo, we need to get Paul Wall on this s--t. And Gip was one of the first ones to have the white grill, way back in the day so I was like we gotta get Gip, too."

The song's ascent to the #1 position meant that Nelly had achieved a unique 1-2-3-4. His first chart-topper was solo ("Hot In Herre"), his second was a collaboration with Kelly Rowland ("Dilemma"), his third, a trio effort with P. Diddy and Murphy Lee, ("Shake Ya Tailfeather") and his fourth, a quartet single featuring Paul Wall, Ali and Gipp (this song).

COUNTRY GRAMMAR (HOT S--T) by NELLY

Nelly (born Cornell Haynes Jr.) had an itinerant childhood, moving to Spain and then to the ghettos of St. Louis, Missouri. He achieved local underground success with rap outfit St. Lunatics in 1996, before going solo in 1999. This Country-meets-Hip-Hop tune was his debut solo single.

The song's melody was taken from the playground song, "Roller Coaster".

Nelly told the story of the song in an interview with XXL magazine: "It was a beat that I had got from one of our producers at the time JE. I loved the beat but I don't think everybody in the group was as excited about the beat as I was. So I took it to one of the most historic clubs in [East] St. Louis. It was called Club Casino. I took it over there the same night and we had a DJ that had been supporting us previously up to that point and his name was DJ 618. He put it on right away and from that moment, you know what I'm saying, people was like, 'Boom, boom, boom' and the s--t just blew up from there, you know."

A radio friendly version was also recorded, in which the word "s--t" is backmasked, and most of the explicit words are replaced by cleaner versions and/or bleep-related sound effects.

HOT IN HERRE by NELLY

The extra "R" in "Herre" is there to indicate that it is really hot. Definitely hotter than just one "R." It's also a written expression of the St. Louis accent, where Nelly is from. Christina Aguilera did the same thing on her song, "Dirrty," which needed the extra "R" because it was really dirty. Another rap hit from the time, "Right Thurr" by Chingy (also from St. Louis), used the extra R as well.

This was produced by The Neptunes, who are the team of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams. In addition to their own group N.E.R.D., they produced for Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and many others, specializing in high-energy hip-hop beats. Nelly makes reference the producers in the line, "Nelly took a trip from the Luna to Neptunes."

The groove is based on "Bustin' Loose," a huge go-go hit for Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers released in 1978. Nelly's line "I feel like bustin' loose" also comes from that track.

In the summer of 2002, this was a huge hit. Listening to it didn't require a lot of thought, and Nelly had already established himself as a rapper focused on enjoying life. These kind of songs tend to do well in the summer, like "Summertime" by D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince (summer of '91) and "Livin' La Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin (summer of '99)

This won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rap Solo Performance in 2003. Nelly performed part of the song at the ceremony, and was then joined on stage by Kelly Rowland so they could sing "Dilemma," their duet that took the award for Best Rap/Sung Performance. Nellyville was nominated for Album of the Year, but lost to Come Away With Me by Norah Jones.

Nelly performed this at halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl, which is where Janet Jackson caused an uproar by exposing a breast.

Nelly recalled recording the song in a 2010 interview with XXL magazine: "I did that in L.A… I remember 'cause Busta was in the same studio and he came through and he heard the beat and you know how Busta is, you know he's over the top. He's life, 'Yo, god! What is that sound?!!?!? [Laughs] What is that sound coming from here, god? Oh my, god! Pharrell, where was that beat at? Where was that? You were hiding that from me!' It was a little unorthodox for the time definitely coming out from 'Country Grammar' …to a Pharrell [beat], that 'Hot in Herre' sound. But, it worked and it helped me too 'cause it helped me show versatility, not just having to do one angle on some s--t."

Weird Al Yankovic recorded a parody of this called "Trash Day," about a guy who refuses to take out the trash and then describes it.

San Francisco's Latino Mix 105.7 played this for 18 hours straight on a continuous loop starting at 3 p.m. (PDT) on March 14, 2014. It was reportedly an act of stunting to promote the radio station's branding change to "Hot 105.7."

The song featured in ads aired during the summer of 2016 for Bud Light's Lime-a-Rita line.

Nelly got some heat from the IRS in 2016 when the agency hit him with a tax lien of $2,412,283. Fans responded by throwing an online streaming party for this song, hashtag

#HotInHerreStreamingParty, to help out with his tax burden. Unfortunately, royalties from streaming services are in the $0.006 range, meaning it would take about 400 million steams to erase his debt.

AIR FORCE ONES by NELLY

This song was written and performed by the St. Louis hip hop artist Nelly, from his 2002 album Nellyville, and features Kyjuan, Ali and Murphy Lee from his Hip-Hop group St. Lunatics. The song finds Nelly and his crew purchasing Nike Air Force Ones footwear.

Nelly recalled to XXL magazine how joking around with his partners spawned a hit tune: "We had got the beat from some producers back home and we had heard it—we were playing it in the dressing room as we were getting ready for the show… We had just talked about leaving the mall and my sister who used to do my styling at the time was getting things for the show—mighta been some fresh new Air Forces—and Murph [Murphy Lee] was like, 'Man you shoulda got me like two peerrr or somethin'' like that you know what I'm sayin' [laughs] and we just started playing with that and integrating that into the hook. It's funny with us, we're family first so I guess when you get around family they tend to bring out certain things in you. I don't wanna say you act more goofy or whatever, but you more relaxed around your family so things like that come out."

Nike Air Force Ones was the first basketball shoe to use the Nike Air technology. The name is a reference to Air Force One, the plane that carries the President of the United States. They were originally considered the favored shoe of inner-city youth, before Hip-Hop artists and streetball players adopted them.

DILEMMA by NELLY

Featuring Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child, this song is about a girl who thinks about another guy even when she's with her boyfriend (thus the "Dilemma"). Nelly and Kelly act this out in the video, but also in the song, as they sing to each other by name.

This was the first big release for Kelly Rowland away from her group, Destiny's Child. Nelly was an established star and hot on the charts, but Rowland was not widely known on her own. This was a good (and very safe) way to introduce her as a solo artist and get her ready for her first album.

The chorus is based on Patti LaBelle's 1983 song, "Love, Need And Want You." LaBelle is in the video.

Nelly heard a tune written by his friend Bam (Antoine Macon), and wanted to include it on his album. Bam recalls: "We sat down at the keyboard and just messed around. Then we added some drums and Nelly began to write some words." It was almost finished when Bam put on the Patti LaBelle album I'm In Love Again and started humming one of the tracks, "Love, Need And Want You." Nelly was not familiar with the song but liked it and insisted they use the "I love you" hook. When Nelly heard the finished track, he said, "I wanted to do something that nobody would think of, and that's why I bought in Kelly Rowland. I thought she would be better on her own as opposed to Destiny's Child." (Quotes from 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh. Thanks, Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England)

This prompted rumors that Nelly and Kelly were dating. They maintained that they were simply good friends.

This spent 10 weeks at the top of the American chart in 2 runs. It paused for a couple of weeks to allow in recent American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This."

The duo recorded an update of this song titled "Gone," which was a track on Nelly's 2010 album, 5.0.
Nelly recalled collaborating with Kelly Rowland on this song in a 2010 interview with XXL
magazine: "I did the Nellyville album in Miami, recorded the songs and all that [short pause] and we kind of felt like we needed a couple more songs on there. So, the last two songs that we put on Nellyville were 'Hot In Herre' and 'Dilemma.' At this time we had been on tour with the girls from Destiny's Child so we had become, fairly close to the girls and all that and I was like, 'What do you think about Kelly?' but at this time she was dating someone very close to me, I should say that, and we was like, 'Yo, fam, this would hot.' So you know we got her in the studio and s--t was magic."
This replaced "Hot in Herre" at #1, making Nelly the fifth artist in Hot 100 history at the time to succeed himself in pole position, following the Beatles, Boyz II Men, Puff Daddy and Ja Rule.