Song With Lyrics You Know What It Means to Me
Rihanna's "S&M" isn't really about sex.
If you thought Rihanna's 2010 striking "S&Thou" was near getting kinky, you lot might be surprised to larn information technology'south actually about her relationship with the media.
"The song can be taken very literally, but information technology'southward really a very metaphorical song. It's about the dearest-hate relationship with the media and how sometimes the hurting is pleasurable," Rihanna told Vogue in 2011, according to The Sydney Forenoon Herald. "Nosotros feed off information technology — or I do. And it was a very personal message that I was trying to get across."
REM's "The Ane I Dearest" is non a honey song.
Despite the fact that the second line of REM's "The One I Beloved" clearly indicates the song is nigh a bitter breakdown — "This one goes out to the one I've left behind/A simple prop to occupy my time" — listeners still seem to believe information technology'due south a heartfelt love song.
"Information technology'south a barbarous kind of song, and I don't know if a lot of people pick up on that," REM front end man Michael Stipe told Rolling Stone in 1987. "Merely I've always left myself pretty open to interpretation. Information technology'southward probably meliorate that they just think information technology's a beloved song at this point."
In a 1988 interview with the now-defunct Musician Magazine, Stipe said the vocal is "lyrically very straightforward."
"It's very clear that it's nearly using people over and over again," Stipe said.
The Goo Goo Dolls' "Slide" is nigh dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
A lot of people get hung up on thinking the Goo Goo Dolls' song is a beautiful track about love, only the lyrics tell a much more complicated story.
"I was thinking a lot about the neighborhood I grew up in. 'Slide' is nearly a teenage boy and girl. They're trying to figure out if they're going to keep the baby or if she's going to get an abortion or if they're but going to run away," the band'due south forepart-runner John Rzeznik told Billboard in 2018. "They're dealing with these heavy life choices at a very early historic period. Everybody grew up manner too fast."
In an interview with Stereogum that same year, the singer further described the song's intended pregnant.
"That was a not-so-apocryphal tale about some difficult choices and dealing with a very rigid civilisation with a lot of demands put on the people who are part of that community, whether information technology was religious force per unit area, family pressure. It was really interesting to me to examine all those things," he said.
Green Day's "Practiced Riddance (Time of Your Life)" is a bitter breakup song masquerading equally a feel-expert track.
If you take fond memories of belting out "Practiced Riddance (Time of Your Life)" at your center-school graduation or during the last night of overnight camp with your friends, you aren't lonely. Many people seemed to misinterpret the lyric "I hope you had the time of your life" as an hostage one, and ignore the first one-half of the song'southward title.
Green Day's pb vocalist, Billie Joe Armstrong, told Guitar Legends magazine in 2005 that he wrote the vocal while he was breaking upward with his girlfriend who was moving to Ecuador.
"I was trying to be as agreement about it as I could. I wrote the vocal every bit kind of a bon voyage. I was trying non to be bitter, merely I think it came out equally a petty bitter anyway," he said.
Third Eye Blind'due south "Semi-Overjoyed Life" isn't nearly feeling dissatisfied. It's about drug addiction.
It's pretty much a fact that "Semi-Charmed Life" is the best karaoke vocal of all fourth dimension with its frantic tempo that can leave you breathlessly trying to keep upwardly with the lyrics.
Merely you may not realize that song's pace actually reflects its narrative about the cruel cycle of highs and lows that accompany a drug addiction.
"Information technology's a muddied, filthy vocal virtually snorting speed and getting accident jobs. It'southward really funny that people play it on the radio," Tertiary Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins told Billboard magazine in 1997. "I think people hear 'Semi-Charmed Life' as a happy summer jam. And that'due south fine with me. I don't think the song should be then breathy that I accept to come out and say 'couples who take speed tend to interruption upwards, and then don't practice it.'"
In a 1998 interview with Rolling Stone, Jenkins added, "Yeah, it's funny. I wrote a song about drugs and f---ing, and I'chiliad pretty much about clean living on the route. Nosotros tin't even believe it got onto the radio. 'Coming over you' is but really what it reports to exist: 'She comes around, and she goes downward on me.' Information technology's not ambiguous."
Don McLean'south classic campfire song "American Pie" disguises its depressing nature with catchiness.
The iconic and undeniably catchy 1971 song "American Pie" is known to inspire group sing-alongs at bonfires and karaoke bars, merely lyrically it's rather dark.
The original release of the vocal clocks in at more than than eight minutes long just, more often than not, people remember the song'due south rhyming chorus, which bids adieu to "Miss American Pie."
They tend to forget that the lyrically dense song references the 1959 plane crash that killed legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson equally "the 24-hour interval the music died."
According to The Guardian, Don McLean said in a 2015 interview that the lyrics are intentionally ambiguous.
"People enquire me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of grade, I did. I wanted to make a whole series of circuitous statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time," he said.
In 2015, McLean also put the song'southward original manuscript up for sale at Christie'south Auctions and Private Sales and told the auction house, "Basically, in 'American Pie' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is condign less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or correct, but it is a morality vocal in a sense. I was around in 1970 and now I am around in 2015 there is no poesy and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.'"
Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is non a vocal that celebrates the country.
The tricky, repetitive chorus of Bruce Springsteen's 1984 striking makes it piece of cake for listeners to overlook the song's actual bulletin, which is a critique of America's involvement in the Vietnam State of war.
"But when you think near all the young men and women that died in Vietnam, and how many died since they've been back — surviving the war and coming back and non surviving — you have to think that, at the time, the country took advantage of their selflessness. There was a moment when they were just actually generous with their lives," Springsteen told Rolling Stone in 1984.
Subsequently conservative columnist George Will lauded the vocal'south chorus equally a "grand, cheerful affirmation," and Ronald Reagan dropped the singer's name on the campaign trail, Springsteen said that he thought the American people'south demand to feel expert about the US afterward the Vietnam State of war was "gettin' manipulated and exploited."
He connected in the interview with Rolling Stone, "And that'south why when Reagan mentioned my name in New Jersey, I felt information technology was some other manipulation, and I had to disassociate myself from the president's kind words."
According to The New Yorker, Springsteen once called "Born in the USA" the "nigh misunderstood vocal since 'Louie, Louie.'"
Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" isn't about letting go of an ballsy romance.
The 1973 song (which was famously covered past Whitney Houston in 1992) was inspired past Dolly Parton's decision to move on from working with her mentor, musician Porter Wagoner, and his series "The Porter Wagoner Show."
"I was with Porter for seven years, and I learned and so many things from Porter. Nosotros had ane of those relationships where we were only and so passionate near what we did; it was like fire and water ice," Parton told the Tennessean in 2015. "We kind of butted heads all the fourth dimension, but we loved each other. There was a great passion in that location. And I wanted to leave the show. I had told Porter that I would stay with the testify for five years. I wanted to go out on my own."
Parton said she wanted to brand Wagoner understand how much she appreciated him, then she wrote the song to let him know.
Semisonic's "Closing Fourth dimension" isn't actually an anthem for the terminal call.
Simply because bars are still playing Semisonic's "Endmost Fourth dimension" as the final vocal of the dark doesn't mean the song is actually most the last phone call.
The band's singer Dan Wilson revealed the vocal is actually almost the nativity of his daughter. Rather than write a cheesy song that was blatantly about the birth of his kid, Wilson hid the song's real meaning.
"And I hid information technology so well in plainly view that millions and millions of people heard the song and bought the vocal and didn't get it. They think it's about beingness bounced from a bar, merely it's virtually being bounced from the womb," he said on stage during his college reunion at Harvard in 2008.
Clash's "Rock the Casbah" was inspired past the 1979 ban on music in Iran.
If y'all've never sat down and read the lyrics to "Rock the Casbah," you might be surprised to learn that the vocal was actually written as a response to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 broadcast music ban in Iran.
According to WCSX radio station, in a 1991 interview, late Clash forepart man Joe Strummer said he started writing the song after the ring's manager pleaded with them to write shorter songs.
"I started to wail virtually the muezzin and the sheiks and the oil in the desert. Somebody'd told me earlier that if yous had a disco anthology in Tehran, you lot got xx lashes. And if you had a canteen of Johnny Walker Black Label whiskey, you got forty lashes," he said. "I couldn't get this out of my heed, and then I was trying to say fanaticism is nowhere. There's no tenderness or humanity in fanaticism. That'due south what I was trying to say in 'Rock the Casbah.'"
Bryan Adams' song "Summer of '69" is not referencing the year.
Historically speaking, 1969 was a large year. That was the summer Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Woodstock took place, and the Stonewall Riots happened.
Just Bryan Adams' vocal "Summertime of '69" isn't well-nigh any of that — it's most sex.
"A lot of people recall it's most the yr, but actually, it's more about making love in the summertime," Adams told CBS' "The Early Show" in 2008. "It'south using '69 equally a sexual reference."
Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" wasn't written afterwards he saw a man allow another man drown — it's about his divorce.
The legends surrounding the backstory to Phil Collins' 1981 hit are plentiful and likely grew thanks to a reference in Eminem's song "Stan." Just "In the Air Tonight" isn't about, as Eminem put it, "that guy who could've saved that other guy from drowning, merely didn't."
"Unfortunately, none of it's true. I was simply pissed off, ya know? I was angry," Collins told Jimmy Fallon on an episode of "The Tonight Show" in 2016, calculation that he was going through an emotionally taxing divorce.
John Lennon'due south "Imagine" isn't merely a song about unity and world peace.
Nearly people call back the 1971 carol by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band is about people putting aside their differences to change the world, but the song — which was cowritten by his wife Yoko Ono — is more political.
Co-ordinate to a 2001 Rolling Stone commodity, Lennon once described the song as "well-nigh the Communist Manifesto, even though I am non particularly a communist and I do not belong to whatsoever movement."
The song clearly asks the listener to imagine a world without organized religion or possessions, but Lennon admitted that he intentionally tried to "sugarcoat" his message with the song's sweetness.
"'Imagine' is a big hit virtually everywhere — anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, just because it is sugarcoated, it is accepted," Lennon once said, co-ordinate to biographer James Henke. "Now I understand what you take to do: Put your political message across with a little honey."
Sarah McLachlan's "Affections" is near someone who died from heroin habit.
Virtually listeners think the vocal is about a profound, personal loss — or think about the commercials for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — but Sarah McLachlan revealed the song was inspired by the death of Bully Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, who died of an credible drug overdose in 1996.
"I went to a cottage northward of Montreal to relax and write. I read on inflow in Rolling Stone about the Smashing Pumpkins keyboard player who had OD'ed in a hotel room," McLachlan wrote on Quora in 2014. "The story shook me because though I have never done difficult drugs like that, I felt a flood of empathy for him and that feeling of being lost, alone, and desperately searching for some kind of release."
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Source: https://www.insider.com/misinterpreted-misunderstood-songs-lyrics-2018-11
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