1966
1970
The fake lyrics -- tam bo li de say de moi ya -- were an ad-lib. Lionel Richie was trying to mimic a Caribbean patois and couldn't find the right words, so he made them up. They kept them. 30 sec is a song about a party so good you forget what language you're speaking. Number one on the Hot 100. Sometimes the wrong words say exactly the right thing.
Stand by Me is about four boys walking along train tracks to find a dead body and finding each other instead. Ben E. King's 'Stand by Me' was recorded twenty-five years before the film was made, but it sounds like it was written for this exact moment. I won't be afraid.
Stand by me. The song was always there. 1,414 artist portraits across 5 genres (Rock, Jazz, Soul, Blues, Folk). 1,363 sourced from Wikipedia (Creative Commons / Public Domain), 50 from Deezer (promotional artwork).