BACK STORIES OF POPULAR SONGS

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UPTOWN GIRL:

“Uptown Girl" is a song written and performed by American musician Billy Joel from his ninth studio album An Innocent Man (1983). The lyrics describe a working-class "downtown man" attempting to woo a wealthy "uptown girl".

According to an interview with Howard Stern, Joel had originally titled the song "Uptown Girls", and it was conceived on an occasion when he was surrounded by Christie Brinkley, Whitney Houston, and his then-girlfriend Elle Macpherson. According to numerous interviews with Joel, the song was initially written about his relationship with Macpherson, but it ended up also becoming about his soon-to-be wife, Brinkley, both women being two of the most famous supermodels of the 1980s. Joel said that the song was inspired by the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

The music video depicts Joel and his backup singers working as auto mechanics. Brinkley arrives in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce as Joel and the mechanics dance with her. A poster of Brinkley can be seen in the garage as well as on a billboard above the garage advertising "Uptown Cosmetics". At the end of the video Joel and Brinkley ride off on a motorcycle.

Elle McPherson, Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley

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LADY IN RED:

"Lady in Red" is a song by British-Irish singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh, released in 1986.

De Burgh started writing this song about his wife Diane, after an argument, but he was having a hard time finishing it. Part of the problem was that he needed a title: he didn't want to use "The Way You Look Tonight," because there was already a song with that name. As de Burgh tells it, five months later he saw Diane, wearing red, across a crowded nightclub, which gave him the idea for the title. On the British TV series This Is Your Life, de Burgh said that the song was inspired by the memory of when he first saw Diane, and how men so often cannot even remember what their wives were wearing when they first met. On his website, he said the song was not specifically about Diane, but about appreciating the most important people in our lives, who we often take for granted; how we often fail to notice what attracted us to another person in the first place. In this account, he was already married to Diane but didn't realise it was her when he spotted her across the room.

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TAINTED LOVE:

Tainted Love" is a song composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of American group the Four Preps, which was originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. In 1981, the song attained worldwide fame after being covered and reworked by British synth-pop duo Soft Cell.

The song is about a toxic relationship, with the singer realiing he's got to leave it. "I love you though you hurt me so," he sings, as he struggles to move on.

The song's writer, Ed Cobb, told Blender magazine: "I had a lover for whom you could say wasn't a good individual. I tried to go into her head and write a song from her standpoint. Once the word 'tainted' had popped into my head, the song was written very quickly, probably 15 minutes."

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