- 5 months ago
Ever wonder who inspired your favorite hit songs? Join us as we reveal the secret celebrity muses behind iconic tracks! From Bob Dylan's pointed lyrics to Alanis Morissette's angry anthem, these songs have fascinating backstories about famous faces you'd never expect. Which hidden celebrity connection will surprise you most?
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00:00Welcome to Miss Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the songs that we later found out were based on other famous people.
00:1710. Like a Rolling Stone
00:19This song features some of Bob Dylan's most famous lyrics, including the title of the 2024 biopic about him.
00:2611. Multiple names have been tied to its subject, identified in the lyrics as Miss Lonely.
00:34Some suggest it's about his colleagues in the industry, but one frequent assumption is that the song's target is Edie Sedgwick, an actress and model who became the muse of Andy Warhol.
00:44Egged down by her friends, including Bob Dylan's right-hand man, Bobby Newworth, with whom she would soon start a passionate affair.
00:53It was the beginning of a bitter tug of war between the Warhol and Dylan camps.
00:57Their public break was ugly, and would have occurred around the time Dylan and Sedgwick had an alleged romantic relationship.
01:03Warhol even believed there were damning references to him in the song, identifying himself as the diplomat with the Siamese cat.
01:109. Sweet Caroline
01:16Baseball stadiums have gotten just as much mileage out of Neil Diamond's nostalgic ode to summer and young love as they have Don't Stop Believin'.
01:24And that's saying something.
01:26How can I hurt when I'm holding you?
01:30But who is Caroline?
01:32A myth sprung up that it was about Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President Kennedy.
01:36In 2007, nearly 40 years after its release, Diamond himself identified Kennedy as the subject.
01:43Sweet Caroline
01:44The fact the song was written when Caroline Kennedy was only 11 makes that long-held myth and his confirmation seem more than a little odd.
01:54But then he recanted that story a couple years later, saying the song was really about his then-wife, Marsha.
02:00The name Caroline was simply better for the rhyme scheme.
02:03I had Caroline Kennedy's name there from years ago in one of my books and I tried, sweet Caroline, that works.
02:11It didn't work with Marsha, so I couldn't tell her that I dedicated the song to her.
02:18I just, it was almost, it was almost Marsha.
02:218. Dude Looks Like a Lady
02:24Aerosmith's naughty and controversial 1987 hit has been criticized as transphobic,
02:29and the band even worried they would offend gay audiences at the time they recorded it.
02:34You look like a lady
02:36But the whole song was actually inspired by a funny mistake between industry colleagues.
02:41Lead singer Steven Tyler said that Aerosmith's song was actually inspired by another band's lead singer.
02:47Tyler had mistaken Vince Neil, the lead singer of heavy metal Motley Crue, for a woman because of his long locks.
02:54I've got one thing you said
02:57This was later confirmed by Neil and his bandmates.
03:00Although the rest of the song is fictional,
03:03it's an interesting example of how one germ of inspiration can spin off into something bigger.
03:077. Fix You
03:12This song is basically an open invitation to start crying.
03:16The plaintiff Coldplay track Fix You is told from the perspective of someone trying to comfort a grieving loved one.
03:22It remains one of the band's signature hits.
03:25And I will try to fix you
03:30Part of what makes it great is how easy it is to ascribe it to your own life and experiences.
03:37It was also deeply personal for lead singer and co-writer Chris Martin,
03:41who was inspired by one-time wife Gwyneth Paltrow.
03:44The two met shortly after the death of her father, director Bruce Paltrow.
03:48So he sort of kept us all together with lots of humor and, you know, we follow his example to this day.
03:54The song's themes of helping someone through their grief are taken directly from his own experience.
03:59She very kindly gave me the idea for her.
04:02It was actually about her dad.
04:04We were talking about her dad who passed away.
04:06And, you know, that's how that came out.
04:106. Heart-Shaped Box
04:12Nirvana lead singer and songwriter Kurt Cobain went on record saying Heart-Shaped Box was inspired by news coverage and documentaries about children with terminal cancer.
04:21The lyrics, while dark, seem more like a poetic rendering of a complicated relationship.
04:27I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box
04:31For that reason, it's widely believed to be about Cobain's wife, Courtney Love.
04:37This isn't a surprise, as Love claims that many grunge songs from all sorts of bands are about her.
04:42I tend to go for people with problems that run very, very deep.
04:48And, um, and I don't know why that is.
04:51But even outside her since-deleted posts about the song being about her genitals, many fans do believe it's true.
04:58The truth may be somewhere in the middle.
05:00That video has come closer to what I've seen in my mind, what I've envisioned, you know, than any other video.
05:08I didn't think it would ever be possible to come that close, you know.
05:12It was just perfect.
05:135. Me and Mr. Jones
05:15Amy Winehouse's Back to Black is a legendary record.
05:19From rehab to the title song, it's filled with wall-to-wall bangers.
05:24Winehouse's pop-chart-friendly confessional style and highly publicized personal life made it easy to wonder what was fact and what was fiction.
05:33The album's third track, Me and Mr. Jones, is more than a callback to the Billy Paul song Me and Mrs. Jones.
05:39Cause it's me and Mr. Jones
05:44It's a song inspired by Winehouse's close friendship with Nas, the rapper, whose real name is Jones.
05:51I still can't believe she's not here.
05:53Like, she was so full of life.
05:54She was just a pure artist.
05:56The two shared a birthday, a deep mutual respect, and a collaboration that continued even after Winehouse passed with the Grammy-nominated duet, Cherry Wine.
06:064. I Kissed a Girl
06:12This cheeky 2008 chart-topper has a very unexpected origin story.
06:17Although the dalliance described by the song's narrator was partly based on true events from Katy Perry's adolescence, a movie star was responsible for inspiring the rest.
06:27I kissed a girl and I did
06:30Perry said she was moved to write I Kissed a Girl after being entranced by future MCU star Scarlett Johansson's lips.
06:38She says, I told my boyfriend, John Mayer, if Scarlett Johansson wanted to go out with me, I'd ditch him immediately.
06:45When she heard about this, while flattered, the actress assured Perry her lips were taken by then-husband Ryan Reynolds.
06:52There's no word on whether or not Perry ever responded to Johansson's joke that she should get a cut of The Prophets.
06:58I've never kissed Katy Perry.
06:59Okay.
07:00Um, not that I know of, anyway.
07:02I mean, like, men, like, dreams just died everywhere.
07:05Like, it's fine.
07:06I mean, it was the odds, so maybe I did.
07:093. Hollaback Girl
07:11Courtney Love is known for her strong opinions on other female singers.
07:15Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there's just too much music, they're all the same.
07:21She commented on the record that no doubt front woman and solo artist Gwen Stefani was nothing more than a cheerleader.
07:28Well, Stefani clearly thought this was B-A-N-A-N-A-S, thus inspiring the 2004 hit Hollaback Girl.
07:36Cause there ain't no Hollaback Girl, I ain't no Hollaback Girl
07:41This song's cheerleader imagery and attitude were Stefani's way of hitting back at love and anyone who thought she shouldn't be taken seriously as an artist.
07:49Despite being a hit, the song marked a divide between listeners, and a lot of us had no idea we were even taking sides in a real-life beef.
07:58Interestingly, co-writer Pharrell told supermodel Naomi Campbell that not being a Hollaback Girl was a concept that Campbell introduced him to.
08:05You told somebody, cause somebody was like trying to speak to you or whatever, and you was like, I'm sorry I have a name, like, I'm not no Hollaback Girl.
08:13And I thought that was so amazing, and that ended up being the chorus.
08:17Number 2. You Oughta Know
08:19One thing was for sure when this came out, Alanis Morissette had torn a duplicitous ex a new one in this rageful and catchy scorned lover anthem.
08:28It's not fair to deny me
08:32But Dave Coulier's admission that it was about him took everyone by surprise.
08:37Once you know this song is about Uncle Joey from Full House, you can never really think of it the same way again.
08:43Cut it out. I love you.
08:45You mean to tell us the Cut It Out guy is the kind of man who inspires passionate rage like this?
08:51Uh, I'm listening to the lyrics going, ooh, oh no, oh, I can't be this guy.
09:01It was the kind of thing that sounds like the internet made it up, but Coulier himself copped to it.
09:06As recently as 2021, Morissette flat out denied it was about Coulier at all, but still refuses to reveal who it's actually about.
09:14You wrote that song about Dave Coulier from Full House?
09:18People talk about who that song's about and they will continue to and I never, I never confirm or affirm who it's about and I never will.
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09:41Number 1. You're So Vain.
09:43We all knew that Carly Simon wrote this immortal song about some public figure.
09:48We just weren't sure who.
09:50You probably think this song is about you.
09:53You're so vain.
09:55You're so vain.
09:56Rolling Stone's frontman Mick Jagger, former husband James Taylor, and actor and known Lothario Warren Beatty
10:03were all rumored to be vain enough to think the song was about them.
10:06Have you done the same thing with the identity of the person you're mocking and you're so vain?
10:11Well, you know, I mean, people have always asked me and people for some reason are very, I don't know why people are so interested in that.
10:18I suppose it was at a time of my life in which I was garnering a great deal of sort of tabloid press in terms of who I was going out with.
10:26The real subject became such a hot topic over the years that Simon auctioned off the secret for charity in 2003.
10:33Beatty is the only person she's identified by name, although she suggested that there's more than one man behind the song.
10:41It happens by osmosis that there's just all of this buzz around me and in some way it's going to inspire me to greater heights.
10:50Did any of these celebrity inspirations surprise you?
10:53Let us know in the comments.
10:54Let us know in the comments.
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