Back in 1998, Scottish provocateur Nick Currie, a.k.a. Momus, released his twelfth album, The Little Red Songbook, an album full of self-described "analog baroque" ditties that playfully tackled some rather ribald subjects.
One such ditty wound up getting Sir Momus in much trouble and, surprisingly, it wasn't "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With" or "Coming In A Girl's Mouth", but, rather, a song by the name of "Walter Carlos".
Walter Carlos, of course, is best known as the electronic musician and composer most responsible for taking the Moog synthesizer mainstream with the release of Switched-On Bach in 1968.
The album saw Carlos and musical partner Benjamin Folkman tackle a number of Bach compositions with nothing but a monophonic Moog synthesizer.
Soonafter, Walter would begin her transition to a woman, thereby changing her name to Wendy Carlos, and go on to create the legendary motion picture scores for the films "A Clockwork Orange", "The Shining", and "Tron", among others.
Momus's song explored a time-travelling scenario whereby Wendy Carlos returns to a time before her gender reassignment surgery and marries her male self, which, it seems Ms. Carlos did not appreciate.
Carlos responded by suing Momus for $22 million dollars.
In the end, the case was settled out of court, with Momus forced to remove the offending song from all future pressings of The Little Red Songbook and pay Carlos's legal fees, totaling $30,000.
To raise the money to pay off the $30,000, Momus came up with the brilliant idea of commissioning his talents, whereby for the sum of $1,000, he would write a song about anyone,or anything.
That he found thirty takers is admirable in and of itself because, let's face it, his music is a bit of an acquired taste, but among those who forked over ten Benjamins were the rock band The Minus 5 and the musical PR firm Girlie Action.
All thirty selections were then released as Momus' next album, Stars Forever.