My Favourite Game by The Cardigans

Contrary to popular belief, the game most enjoyed by the members of The Cardigans is Travel Go, formerly known as Go — The International Travel Game.

Now, with most countries using the Euro, and quite a few using Second Life's Linden Dollar, playing Travel Go seems unthinkable. Much of the enjoyment of Travel Go came from manipulating the currencies of various silly countries, a job usually done by the lovely people at the CIA and MI6.

Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans, plays games all day, every day. She likes chess, Cluedo, Shanghai, Connect-Four, Russian roulette, hopscotch and electioneering. In common with the other band members, her favourite game is Waddingtons' Travel Go. The word on the street is that when she looses her favourite game she gets very, very angry. On several occasions she has become so angry that she ordered air strikes on the Norwigian town of Roros in the Gauldalen region. We can now reveal, for the first time in a mildly amusing blog post(emphasis on the mild), that Persson recorded My Favourite Game as part of an anger management program.

My Sharona by The Knack

Contrary to popular belief, My Sharona is not about pedophilia. Granted, some of the lyrics sound quite suggestive:

Oh my little pretty one, pretty one.
When you gonna give me some time, Sharona?
Ooh you make my motor run, my motor run.
Gun it comin' off the line Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up.
Such a dirty mind. Always get it up for the touch
of the younger kind.

The Knack were, as it later turned out, singing the praises of Mishurowner, a special tea grown only in India and Basingstoke. The tea is notable for the fact that it reduces one's perception of the passing of time, hence the lyric "When you gonna give me some time, Sharona"(sic). Only the young tips of the tea leaves are used, which is why the song makes reference to "the younger kind". For reasons of melody and rhythm, "Mishurowner" became "My Sharona" in the final version of the song. So now you know.

Definitely Maybe by Oasis

Contrary to popular belief, Oasis's debut album Definitely Maybe is a actually a tribute album. It is a tribute to Lotfi A. Zadeh, the first mathematician to propose a systematic alternative to the bi-valued logic of Aristotle and described the 3-valued logic, with the third value being "Possible", also known as "Definitely Maybe". The album was an immediate commercial and critical success in the UK, which is testament to Noel and Liam Gallagher's passion for Fuzzy Logic and Fuzzy Set Theory.

It is hoped that one day Oasis will record an album about non-Euclidean geometry.

Girl From Mars by Ash

Contrary to popular belief, Ash's 1995 single Girl From Mars is a song about Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space. Sharman completed he PhD while working as a chemist at confectionery, maker Mars Limited in Slough. She was known to her friends and enemies as "the girl from Mars", so when she had a falling out with Ash's lead singer Tim Wheeler(only 16 at the time!) over a Bakelite telephone at a car-boot sale, it was only natural for Ash to record Girl From Mars.

Far from helping the situation, Girl From Mars made things ten times worse! Ash had just sat their A-Level exams, should have been concentrating on getting university places through the system known as Clearing, not stirring up trouble with a cheeky little ditty about the UK's first astronaut.(the first to return alive, that is)

Somehow NASA came to hear of the single and immediately started using it as their hold music. This was clearly an attempt by NASA to anger Sharman, who had stayed at Soviet space station Mir in 1991, upsetting the American space agency so much that they wote something rude about her on the surface of the moon.(it's still there to this day)

Kinky Afro by Happy Mondays

Contrary to popular belief, the Happy Monday's 1990 Madchester classic, Kinky Afro, was a cry for help on behalf of the UK Chartered Institute of Barbers and Hairdressers.(CIBH)

Britain in the 1980's was a tough place to practice barbering. The British public felt that British barbers had lost touch with the reality of British hair. Barbers and hairdressers had eggs and tulips thrown at them in the street, they were served only salmon roe when they ordered caviar in restaurants and worst of all, their price lists(known as "hair-menus" in the trade) were frequently defaced. Gangs of disaffected youths known as "Secret Santas" would roam the streets at lunch time, changing "Short Back and Sides" to "Kinky Afro" on any hair-menu they could find. In September of 1990 tensions reached their peak. Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays knew something had to be done; he held a secret meeting with Bez in one of those red-and-white striped tents that British Telecom used to use, and it was decided that they would record a song.

The resulting track, known colloquially as Uncle Herman's Chocolate Surprise, was aimed at initiating a dialogue between the CIBH and the Secret Santas. The result, as we all know, was that differences were set aside, hairstyles were changed and hairdressing in the UK entered a resurgence.

Sparky's Dream by Teenage Fanclub

Contrary to popular belief, Scottish alternative rock group Teenage Fanclub had Britain's street lighting in mind when they wrote Sparky's Dream. The song tells the story of a young electrician who, in 1872, had a dream about a city in which all the gas lights had been replaced by electric ones.

The electrician, whose name has been lost in time, like tears down the drain, gave a presentation about his dream to the Royal Society, using a very early version of PowerPoint. This led to experimental arrays of arc lamps being used to light Holborn Viaduct and the Thames Embankment in London, this was in fact the first electric street lighting in Britain.

Sparky's Dream only reached number 40 in the UK singles charts but it did receive extensive airplay all over the world. This led Kurt Cobain to describe Teenage Fanclub as "the best band in the world", reflecting Cobain's love of electricity or, as he called it "electrickery".

All I Need by Air

Contrary to popular belief, French electronica duo Air originally asked singer-songwriter Beth Hirsch to sing about Florence Nightingale's successful use of statistical graphics while lobbying UK politicians for public health reforms in 1863. Hirsch had other ideas, and turned All I Need into an ode to the bedtime malted-milk drink Ovaltine.

One possible explanation for Hirsch's obsession with Ovaltine is that she may have grown up next to, or even inside, an Ovaltine factory.

Suffragette City by David Bowie

Contrary to popular belief, although the term suffragette is usually thought of as a derogatory label for members of the Women's Social and Political Union, the suffragette city referred to in Bowie's 1976 song Suffragette City is Uxbridge, a large suburban town in northwest London. Bowie recorded the song at a time when few people in the UK had heard of Uxbridge, let alone been there. Bowie was determined to put Uxbridge on the map once-and-for-all, and he knew that the only way to raise its profile would be to record a song about it.

As we now know, Bowie was utterly unsuccessful in his quest to make Uxbridge famous. It wasn't until 1989, 13 years after the release of Bowie's song, that Uxbridge finally got the recognition it deserved when it was chosen as the filming location of Press Gang, a television drama series about a cut-throat gang of corporate press officers, led by Linda Day(played by Julia Sawalha)

Around The World by Daft Punk

Contrary to popular belief, Around The World by Daft Punk is actually based on a true story. In 1996, French electronic music duo Daft Punk embarked on a round-the-world journey in an attempt to buy up the entire world's supply of toothbrushes. The plan was to cause an artificial shortage of toothbrushes, and then give away a toothbrush with each copy of their debut album Homework. This could have been a very successful tactic and might have resulted in the album going straight to number one in every album chart. Unfortunately Daft Punk, for reasons that have never become clear, decided to restrict themselves to travel by hula hoop. They didn't get very far.

Computer Love by Kraftwerk

Contrary to popular belief, Computer Love by Kraftwerk is a homage to Amiga Workbench, the greatest operating system ever made. The lyric "I need a rendezvous" means that the protagonist of the song wanted to meet up with other Amiga users, probably to discuss various aspects of Amiga Workbench such as its gauge meter to show free space of removable devices or the way that the exec.library handles low-level functions such as passing messages to programs, allocating memory and task switching.

There is, however, one person who is unimpressed by Amiga Workbench. That person is Dr Ted Nelson. He claims that all operating systems are just slightly different versions of the PUI, the Palo-Alto User Interface. He's right.

Made Of Stone by The Stone Roses

Contrary to popular belief, Made Of Stone by The stone Roses is a song about some decorative garden features that The Stone Roses bought at a local garden centre. It possible that the song is ironic because such garden features tend to be made of concrete, not stone.

The lyric "I'm standing warm against the cold/Now that the flames have taken hold" is a reference to a garden heater that Mani gave to John Squire when he passed his driving test(it was his second attempt). The Stone Roses were famous for throwing regular barbecue parties throughout the year, this is mentioned in Made Of Stone: "And for as far as I can see/Ten twisted [BBQ]grills grin back at me".

Night In My Veins by The Pretenders

Contrary to popular belief, Night In My Veins by The Pretenders tells the tale of a young woman doing a spring clean of her apartment late one evening: "It's just the night in my veins// Oh making me crawl in the dust again."