Are we sure that the couple in the Pina Colada song aren’t Jack and Diane?
As for awful people in songs, the women in 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and Cecilia have to be on the short list. Paul Simon may have some issues.
Paul Simon may well have some issues. At the beginning of “America,” he’s happy to be travelling with Kathy (“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together”), but by the end of the song, after Kathy is asleep, he’s “empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
Maybe you should have bought an extra pack of cigarettes, Paul.
Hmm, all I’m gonna say is that to me, some of The Smiths’ songs sound rather upbeat to me musically. So I am not sure you can read too much into how jaunty a tune is necessarily!
When I sing the Pina Colada song, I like to snarl that line to express maximum disappointment. 
Oh boy, my thread has morphed into an “overanalyze song lyrics” thread, and I couldn’t be happier.
Ya think? Every single Simon song is 30% reference to failed relationships, 30% existential angst, and 40% poetic word salad. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan.
Ha, that could work. Mellencamp was singing about J&D as they were in the 60s as teens, and the PC song is them as grown up, jaded, 70s swingers.
Saddest Sentence Fragment of 2024.
Come ON, people. This Café is full of erudite people who know great writing and music. And vapid pop songs like this “ain’t neither.”
This goes for Afternoon Delight or Sugar, Sugar as well…
Sorry, but there are so many songs that deserve an in-depth analysis. And here we are rehashing an annoying* one.
*Especially annoying if you had to live through the days when they were repeated ad nauseam on Top 40 radio. And your little sister who got to sit in the front seat would squeal “I LOVE this song! You know it’s not just about pina coladas…” and turn it up. And Mom, who was driving wouldn’t turn it down, but would join in singing.
Perhaps you’d prefer another song?
“There’s a port, on a western bay, and it serves a hundred ships a day…”
Well played, my friend…
Up next, the existential dread of Olivia Newton-John
Dung_B, you’re a fine bug
What a great poster you can be
I welcome your contributions
To the SDMB…
I vaguely remember Paul Simon being asked about the lyrics of one of his songs, possibly Me And Julio Down By the Schoolyard, and saying that sometimes it’s just a lyric meant to fit the song.
I can completely believe that. Not every song is written about a personal experience of the songwriter.
OTOH, having been a fan of Paul Simon’s music since I was a teenager, and having read many interviews with (and commentary about) him, my observation is:
- He’s one of the very best lyricists of the rock music era
- He is a difficult, irritable, unhappy human being
I like my mashup While You Were Sleepless in Seattle, where Bill Pullman loses Meg Ryan but gets Sandra Bullock. I think that’s a win.
It’s a euphemism. Diane is sucking on Jack’s “dog”. Those horny teens!
And not smart. The Tallahatchie Bridge is like 20 feet above the water. George Bailey has a better change of dying jumping off the Bedford Falls bridge.
Aw shucks!
Not there was ever any doubt, read some of the biographies. His treatment of Garfunkel, not to mention Kathy (Kathleen Chitty, a real person) paint an unflattering portrait. Also not to mention the musical plagiarism.
“It’s better to have loved and lost than to listen to a song by Olivia Newton John.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because anything’s better than listening to a song by Olivia Newton John.”-- Red Dwarf
Please, mister, please.
All I ask you is let me be there.
Alright, I’ll be that guy: I love Olivia Newton-John, thought she had a beautiful voice. And Afternoon Delight has cheesy lyrics, but I really enjoy the harmony. I also like Air Supply.
There, I said it.
Try some Richard Thompson. We have a bootleg named “Doom and Gloom” which is quite appropriate. Some stuff is not so gloomy, but he’s a master of it.