Songwriters Hall of Fame Honorees Post Malone, Teddy Riley, Gloria Estefan & More Share the Stories Behind Their Songs (2024)

• Glen Ballard, “Ironic”

  

  Co-written with: Alanis Morissette

  Recorded by: Alanis Morissette

  Chart peak: No. 4, Billboard Hot 100, April 13, 1996

  “Ironic” was the third song I wrote with Alanis. A guy named John Alexander at MCA Music Publishing in Canada was her publisher and they sent her to L.A. to write songs, and they put her with Glen Ballard. We would start with an idea musically and then we would just chase it, and she would sit on the floor and continually refine the idea. “It’s a black fly in your chardonnay/ It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late.” We were just kicking that s–t around. We had a conversation about just how life goes this way and it goes that way. You have expectations. They work out, they don’t work out. And conceptually she understood it right from the downbeat. How many 19-year-olds can you have that kind of conversation with?

  The whole thing so deeply, wonderfully, magically, mystically evolved. We created Jagged Little Pill without any record company support, believe me. We created all of the demos in my studio. We shopped them to almost every major label in L.A. and they all rejected it. Our saving grace is that we ended up at 8000 Beverly Blvd. at Maverick Records, and Guy Oseary heard it and he said, “We should do this.” And Madonna embraced it. I’m the only one who wanted to include this song on the record. They put it on as the 10th track and I was fine with that. We were just lucky to have that record come out.

  I’ve taken so much criticism about the meaning of ironic and irony, and I literally have an English degree. All of this mattering about, “Is this ironic or not?” It’s actually fun, and it helped the song become a huge hit. And now this whole record that we made in 1995 went on to become this incredible musical. I’m just grateful to Diablo Cody and the entire team for every reflection of every song. And yes, “Ironic” is in there.

• Gloria Estefan, “Anything for You”

  

  Recorded by: Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine

  Chart peak: No. 1, Hot 100,May 14, 1988

  That’s my first No. 1 ever. We were on tour and arriving in Japan and when we landed the whole record company was there waiting for us with signs that said “Congratulations You’re No. 1” because it had all happened while we were in the air. It was such an incredible surprise. There are different types of songs. Some songs come through me, and I’m kind of the vehicle. “Anything for You” was one of those. I wrote it in one fell swoop. I wrote it on this giant leather-bound book. That one has already been filled and I have several, but when I look back for any reason to “Anything for You,” there were practically zero changes. It just poured out in about 20 minutes.

  The song in a way was about Emilio, because he is at the core of so many of my songs, whether they are autobiographical or not. We were talking about relationships, and someone in the band had just broken up with someone, and it started me thinking about what I would feel if we were not to be together. The day I wrote it, we were recording the album, and we had just hired Jorge Casas and Clay Ostwald and a new drummer, and we were getting ready to go hardcore on this tour. So I called Clay — who was the keyboard player and my [music director] and still with us after all these years — and said, “I wrote a song and I want to sing it with piano, so that we can figure out how we want to arrange it.”

  I went into the booth — I had given him the chords on the guitar and he was playing it — and I recorded the demo. Jorge and Clay did the arrangement, and we recorded it thinking I would come back and do the vocals, because it was literally the first time I had sung the song completely. But that performance, the demo, is what ended up on the record. I came back, and no matter how technically it may have been better, there was a magic to the emotional capture of that song the day after I wrote it.

• Post Malone, “rockstar”

  

  Co-written with:Carl Rosen, Joey Bada$$, and producers Louis Bell & Tank God

  Recorded by: Post Malone featuring 21 Savage

  Chart peak: No. 1, Hot 100, Oct. 28, 2017

  Hal David Starlight Award

  The lyrics were completely inspired by the vibe at the time. When I was younger, I knew how to have a good time. We would tour and go nuts in green rooms and party as hard as we could. Now that I’m older and on dad duty, I’ve slowed down quite a bit, but the song to me has always been about living life to the fullest and going hard while you still got it. I’d been thinking a lot about who I wanted to have on the song, and 21 Savage popped into my noggin. I knew he’d be the perfect man for the job, and as soon as he sent the verse, I knew he made the song. He’s such a badass and kind person, and from that day we’ve been great friends and collaborators — with hopefully many more smexy [SIC] jams to come.

  The recording process was super quick. I remember I started the idea in New York, hanging with Joey Bada$$. And we were just listening to beats with Tank God and it just flowed. Many brews were consumed and it was an amazing night. The opening piano was what initially struck me. I was like, “This beat is amaze-balls.” It’s very recognizable immediately, and I felt it was special the first time I heard it. And the laugh wasn’t supposed to be there. I think initially, when me and Lou cut the vocals and listened back, it was left in there, and it adds kind of an ominous joy to the song.

  We did not know we had a hit on our hands right away. I never really know which songs people are going to like. I think they’re all pretty medium. But I’m so honored and blessed that people gain so much joy out of listening. To me it’s the most beautiful thing ever. That said — when Savage jumped on, I knew it was special to me.

• Tim Rice, “A Whole New World”

  

  Co-written with: Alan Menken

  Recorded by: Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle

  Chart peak: No. 1, Hot 100, March 6, 1993

  Johnny Mercer Award

  It’s probably my biggest copyright, because it did get to No. 1 [on the Hot 100] and it was song of the year at the Grammys. It was the first song I wrote with Alan Menken [on the left in this photo]. I was at Disney working on The Lion King, which was at a very early stage of development at the time. And the wonderful songs in Aladdin — as had been in Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid — were written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. And Howard was desperately ill and died before he could finish the work for Aladdin.

  Disney was slightly concerned Aladdin would be held up, because Howard was no longer around to finish the songs. And they said to me, “Will you please forget Lion King for the next six weeks? We want you to go over and work on Aladdin with Alan Menken” — who I had never met. And not only was [I thinking], “I hope I like him,” but I also thought, “I’m going to be in the footsteps of the great Howard Ashman on a project that I had only just begun to hear about.”

  Luckily Alan and I got on instantly very well. He said the most important song is the song where Aladdin and Jasmine fall in love and they’re going around the world on a magic carpet. Alan said, “I’ve got this tune I think might work, and maybe we should call it ‘World at Your Feet.’” And I thought, “I’m not sure feet is a very romantic word — but how about ‘A Whole New World’?”

  Alan came over to England and he played me the tune at my house. And I wrote the lyric pretty speedily, because I had to. It works as a travelog and it works as a love song as well. It was very exciting for me, because I’m a bit of a chart freak and I’d never had a No. 1 hit in America, and this song went to the top of the Billboard charts. And apart from working with Alan, which was fantastic, I got to know other producers and directors and artists in the Disney animation world — and when I went back to The Lion King, I felt I was a bit more experienced about what was going on in the Disney studios.

• Teddy Riley, “Remember the Time”

  

  Co-written with: Michael Jackson and Bernard Belle

  Recorded by: Michael Jackson

  Chart peak: No. 3, Hot 100, March 7, 1992

  This record that was all about the hook: “Do you remember the time when we fell in love?” I put myself in that position with my fiancé at that moment, because we were falling out of love, and I always go back to that line. I was with Michael and he listened to four [of my] demos before that song, and we got to that fifth track — and after hearing it for like 16 bars, Michael said, “Stop.” I actually thought I was getting fired. And the next thing I know he said, ‘Can I talk to you in my office?’

  And I go into the office, and I’m nervous as hell. This is my first time playing demos for him. And I see is this beautiful collage he was working on. I made him use that as the cover for the album, but that’s a different story. He said, “What is that first chord?” I said to him, “I don’t know. I can’t name the chord for you.” He gave a little laugh and said, “I’m not trying to put you on the spot, I just want you to know that you have blown me away with that chord. I’ve never heard it in my whole entire career.” It’s actually a C 7 augment. So you’re playing C, E, G, B flat, E flat. It’s a church chord.

  When we finally get to the studio to start recording vocals after we got the lyrics from my friend Bernard Belle — who I have to mention, because he just took new jack swing to the next level — Michael comes in and sings the first verse. And we all get excited. And then he takes a break, and we think he’s going to work out with his vocal coach Seth Riggs, and [he] keeps us waiting. So I go in the back and I say, “Seth, where is Michael?” He had slipped out the back. And then Michael calls me. He’s on a plane going to Switzerland. He didn’t mention it. This just gives the people an idea that creativity has no time. It’s whenever, whatever, however. I was just floored.

• Liz Rose, “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”

  

  Co-written with: Taylor Swift

  Recorded by: Taylor Swift

  Chart peak: No. 1, Hot 100, Nov. 27, 2021

  I’m so happy she won a Grammy for that [music video], and the film is just unreal. For her to resurrect it and bring back the 10-minute version was so genius. The journey of the song is, there was the long version and there was the six-minute version, which was still too long for radio — but we couldn’t make it any shorter because there were so many great parts to it. It was never a single, but it was still important to her. She put it back together, she had all the pieces, and she sent it to me and talked about how much the song meant to her. This song means a lot, however you interpret it.

  And you’ve got to hand it to the fans. That was one of their favorites, so the fans kept the song alive. The Nashville show was just unreal. To stand in a stadium in the pouring down rain and listen to I don’t even know how many people sing that song… I will never get over that, ever, in my entire life. I love that song and I’m proud of that song and I never get tired of that song. I’m scared to do it in writers rounds because it always gets screwed up, but everybody wants to hear it. I think it’s brilliant.

  We started writing when Taylor was about 14, and I probably didn‘t know what a genius I was meeting with at the time. We just clicked, even though I was the age of her mother and she was the age of my daughter. And she’s been so generous with me. I remember people coming to me and saying, “Can you get her to write a little more country? Do we need to bring in another co-writer, another melody?” And I would say, “You all don’t understand. This girl knows exactly what she’s doing. This girl knows exactly what she’s saying, and it’s really something that does not need to be messed with.”

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