9 Popular Songs You Didn't Know Were Based On Real News Stories

5. Elvis Presley - "Heartbreak Hotel"

As should be well-known by this point, Elvis didn't write many of his own songs. He was simply the mouthpiece for other, less charismatic songwriters. That said, he sold the content of those songs pretty well (supposing, of course, that those songs were about love, the Lord, or pelvic thrusting his way across America).

"Heartbreak Hotel," one of the most memorable tunes from early in his career, was written by Nashville songwriter Tommy Durden after he read a story in the papers about a man who committed suicide, leaving behind a nebulous note that read, simply, "I walk a lonely street."

From there, Durden worked out a story about a crestfallen man whose baby recently left him, forcing him to take up residence at Heartbreak Hotel, located rather fortuitously at the end of Lonely Street. There was a different story about the culmination of "Heartbreak Hotel" that claims the man at the center of this story had actually leapt to his death from a hotel window. This part of the tale appears to be fiction, as are the stories that he'd burned up any evidence of his true identity. More likely is that Durden left the man's identity out of the song because it would have been a wildly unnecessary inclusion.

Well, since my baby left me,I found a new place to dwell.It's down at the end of lonely streetat Heartbreak Hotel.