On Automatic for the People, REM advocated for assisted suicide in “Try Not to Breath,” then urged suicidal people to hold on, because “Everybody Hurts” just two songs later.
i know it’s not the exact same issue, but i found it interesting
In the original version of Kate Bush’s song And So Is Love on her album The Red Shoes the refrain was “life is sad and so is love.” When she re-recorded it for her album Director’s Cut the refrain was changed to “life is sweet and so is love”.
Two philosophys, one song.
The first time I saw Star Wars, Han shot Greebo in cold blood because that was life on the edge, kill or be killed.
Years later when I saw it again, Greebo fired at Han and missed, and then Han shot Greebo in self defense.
Exactly what I was going to say. The song was a protest against the insanely high tax rate they were forced to pay (far greater than the top tax Americans who whine about such things pay today); neither Harrison (who wrote the song, with a tiny help in lyrics from John) nor Lennon were libertarian/conservative.
Thanks for the info. I always thought Harrison and Lennon were of a libertarian/socialist bent although hardly conservative.
John Lennon: Happiness Is A Warm Gun versus Give Peace A Chance
Um, Warm Gun is a euphamism.
Lennon said he saw “Happiness is a warm gun” on the cover on a magazine and it struck him as odd..celebrating that you killed a living creature.
The Beatles could sing about “All You Need Is Love” and spend years in litigation with each other. Lennon could write “Imagine no possessions” and love in the Dakota in New York City with a $150 million net worth in the late 1970s
Well, yeah, but he could imagine no possessions. 
Sting sang “If You Love Someone, Set Them Free.” But earlier, in “Every Breath You Take,” he was a stalker, ominously threatening his beloved, and vowing never to let her get away.
Yes, but “Every Breath You Take” is sung in character. Sting is not approving of the stalker. You are meant to find him creepy, and the music reinforces that.
Likewise, no way was the sentence “Happiness is a Warm Gun” ever meant to be taken as an expression of Lennon’s actual feelings, and in the context of the song it is clearly intended ironically/satirically. Inasmuch as the song is saying anything about guns (and that may not be very much) it is saying that people who like guns are creepy.
It is too easy to find contradictory views in people’s songs if you take some of their words out of context, whether the context of the other words, of the music, or of the artist’s persona.
Peter Gabriel’s “persona” songs, like Intruder (POV of a home invasion rapist), Family Snapshot (political assassin), Big Time (narcissistic douche). He takes on some yucky personas in fascinating ways.
Pat Benatar
Though the lyrics do not necessarily contradict each other it is interesting to note that on her album “Crimes of Passion” The songs “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” and “Hell is for Children” are next to each other.
I remember reading a review of that LP, and that is the first thing the reviewer noted (quite negatively, I might add).
True enough, but it still fits the topic at hand- songs by the same artist expressing vastly different attitudes.
Nonsense. If Han ever even thought about doing such a thing, he’d find himself believing he was some kind of amphibious creature pretty tout damn de suite.
And I betcha Mistress Weatherwax wouldn’t say “Boo” to Mrs. Ogg about it, for all that there’s no love lost between her and Greebo.
U2 writes songs praising non violent people such as Gandhi and King and then write “God Part 2” on the “Rattle and Hum” album threatening to kill John Lennon biographer Albert Goldman. At least Goldman thought “Instant Karma’s going get him, if I don’t get him first” was a threat against his life.
And in his first novel (first written, that is – published posthumously), [he describes a future utopia based in part on [url=Social credit - Wikipedia]social credit.](]For Us, The Living,[/url)
Commie! :mad:
And, the society depicted in Heinlein’s first published novel*, Beyond This Horizon, appears to be based on the same system.
- Published as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction in 1942, not published in novel form until 1948. His first novel published as a novel was Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), which expresses no politics other than “Nazis are bad.”
The OP does not refer to contradictory attitudes, it refers to contradictory “philosophies” or “messages”. The messages of, or philosophies behind the two Sting songs you mentioned are not contradictory, they are very consistent. They express different attitudes only because one expresses that of the singer himself, and the other that of a character of whom he clearly disapproves.
The same goes for the Lennon songs.