
Cherry Pie
A pizza box in a Florida Hard Rock Cafe holds the lyric Lane dashed off at the label's insistence.

A pizza box in a Florida Hard Rock Cafe holds the lyric Lane dashed off at the label's insistence.

Nine weeks at number one, Maroon 5's longest Hot 100 reign, and a reggae lilt under the ache.

Plies cut the original verses; Akon swapped in Snoop Dogg, cleaned the title, and landed his first number one.

Bruce Dukov's violin line, modelled on Wes Montgomery's Eleanor Rigby, over a track first built for Michael Jackson.
Van Eede scribbled the title down the night it occurred to him; Terry Brown drummed it on Neil Peart's snare.

Teddy Riley's beat rides a Lafayette Afro Rock Band sax loop, and a nineteen-year-old Pharrell wrote Riley's verse.

By Ja Rule's account he fished the beat out of Gotti's garbage; Ashanti's hook carried it to number one.

Hoppus and DeLonge wrote in separate rooms, choruses and verses, and Barker's beat locked them together in a day.
One riff played idly in Jones's apartment, and Gramm making him stop and play it again.

Scott Storch built it on a Donna Summer interpolation, and Beyonce turns a club come-on into pure command.

Cavaliere heard the Olympics' version on New York radio, and the Rascals turned a number 81 into a number one.

Crunk's breakthrough, produced entirely by Lil Jon, stalled at number two and drove the album past two million copies.

Ayatollah looped the chorus of Aretha's 1965 Columbia single "One Step Ahead", and Mos Def narrates a romance collapsing.

Rhodes had the backing track in mind before reaching the studio; the Sri Lanka video carried it to number three.

Two rock takes buried under dozens of abandoned reggae versions, dug out of the vault while assembling Tattoo You.

Jesse Stone wrote it under a pen name, Atlantic cut it in February 1954, and Turner topped the R&B chart.

The Meters on rhythm at Sea-Saint, Toussaint producing, and Patti LaBelle singing a French hook she did not understand.