In 1974, Living In The City earned Stevie Wonder two Grammy's, Best Rhythmn and Blues Song and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. The album the song appeared - Innervisions - won Grammies for Album of the Year and for Best Engineereed Non-Classical Recording. The album has been considered on of the greatest albums of all-time. Stevie Wonder plays all the instruments and provides all the vocals on Living For the City. The song takes on systematic racism in it's story about the struggles of a boy from Mississippi who moves to New York City, when the young man is arrested for drugs and thrown in jail his dreams are crushed. The song addresses many social and political issues. Three days after Innervisions 1973 release, Wonder was in a car accident with a logging truck after a performance in South Carolina. A flying log hit him in the forehead and knocked him unconscious, leaving him in a coma for 4 days.

In 1978, singer and songwriter Randy Newman released his most successful song Short People - an inadvertent novelty song. The song may be one of the most misunderstood hit records of all-time. What appears to be an attack on short people is actually a song about prejudice. Newman jokingly considered the song a "bad break", as it had earned him threats, and a #2 spot on the pop charts right behind Stayin' Alive. After the release of Short People the overly sensitive Maryland delegate Isaiah Dixon attempted ban the song from the airwaves. Newman attacks prejudice and racism with an undercut in a similar way with in his 1974 song Rednecks. Despite his misinterpreted "novelty" hit, Newman is also known for many successful songs. In the 1980's he went on to composing films, and earned dozens of nominations and awards for his work. 

In the little-known 1955 prison film Unchained, American actor and opera singer Todd Duncan introduced the widely-known standard Unchained Melody. Duncan earned the song a Oscar nomination for Best Song that year. From 1930-1945, Duncan taught voice at Howard University in Washington DC. In 1935, he found instant fame when George Gershwin personally selected him for the role of Porgy in the premiere of Porgy & Bess. The shown opened in Boston before it's run on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre - now the Neil Simon Theatre. In 1936 the show made it's way to Washington DC's segregated National Theatre. In Washington DC, Duncan led the cast in a protest that persuaded the theatre to allow an intergrated audience for the first time. In 1945, trailblazing Duncan was the first black person in America to sing with a major opera company at The New York City Opera. In 1955, when Duncan's small film role in Unchained scripted him the first recording of Unchained Melody the significance was unapparent. The song would become one of the most recorded songs ever - recorded by several hundred artists around the world. The song was an instant hit, with three different versions of the song appearing on the Billboard Top 10 in 1955.

In 1987, Irish new age pop pioneer Enya released her self-titled debut album. The album was a compiled selection of music Enya composed for the BBC TV series The Celts. The album was released on vinyl and cassette before the show aired on television. The album was successful enough to secure her a record deal, and after her following two albums Enya remastered and re-released her debut, and re-titled it The Celts. The 1992 re-release hit number 10 on the UK Albums Chart, and  it was an huge international success that far outperformed the original release. The album produced several hits, including Bodecia - a song later sampled in The Fugee's massive 1996 hit Ready Or Not. The Fugees had not cleared the sample or given credit to Enya's song Bodecia. Enya was moving forward with a copyright infringement lawsuit, but she was convinced to settle out of court when she was assured that the rap group was anti-drug and had a positive message in their music. Apparently The Fugues were not familiar with copyright clearance at the time, and they were grateful of Enya, who agreed to a arrangement that gave her proper credit. Boadicea has been sampled many other times, including by producer P. Diddy for Mario Winans 2004 hit I Don't Wanna Know. 

On January 30th 1964 Sam Cooke recorded the timeless civil rights anthem A Change Is Gonna Come - it is considered to be one of the greatest and most important songs ever written. Inspired by Bob Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind, the song reflected on his real life struggles as a black man. The song appeared on his eleventh and final album Ain't That Good News, released March 1st of that year. Cooke performed the song on the Johnny Carson Show just before the albums release on February 7 - it would be the only time he performed the song. The performance of his unusually personal and political song was overshadowed by The Beatles first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show 2 days later. By December of that year, A Change Is Gonna Come was finally prepared to be released as a single on the b-side of his hit song Shake. On December 11th, 2 weeks before the records release date, 33 year old Cooke was shot to death at a Los Angeles motel. Although his death was ruled a justifiable homicide, the unusual events and reports of his badly beaten body leave a lot of unanswered questions. After his death the song became a major hit and an important part of the civil rights movement. The song entered the pop charts on the first week of 1965, where it stayed for a few months. Those months were marked by significant events such as the clash on the Pettus bridge during a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. 

In 1981, popular Bolivian folk band Los Kjarkas recorded their sixth album Canto a la Mujer de Mi Pablo. The album included the song Llorando Se Fue - over the next decade the song became a worldwide hit with authorized versions in at least 42 languages. In 1984, Peruvian group Cuarteto Continental introduced the accordion to their successful upbeat version. In 1985, Brazilian singer Marcia Ferreira covered the song in a Portuguese language version. In her upbeat version with added accordion she set the song to the popular Brazilian dance and rhythm of the Lambada. The popular Brazilian couples dance and accompanying rhythm was gradually gaining popularity across Brazil since 1976. The Lambada dance, also known as the forbidden dance, was based on the popular Carimbo dance - which was itself inspired by the Maxixe, the original "forbidden dance" from the 1920's. Ferreira's Lambada-infused cover of Llorando Se Fue earned her the title "The Queen of Lambada". In 1989, French-Portuguese band Kaoma released an unauthorized  and uncredited cover of Marcia Ferreira's version. Their song titled Lambada, also recorded with Portuguese lyrics, became a worldwide hit and sensation selling more then 5 million copies. The song was the biggest European single ever for CBS records. Prior to Koama's plagiarized hit song, there had already been numerous popular dance versions of Llorando Se Fue in an array of languages. In 1990, the songs original composers, Los Kjarkas, sued the French producer of Kaoma. In an out-of-court settlement the Bolivian band and it's record label EMI were given proper credits and 50% of the song's revenue.

In 1939 Billie Holiday introduced Strange Fruit on a nightclub stage in Harlem - the song would ultimately define her. The early civil rights song had originally been written in 1930 as a poem by a Jewish teacher and activist from the Bronx - Abel Meeropol. The painful poem told the story of southern lynchings. After having been published, he composed the poem into a song and passed it on to a nightclub owner, and then it was passed on to a 23-year old Billie Holiday. She immediately connected with the song, which reminded her of her father and how he died after being refused treatment at a hospital because he was black. At the time, the controversial song was applauded by some, and it infuriated others. When the racist commissioner of the Federal Beauru of Narcotics - Harry Anslinger - demanded that she stop performing the song, she refused. Because of this, the Beauru targeted her on a personal vendetta to ruin her. After the Bureau framed her in a herion bust, Holiday was sent to prison for a year and a half. When she was released in 1948, the feds stripped her of her cabaret license to further punish her. In 1959, a decade later, while Billie Holiday was near death in a hospital bed with liver and heart disease, a unrelenting Anslinger had his agents handcuff her to her hospital bed. Federal agents prevented doctors from giving her the care she needed, and she soon died. In it's December 31 1999 issue, Time Magazine declared Strange Fruit  "The Song Of The Century."      

Hide And Seek was released in 2005 by UK electro pop pioneer Imogen Heap. The song was the first single off her second album Speak For Yourself. The popularity of the song exploded after it was featured on the popular Fox TV-series The O.C., the song was even used in a SNL parody of the show. In 2009, pop singer Jason Derulo built his hit Whatcha Say around a sample of the Hide And Seek hook. Derulo used Heap's catchy hook for the first release off his self titled debut album - the song launched his career as it soared to the top of The Billboard Hot 100.

In 1982, The Clash released their fifth studio album Combat Rock - the album was their most successful and was the last to feature the band's classic lineup. The albums biggest hits were Rock The Casbah and Should I Stay Or Should I Go. The later was released as a double A-side single with the album track Straight To Hell. That song had reportedly been written at the Combat Rock recording sessions in New York City. Joe Strummer recalled writing the song in 1981, the night before the band had a New Years Eve flight out of New York City at the end of their two months of recording sessions. The original recording of Straight To Hell was 7 minutes long, and it was shortened to 5:30 when the album was drastically edited down to a single album, rather then the originalyl planned double album. In 2007, Straight To Hell's distinctive riff was sampled by M.I.A. (and co-writer/producer Diplo) on her massive hit Paper Planes. The song fittingly gives writing credits to Clash band members.  

Grant Green was was an influential jazz guitarist and composer that appeared on many Blue Note recordings as both the lead artist and as a sidekick. Throughout his life and busy career he was quite underrated, but after his death he came to be known as "the father of acid jazz." In 1970, he released his first live recording - Alive. The funky jazz album features his cover of the song Sookie Sookie, which was famously sampled for the basis of Us3's 1993 hit song Tukka Yoot's Riddim. The song was originally recorded in 1966 by songwriter and singer Don Covay. Before Grant Green, the song had been covered by Steppenwolf, and later it was covered by Iggy Pop, The Smashing Pumpkins and others.