Blackbird
Paul McCartney recounted how the song came to be when speaking on the air with a radio station called KCRW in Santa Monica. There is a blackbird with broken wings, but it is a little more symbolic than that. When asked about the Civil Rights Movement beyond the Atlantic in an interview with Mojo in 2008, McCartney described how enthralled the band was with the movement going on in other parts of the world. He got the notion of utilizing the blackbird as some metaphor for a Black person when he was thinking about it. It wasn’t essentially a black ‘bird,’ but it worked that way, much as people used to refer to girls as ‘birds’ back then. There were no birds in the song, so it wasn’t precisely an animal science concept; it was just metaphorical.
Blackbird
Good Riddance
Punk rock band Green Day’s acoustic ballad, which has become a regular favorite for best prom song, wasn’t designed as a love song in the traditional sense. Out of frustration at the breakup, Billie Joe Armstrong, the band’s moody vocalist, penned the song “Good Riddance” about a lover moving to Ecuador. He dubbed it “Good Riddance” in honor of them. In an interview with Behind The Music by VH1, Armstrong expressed his dissatisfaction with the ballad’s mischaracterization as a junior high slow dance song, stating that he sort of relish the idea that he was frequently misunderstood but it was alright.
Good Riddance
