Updated March 20, 2019 36.2K votes 9.1K voters 869.0K views
Over 9.1K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of 14 Songs You Didn't Know Were About Other Celebrities
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Vote up the most surprising songs about fellow stars.
Some songs were quite obviously written as part of a well-publicized celebrity feud (Taylor Swift's “Bad Blood” almost certainly calls out Katy Perry, for instance). But then there are songs that are secretly about other stars. It's not surprising that there are so many - musicians hang out with other famous people and write songs about what they know. But once you learn who the lyrics are really about, the songs about other celebrities take on a whole new meaning.
A number of these songs about famous people are not-so-subtle diss tracks, like "Cry Me a River" by Justin Timberlake or "Obsessed" by Mariah Carey, which is a musical eye roll directed at Eminem. Others are tender love songs – try to listen to Coldplay's "Fix You" without tearing up after you learn its real message. Just don't expect to see any songs about Taylor Swift here. She's had enough to earn her own list.
In an interview with Seventeen magazine, Courtney Love reportedly said, "Being famous is just like being in high school. But I'm not interested in being the cheerleader. I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed."
Stefani told NME that this comment inspired her to write "Hollaback Girl":
Y'know, someone one time called me a cheerleader, negatively, and I’ve never been a cheerleader. So I was like, ‘Okay, f*ck you! You want me to be a cheerleader? Well, I will be one then. And I’ll rule the whole world, just you watch me.’
Based on its title, you'd think this one is, in fact, about the New York hotel frequented by several generations of writers and artists - the same spot where Sid Vicious's girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, would later be found dead. And indeed the song is largely about the Chelsea institution, but more importantly, it's about Janis Joplin. Specifically, it's about an affair between Leonard Cohen and Joplin, who were staying in rooms 424 and 411, respectively.
The song centers on a night the two spent together after Cohen claimed to be Kris Kristofferson as he and Joplin shared an elevator ride to the fourth floor. "She wasn’t looking for me, she was looking for Kris Kristofferson; I wasn’t looking for her, I was looking for Brigitte Bardot," said Cohen. "But we fell into each other’s arms through some process of elimination.”
"Like A Rolling Stone" is essentially six minutes of Bob Dylan throwing shade at some unnamed another person. Although it does not appear to be 100% confirmed, it's widely believed that the song is chiefly aimed at actress and model Edie Sedgwick. She was a former debutante, and lines like "Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?" seem to reflect that.
Specifically, Dylan was apparently upset that Sedgwick had ditched his crowd to hang out in the art world of Andy Warhol. Dylan reportedly believed Warhol was mistreating her, and the lines, "Ain't it hard when you discover that he really wasn't where it's at, after he took from you everything he could steal," might be aimed at Warhol.
Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" has a very specific origin story. In an interview with SongFacts, co-writer Desmond Child said that lead singer Steven Tyler showed him a song he was working on called "Cruisin' For The Ladies." Child thought it was a boring title and wasn't into it:
And then Steven volunteered, sheepishly, and said that when he first wrote the melody he was singing "Dude Looks like a Lady"... He got the idea because they had gone to a bar and had seen a girl at the end of the bar with ginormous blonde rock hair, and the girl turned around and it ended up being Vince Neil from Motley Crue. So then they started making fun of him and started saying, "That dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady." So that's how that was born.
When you name a song "Sex On Fire," it's bound to get people's attention. That was certainly true in the case of Kings of Leon, who scored a big hit with the tune in 2008. And, according to Elle magazine, lead singer Caleb Followill wrote the lyrics about his girlfriend at the time, Victoria's Secret model Lily Aldridge. In the lyrics he sings, "It's not forever, but it's just tonight," but it appears he was mistaken. Followill and Aldridge got married in 2011.
Ed Sheeran is a beloved singer-songwriter, but there was a time he wasn't feeling all that loved at all. It was when he was dating singer Ellie Goulding, who was apparently also spending time with One Direction's Niall Horan.
Sheeran was clearly quite displeased when he wrote lyrics like, "And I never saw him as a threat, 'til you disappeared with him to have sex." However, he says he got completely over the situation after writing the song and has even been seen getting chummy with Horan at a party in Vegas.
