I started this thread after reading through the “Songs about self-pleasure” thread. I had one song in particular in mind, but it doesn’t qualify as a song about masturbation since I’m not so sure what the hell its about. There are some obvious elements of pleasure, but it isn’t clear what kind of pleasure that is.
But anyway, I though this might be a good thread about cryptic songs in general, since there are a lot of songs that always leave me puzzled.
Piggy in the Mirror by The Cure is one song that always seemed like a bit of a riddle to me. I suppose it can be interpreted in a lot of ways. Here it goes…
If you thought that was easy, I’d like to see you make sense of ‘Bananafishbones’, ‘So What?’, and ‘Hot Hot Hot!!!’ also by The Cure.
I always wondered if David Bowie’s Oh, You Pretty Things had something do to with the Cthulhu mythos. I can’t find the lyrics right now, though, and I can’t say specifically what made me think of that connection.
They Might Be Giants has dozens of songs that are just plain strange. Most of them I’ve managed to figure out, but this still eludes me:
"I never went to the tropical island
Though everybody said they saw me there
And it wasn’t me you punched a hole in
At the West German protest march
Simultaneous events don’t happen
We are isolated temporally
And a part is never called a whole thing
Though it bothers me to know it’s so
Every man is made of two opinions
Every woman has a second half
And it’s sambo time for Tambo and
Weep day for Urine Man
I didn’t write the words you hear me singing
I didn’t sing the line before this one
You were not the one I was addressing
That person took a train to Africa
Where he met the consulate from Belgium
Who is now a hermit in a cave
Who is pitching for the Oakland Raiders
Striking out the batter she became
Every man is made of two opinions
Every woman has a second half
And it’s sambo time for Tambo and
Weep day for Urine Man"
–They Might Be Giants
“Weep Day”
Someone 'splain this to me.
I always figured “Paint it Black” was about a guy whose girlfriend had gotten killed and who’s now considering suicide . . . “I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black” . . . “If I look long enough into the setting sun/My love will laugh with me before the morning comes”. Or something depressing like that.
Funny, I was thinking about “Oh You Pretty Things” too. For years I thought it said, “Mother superior” where it really says “Homo superior”, which means I have no idea what the song is about.
I like the Cthulhu theory though. Say, anybody have any idea what “Call of Ktulu” by Metallica is based on? Just kidding.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
MaxTorque
It sound like the song is about violence is South African prisons. I don’t know why exactly, that’s just the overall idea I get. I heard on 60 Minutes about some poor wretch who the Apartheid government imprisoned; they buried him up to his neck in the sand. One guard asked him if he wanted a drink, he said yes, and the guard … err … did a really really mean thing.
Oliver Tambo was/is an African National Congress leader.
But I’m just guessing
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Let me just start out by sayin to homeboy out there that I am a huge Nirvana fan, and what he means when he says, “I’d like to eat your cancer when it turns black” isn’t supposed to mean anything. Plain and simple. Often songs do have meanings, but sometimes they don’t. And sometimes the writers were just REALLY stoned off of their a**es when they wrote em.