Janis Ian was 14 when she wrote her 1967 hit single “Society’s Child,” a controversial song about how social pressure doomed an interracial romance. “I was sitting on a bus in East Orange, NJ, where I was living with my parents, and I saw it happening around me,” Ian told Songwriter Universe.

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Keith Carradine wrote and performed “I’m Easy” for the 1975 Robert Altman film Nashville. Carradine, as womanizing musician Tom Frank, performs the song to an audience of past, present, and possibly future lovers.

It was 1956. Drummer Tom Austin and keyboardist Bob Gaudio were talented New Jersey teenagers who recruited guitarist Billy Dalton and saxophonist Billy Crandall to form a band, the Royals. Austin and Gaudio teamed to write “Short Shorts,” a number three hit in 1958 for the newly named Royal Teens.

Guitarist Mick Jones wrote Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” a №1 hit in 1985. “I always worked late at night, when everybody left and the phone stopped ringing,” Jones recalled in Classic Rock.

1. “Barbara Ann” was first recorded by A. The Regents B. The Beach Boys C. The Cadillacs

The Shangri-Las have been cited as an influence on 1970s punk rockers Blondie and the New York Dolls. The group set itself apart from the girl groups of the 1960s by wearing skin-tight slacks and spike-heeled leather boots to promote a tough-girl image. Their first hit, “(Remember) Walking in the Sand,” reached the Top 5 in 1964. Its follow-up, “Leader of the Pack,” was a №1 hit later that year.

“Doctor’s Orders” was recorded on Midland International Records in the US by disco diva Carol Douglas and became a №9 hit on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1975.

“Disco Inferno” was first recorded as the title track of the Trammps’ 1976 album. Released as a single, “Disco Inferno” only reached №53. When the Philadelphia group’s tune was included in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, “Disco Inferno” was re-released and shot up to №1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.

“Fame itself, of course, doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant,” David Bowie told Performing Songwriter. “I’m just amazed how fame is being posited as the be-all and end-all, and how many of these young kids who are being foisted on the public have been talked into this idea that anything necessary to be famous is all right. It’s a sad state of affairs.”

“Harper Valley PTA” was Jeannie C. Riley’s only pop hit but it made her the first woman to reach №1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles charts with the same song.

Perry included “Foolish Heart” on his 1984 album Street Talk, and it reached №18. “The feeling was just basically one of being confused about falling back in love again,” Perry explained to Dick Clark, “because your heart wants to so bad, but your head says, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve done that before and it doesn’t feel good.’

“Missing You” is the №1 single from John Waite’s 1984 album No Brakes. The former frontman of the British band The Babys explained its inspiration in American Songwriting. “I was getting divorced. I was trying to get home because my marriage was in genuine trouble — everything was wrong, and it had been wrong for a while."

Sisters Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson are the basis of Heart, whose 1986 “These Dreams” became the band’s first №1 hit. With music by Martin Page and lyrics by Bernie Taupin, who was taking time off from working with Elton John, “These Dreams” was turned down by Stevie Nicks and Kim Carnes before it was offered to Heart.

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Murray the K presented the last of his package shows for nine days beginning March 25, 1967, at the RKO 58th Street theater at 154 East 58th Street in Manhattan. Billed as “Music in the Fifth Dimension,” the headliners were Mitch Ryder and Wilson Pickett. “Direct from England” were two bands making their American debuts: The Who and Cream, who were billed as “The Cream.”

In early 1966, Sledge recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” with some of the area’s finest musicians: Junior Lowe (bass), Spooner Oldham (organ), Roger Hawkins (drums), and Jimmy Johnson (lead guitar). The band was borrowed from Rick Hall’s FAME Studios, where the Muscle Shoals Sound was born.

“She Works Hard for the Money” is the title track of Donna Summer’s 1983 album. Released as the lead single, it was a №1 R&B hit that year. Summer wrote the song with producer Michael Omartian. Its inspiration came after the February 1983 Grammy Awards ceremony when Summer attended a party at Chasen’s restaurant in West Hollywood. Summer and manager Susan Muneo encountered an exhausted restroom attendant named Onetta Johnson.

“Bread and Butter” was a №2 hit in 1964 for the Newbeats: lead singer Larry Henley and brothers Dean and Mark Mathis. The group formed in Shreveport, LA, and was signed by Hickory Records on the strength of a demo of “Bread and Butter.”

“Probably the thing that they had to twist my arm the hardest to do,” Cassidy told Lost 45s, “was ‘Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted.’