Hozier’s Take Me To Church has apparently been played in actual churches. A song about repressive religion and engaging in what the church would consider depraved sexual activity. I mean the music video is about violence against LGBTQ people in Russia.
And in many of these examples people get caught up in the chorus and don’t listen to the rest, but in this song the chorus is pretty straight up not about godliness:
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins while you sharpen your knife
Same for “I Will Always Love You” used as a wedding song. It’s a BREAKUP song, people!
Then there’s “Saving All My Love For You”. Side piece is whining about how awful it is that “her” so-called “man” hasn’t walked out on his family for her yet.
On a similar note, I saw an ad that shows a family being happy in their home and a boy is playing outside. It has the first few notes of “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty. To me, the song sounds like someone accepting that he and a partner/spouse need to go their separate ways.
I joke about ‘You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me Lucille’ [got stuck on hold once to it for 45 minutes]
I maintain dude needs to hit up a bar, pick up a chick to take care of the kids, get his ass out and harvest the damned field, not whinge about it all.
Hallelulja by Leonard Cohen - David and Bathsheba, real romantic setup - spot a woman, ship her husband off to die in battle so you can fornicate with her.
Several years ago I was doing a vacation fill-in on a radio station that had a “love songs and dedications” show in the evening. Not my cup of tea exactly but I did a credible job. People would request all manner of inappropriate songs that they obviously had never listened to closely, like “I Will Always Love You” and “Every Breath You Take.” Male callers were especially clueless. I sometimes would ask them “Are you SURE you want to dedicate that song to your girlfriend?”
One evening a woman called and asked me to play “Endless Love” by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, for her daughter and her fiancé. Without thinking, I said “Well I hope they have better luck than the couple in the movie!” She said “There was a movie??? What happened to the couple in the movie?” (This was not “live.” The calls were pre-recorded and edited for airplay.) Realizing I had stepped in it, I said “Well, that was just a movie. Forget I mentioned it. It’s a beautiful song for a couple starting their lives together and we are happy to play it for them.” (Or something like that.) I’m not sure she believed me. From then on I was a lot more careful about making off the cuff remarks to people, no matter what I thought about their request!
I think it is. Yes, it does mention a " bum over there, man" but lots of homeless in LA.
He never actually cheats, and of course she is “cheating” as well. She put the ad in, he answered it.
Right.
They consider cheating, as their love life has got stale, but they then realize they like a lot of the same things. It is actually- to me anyway- romantic.
There’s also a mention of the Santa Ana winds, more a nuisance than a point of local pride. And other lines are double-edged in their praise: “Look at these women / Ain’t nothing like them nowhere.”
One commercial misuse I’m always amused by is Philadelphia Cream Cheese using “New York, New York”. Or at least, the first four words (“Start spreading the news”).
“I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” Meat Loaf. People apparently still ask “won’t do what?” even though the song details exactly what he won’t do.
In the first line of “The Impression That I Get,” it sounds like the singer is saying nonsensically that he “never had to knock on wood.” It only makes sense if you consider the line in the context of the first verse and interpolate a few implied words (and a silent comma):
Have you ever been close to tragedy
Or been close to folks who have
Have you ever felt a pain so powerful
So heavy you collapse (No? Well…)
I’ve never had to [experience those things], knock on wood…
I remember seeing a comment at the time along the lines of “I don’t know what ‘Of course I’ve had it in the ear before’ means, but it’s probably not allowed on a Royal Caribbean cruise”.
On VH1 Storytellers, Mr. Loaf broke out a blackboard and a pointer to diagram the lyrics and explain exactly what “that” is.
My own submission to this thread is You’re Beautiful by James Blunt. I’ve heard of it being used as a wedding song, when in reality it’s about a guy crashing out over a married woman he saw on the subway while high, and is now planning to kill himself because he’ll never be with her.