Curated playlist
20th-century American composers
- Marvin GayeMotown boss Berry Gordy refused to release Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
- Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg died on Friday the 13th, fifteen minutes before midnight. He had long dreaded the number thirteen.
- Paul SimonPaul Simon, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, nearly gave one of his best-known songs the wrong name. While writing music for the film The Graduate, he toyed with calling a new song "Mrs. Roosevelt." Art Garfunkel passed the…
- James BrownJames Brown pointed out band members' wrong notes with hand signals.
- Tom WaitsTom Waits accepted his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 with a joke at his own expense. “They say that I have no hits and I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing!” The man who inducted him, Neil…
- John CageJohn Cage once had a pianist play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audience noise became the music.
- Jerry Lee LewisJerry Lee Lewis feared his own hit song was blasphemous.
- John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
- Dolly PartonDolly Parton refused to give Elvis Presley half the publishing rights to "I Will Always Love You."
- J. J. AbramsJ. J. Abrams wrote his first film score at age 16 for a horror movie. The 1982 low-budget film was called Nightbeast.
- Joe WalshJoe Walsh ran for President of the United States in 1980 on a platform of "Free Gas For Everyone." He promised that if he won, "Life's Been Good" would become the new national anthem. He was only 32, three years short of the 35 the office…
- James TaylorJames Taylor, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was the last act on the bill at the Newport Folk Festival on the 20th of July 1969. Thousands of fans had stayed through the rain just to hear him. He got through only 15 minutes.…
- Fred RogersFred Rogers weighed 143 pounds for most of his adult life, and he treated the number as a private message. In a 1998 Esquire profile, he told the writer Tom Junod, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four…
- Sean LennonSteve Jobs once brought Sean Lennon an early Macintosh for his ninth birthday.
- Idina MenzelIn 1992, a young singer named Idina Menzel recorded a demo of a song called "In Your Eyes" and was paid $75 for the job. The song went on to win the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993, sung by the Irish performer Niamh Kavanagh. That story…
- Joe RomersaJoe Romersa was a homeless 19-year-old drummer in New Jersey after a tragic early tour.