Turns out that the words these forgotten originals were routinely bizarre, racist, and/or totally insane.
If you dig into the past of almost any famous artist, you'll find something radically, hilariously different from what they became famous for.
Humanity has produced a lot of terrible music over the years, and we just don't have enough room to keep it all lying around. Some stuff, though, needs to be made available immediately.
Some marketers are content to slap any old catchy riff into their ads, regardless of the incredibly awkward context that the lyrics might create.
If cooler heads hadn't prevailed, history might remember all of these differently.
Some musicians go solo and do the same thing they were doing in their band. Others spread their wings and we wish they did also.
There's a lot of propaganda out there about not putting angel dust or airplane glue or thumbtacks in your face holes, and most of it is terrible.
Here is the real story about the people behind five pop songs about unconventional women.
These songs were all big hits, but for one reason or another found big success in very specific, truly bizarre corners of life.
Lyrics do go through some changes from the time they start out to the time they're finalized. But sometimes those changes are fun and notable. How many times? Five. Exactly five times.
Second fiddle is a hard instrument to play, especially when you know you deserve better.
Cue comment explosion in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Since we're on the verge of celebrating two decades of completely telegraphed swear words, I wouldn't mind seeing some labels put in place for some of the other unwelcome surprises that tend to pop up in modern music.
Here are five things to avoid if you don't want to piss off people who take Twitter seriously.