The 25 greatest biographical songs

Typically, someone's wedding and honeymoon are not front-page news. However, when one-half of the couple is a member of the Beatles, it's a worldwide story. Those details were covered in this Beatles song written by Lennon and arraigned with help from Paul McCartney. 

One of the great protest songs of all time. Neil Young wrote it in response to the May 1970 shootings of four Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard. Young brought it to the other three band members, and the song became a massive hit for the four-piece. 

Known for one of the most legendary guitar riffs of all time, the story behind this hard-rock classic is just as notable. Before the band's recording session in Switzerland, Frank Zappa held a show at a casino theater within the complex Deep Purple was holding those sessions. A fire broke out at the show after someone shot off a flare gun and destroyed the complex. The song was about the incident, and the title came from a dream bassist Roger Glover had when remembering the smoke from the fire hovering over nearby Lake Geneva.

While the overall theme of this classic is the end of innocence, the frequently sung phrase, "the day the music died," has become one of the most iconic lines in pop-rock music history. The reference to that tragic plane crash from 1959, which took the lives of legendary rockers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, was the catalyst for a song about Americana.

One of the more unique songs on this list. This Reed classic pays homage to several real-life figures who touched his life, such as prominent New York City personalities who often visited Andy Warhol's Manhattan studio known as the Factory and actors Joe Dallesandro and Joe Campbell. For a portion of the 1960s and early '70s, these people and day-to-day activities impacted and influenced many lives in NYC.

The late Chapin was known for his beloved "Cats in the Cradle." However, perhaps the best story behind any of his songs is this one. It's about a truck driver carrying a load of several thousand bananas to a grocery store in Scranton, Penn., in 1965. A mechanical failure caused the driver, Eugene Sesky, to lose control of his rig as he sped into town. Sadly, Sesky died when the truck tipped over, and the bananas flew onto the streets.

As we'll see, a few of the songs on this list are straight-up tributes to famous or historical figures. In this case, Elton John and his legendary lyricist Bernie Taupin chronicled the life of famed actress Marilyn Monroe. Fast forward 23 years, and "Candle in the Wind" was re-worked by John and Taupin as a tribute to Princess Diana following her tragic death in late August 1997. 

We touched on Neil Young earlier in this list. Two other popular tracks of his, "Southern Man" and "Alabama," drew fire from Skynyrd, especially late frontman Ronnie Van Zant. As legend has it, Van Zandt and Co. took offense to some of Young's lyrics from those tracks. "Sweet Home Alabama" was an "answer" to each song and became a massive hit for the band and remains a classic rock staple.

"Hurricane" chronicles the arrest, investigation, initial trial, and eventual wrongful imprisonment of star boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter and John Artis for a triple murder in New Jersey in 1966. The song has quite a legacy, and Dylan himself became immersed in trying to unearth the truth about the incident.

Like "Hurricane," this tune about notorious New York City mobster Joey Gallo can be found on Dylan's exceptional Desire record. Even longer than "Hurricane," taking just over 11 minutes of the album, Dylan goes into quite the sympathetic lyrical detail regarding Gallo's life and 1972 murder at Umberto's Clam House in the Little Italy neighborhood. 

Arguably the popular 1970s singer-songwriter's most notable hit. Clocking in at roughly 6 1/2 minutes, the song tells the ill-fated tale of the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank during a massive storm on Lake Superior in November 1975. All 29 crew members died. Lightfoot was reportedly inspired to write a track that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 after reading about the incident in a Newsweek article.

Many punk fans loved the macabre world of the Misfits. The lyrical imagery was essentially fantasy, and perhaps no song by the band exemplified that more than "Bullet." It's a rather twisted take on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then again, would we expect anything less from Glenn Danzig and Co.?

To the casual pop-rock fan, it might seem obvious that the song is about hating Monday. But the song is about the 1979 school shooting in San Diego, where 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer killed two adults and injured several children and a police officer. Her reasoning: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." Bob Geldof has said he regrets co-writing the track because it brought undue attention to Spencer. 

Many critics and fans of The Boss believe Nebraska is his most creative and authentic album. One reason why is the haunting yet brilliant title track. It's a first-person tale about Charles Starkweather, the spree killer who murdered 10 people in Nebraska and Wyoming over a roughly week-long stretch in 1958 along with his girlfriend. Springsteen cited Woody Guthrie as a major influence in his songwriting, and this is the perfect example.

One of the band's most popular songs sits atop a long list of politically and historically fueled singles, especially during the 1980s, that became synonymous with Bono and Co. It mainly details the observation of the deadly Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, when British soldiers gunned down several unarmed civil rights protestors. When it comes to political songs, this ranks among the greatest of all time. 

One of the highlights of Metallica's stellar second album Ride the Lightning. The band has been known to touch on the historical subject matter in its songs throughout the years. In this case, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, and the late Cliff Burton took on the tale of the tenth plague of Egypt.

The Ramones usually did not infuse politics into their music. However, with help from prominent songwriter Jean Beauvoir, the band veered in that direction with this mid-1980s song that became more popular as time passed. The song calls out then-President Ronald Reagan's controversial visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Nazi soldiers are buried, as part of a tribute to those victimized by Nazism.

The "Piano Man" didn't just settle on one historical event, figure, or piece of iconography to sing about. He offered more than 100. In this fast-paced, rapid-fire listicle of some of the most famous and infamous moments or people in world history, starting in 1949 (the year Joel was born), the famed pop star scored a No. 1 hit and earned a Grammy nomination. To this day, even the most die-hard fans of the song probably have a hard time getting all the words right

Late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain wrote this single off the group's groundbreaking Nevermind record about the 1987 kidnapping and rapė of a 14-year-old girl by Gerald Arthur Friend in Tacoma, WA. Cobain, whose music was often inspired by disturbing news events, seemed to be particularly enamored with his story of a young girl who was abducted after leaving a concert. 

Pearl Jam is no stranger to delving into politics and other headline news. This is perhaps Pearl Jam's most controversial song. The tune is based on 15-year-old Jeremy Wade Delle's 1991 suıcide shooting in front of a full Texas classroom and another school-shooting incident in San Diego, with whom the shooter was reportedly an acquaintance of lead singer Eddie Vedder.

Another tribute song. This time to the discombobulated and tragic life of comedian and actor Andy Kaufman, who died in 1984 of lung cancer at age 35. The song highlights some of the more prominent and controversial moments from Kaufman's short but memorable life. The song was a hit for R.E.M. and the name of the 1999 film about Kaufman's life.

Connolly was the revered founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party and was executed during the Easter Rising of 1916. He has been praised in song on more than one occasion through the years. However, one of the more contemporary tributes to Connolly came from these underrated New York City Celtic punk rockers with this early 1990s anthem that was a fan favorite during their spirited live shows. 

Off the debut solo album of the Radiohead frontman, "Harrowdown Hill" is one of his better solo efforts. The song is about David Kelly, a British weapons expert who reportedly committed suıcide after proclaiming that the British government falsely claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

This is one of Sting's best solo efforts. The tune was nominated for an Academy Award as part of the documentary Jim: The James Foley Story. Written for the film, the song tells the life story of American photojournalist Jim Foley, kidnapped and beheaded by ISIS forces in Syria. It's one of Sting's darker songs.

The track is about gun control and was released early in 2020 as the first single off Eminem's Music to Be Murdered By record. From his perspective, Eminem takes us into the mind of Stephen Paddock, the man who shot and killed 61 people attending a concert while he was positioned in a window of a Mandalay Bay hotel room in Las Vegas in 2017.