Professor of Rock

The 1950s gave us the birth of rock and roll — and with it a collection of song stories so bizarre and completely unhinged that they sound made up. Behind the poodle skirts and the sock hops was a decade of scandals, accidents, and twists that will shock you. Today we're counting down the Weirdest and Wickedest songs the 50s ever produced. First… the sweet, childlike duet Tonight You Belong to Me that was recorded as a family keepsake somehow became one of the most chilling songs on the internet thanks to a dark urban legend about girls forced to sing it by a lunatic. It racked up millions of views on social media… even though the real story behind the record is stranger than any ghost story.
Then… a female rock pioneer Wanda Jackson recorded a sensually charged song laced with references to nuclear devastation that American radio banned outright and many felt it was truly offensive to one particular country… only to watch it become one of the biggest hits ever in that exact country! And finally… the song Purple People Eater that its writer dismissed as the worst thing ever written was rescued from obscurity by a group of record label employees who couldn’t stop playing it in the lunchroom. Plus the story of Rock Around the Clock by BIll Haley and his Comets....Let’s go.

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Sadly, we lost a great artist recently. Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter who wrote one of the best songs of the late 90s and, statistically, the biggest one-hit wonder ever. Barely Breathing spent an all-time record 55 consecutive weeks on the Hot 100, and nobody has come close since. The song was written about a manipulative girlfriend, and Duncan captured his pain perfectly. It’s really one of the more complex pop songs of its time, and Duncan truly had a gift as a songwriter. Coming up, a lost interview that I did with Duncan Sheik many years ago… it’s never been shown or seen. In fact, it was one of my first interviews ever, and I was told it had been accidentally deleted by the channel that my first show was on.

I got my start about 12 years ago on a local ABC affiliate, and their camera guys who normally captured local news stories would sometimes shoot my interviews. This happened at the last second. Somebody called me about 30 mins before the interview was filmed and asked, "Can you run over here and do an interview with Duncan Shiek?" So I raced over and did it. I found Duncan to be a great dude, passionate and articulate, and in this interview we talk about his best songs, including Barely Breathing, She Runs Away, Half Life, and the two musicals that he scored, including the Tony Award-winning Spring Awakening and American Psycho.

In fact, Duncan, who admitted he didn’t even like Broadway music before he started, became a master of the genre, composing for 12 musicals, including Because of Wynn Dixie, Alice by Heart, The Secret Life of Bees, and many more. Duncan passed away on September 17th from heart failure. He is survived by his wife, Nora, and daughter. Rest in peace. I’m really grateful I found this interview. Again, I was told it had been deleted, so when I heard the news, I reached out one more time to see if there was a possibility it was somehow moved or I had made a backup, and my editor spent over a day searching for it and found it. Here it is.
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Coming up, a grand year in music where once again a bunch of legendary Top 10 hits that missed the #1 spot on the charts were actually better than the songs that did. Today we’re rewriting history by putting them where they belong… at #1. We’ll spotlight a classic from an Elton John who got so upset about the cadence a song was written in that he recorded it with an EXAGGERATED AMERICAN ACCENT, and it made the song a classic. Plus the song Longfellow Serenade that stole its idea from a 19th century poem to seduce an older woman, and it ended up becoming a classic.
Plus, the cocky college student from Steely Dan who hit on his professor’s pregnant wife and actually got her number, but instead of having an affair, he turned it into his biggest hit on the charts. And the Lynyrd Skynyrd rock icon who ominously predicted his demise, proclaiming that he wouldn’t make it to age 30. His prediction came true when he tragically passed away less than 3 months before his 30th birthday. Then there’s the mysterious man Tony Burrows, who recorded vocals for 5 different bands and strangely enough, each of those songs became a one hit wonder.
But we start with the bold teenager Chaka Khan who told the biggest music Icon of his time that the song he gave to her rookie band to record was Trash and he needed to give them something BETTER…
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Some of the best songs ever recorded were never released as singles. But today, they have become bigger than a lot of these legendary bands’ biggest hits. Today we're counting down the most beloved album cuts that became the band’s signature tracks, and for starters, we have an acoustic track that’s become the most-streamed song in the Beatles catalog… despite being purposely passed over back in the day. It ended up bettering every massive hit the Beatles have ever released, and they had dozens of #1 hits…Then there’s Kurt Cobain, who wrote a harrowing tale about living homeless under a bridge to explain his song's haunting origins… but it turns out the story was totally fabricated and debunked by his bandmate after he passed. Plus the song that you won’t get through without collapsing in complete devastation. The most soul-crushing song in history. Plus the Smashing Pumpkins song that got its bizarre title from a Japanese translation blunder. It was deemed too long and too strange for radio, but has since become one of their most essential songs. And that’s where we’re starting the countdown. Let’s get into it.

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You won’t believe this epsidoes. A Rock concert that was so loud and unruly it caused an earthquake from the Foo Fighters? An unfinished 80s instrumental song that sold half a billion copies from an imaginary band who scammed half the world, and a an icon that had a hit song for 7 straight decades Coming up, it’s a countdown that centers on Guinness World Records but for music. And for this episode we’re bringing you six larger than life stories. Including rock band who destroyed the most guitars on a single tour…It’s over 140 by the band Muse. and a band who played 8 concerts in 8 different cities throughout 3 different states in just 24 hours but we start out with the rock band that I mentioned previously who caused an actually earthquake with their insane rock show. can you guess the band? Let’s do it.

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