
Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)
A shuffle borrowed from Tears for Fears, cut on day one, with Bryan Adams singing near the end.

A shuffle borrowed from Tears for Fears, cut on day one, with Bryan Adams singing near the end.

Twelve weeks at number one on Alternative Airplay, with Brett Scallions selling every syllable of Carl Bell's chorus.

A slow burn, Hugh Padgham at the desk, Stephen Bishop harmonising behind, and Collins's fourteenth and final American top ten.

A father narrating his son's boyhood, written by Dillon and Chamberlain, and Strait's thirty-sixth number one.

Seamus Egan's instrumental came first; McLachlan added words, and the live Mirrorball version won her a Grammy.

Lee and Moody wrote it at fifteen; the album kept her raw demo vocal, radio got Campbell's grieving strings.
Bacharach and David's 1964 ballad rebuilt in synthesizers at Abbey Road, and by Byrne's account the vocal took one take.

Vee-Jay released it in 1956 as doo-wop; the Dells recut it thirteen years later and reached the pop ten.

Cut at Tree Sound in Georgia with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis producing, it won Usher his first Grammy.

Unhappy with the mix, Walla squashed the drums through speech-therapy hardware and rebuilt the track around a glove compartment.
Steinman wrote it out of Wuthering Heights for Pandora's Box in 1989, and Dion made it enormous.

Barley fields outside Sting's Wiltshire house, Kathryn Tickell's Northumbrian smallpipes, and a promise meant to last a lifetime.
Gordy ordered a rush job after Columbia reissued an old single, so Holland-Dozier-Holland reversed their own chart topper.
One classical guitar, no drums, and the Knife's synth-pop single reduced to a whisper that reached UK number nine.
Owen Bradley produced the December 1961 session; Cline works through an inventory of keepsakes while Floyd Cramer's piano answers.

Shadow Morton had never written a hit when he cut this demo, seagull effects and all, to prove he could.

Doug Dillard's banjo rolls under a lyric with no chorus, written soon after Hartford watched Doctor Zhivago.

Kern's melody took the 1936 Academy Award; Nelson Riddle's 1964 arrangement made Sinatra's the most imitated reading.

Horns and clarinets swell over guitar in a converted Wisconsin veterinary clinic; Grammy voters nominated it for record and song.

Hynde cut it weeks after Honeyman-Scott's death, with Rockpile's Bremner on guitar and a Sam Cooke chant behind her.