Ordinary songs that no one notices are actually creepy

Cafe Society
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[hijack]

Re Toadies: I don’t think of them as one hit wonders, but maybe that’s because they’re really popular in Austin. I regularly hear Possum Kingdom, Tyler, Backslide, and I Come From the Water on the radio down there.

Re Disturbed: I’ve been a huge Disturbed fan since before they were famous (got the first CD for $9.99, saw them at the second stage at 2pm at an Ozzfest - aka the Crappy Time). I’ve read and listened to a lot of interviews with David Draiman. Their songs really aren’t supposed to be taken literally. A lot of them are actually social commentaries. “Mother” in Down With the Sickness actually referrs to Mother Culture, and Voices is about, basically, the Id. You gotta give a man with a Philosophy degree a little more credit, hehe.

[/hijack]

Well, since Toadies have already been covered, I’ll go with the other band I was thinking of, Cold.

Sad Happy
She was only seventeen
and forced to blame it on herself
as she hides away to tame the pain she feels
she was thrown to a scene
a drunken man without a will
and a God that makes mistakes
and still pretends

It’s a creepy song to begin with, but it only gets worse when you know the story behind it. Scooter (lead singer) tends to talk to his fans a lot. Apparently, he was meeting people after a show, and this girl told him how her dad raped her all the time, and that Cold’s music helped her through some really dark times. Thus the chorus:
"and I’ll be strong
and I will sing
and I will take your pain away "
Songs are always creepier (to me) when based on actual occurences.
Then we get to some of the most depressing songs I know, from Tea Party.

Emerald
just be still my emerald
I’ll be waiting for you
do exactly what you’re told
I’ll be waiting for you

ashamed by the threats
you pierce the embrace
afraid and alone
in a dark and lonely place

Transmission
confused by the weight of our virtue
we follow the paths of the slain
in silence we walk through these shadows
embracing the pleasures of pain
once again

And Rammstein, which is atcually quite disturbing when you get the English.

Tier(Beast/Animal)

He will go to his daughter so late
She is young and she 's such sweet bait
Just as if he were a dog
With his own flesh and blood he will mate

SPIEL MIT MIR (Play With Me)

We share a room and the bed
Brother dear please go right ahead
Brother dear come touch me here
Slide to me so close and near

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They played this at my daughter’s wedding too - I think it has something to do with getting people up on the dance floor to boogie - everybody knows the moves.

When the DJ played ‘Spirit in the sky’ I remarked on it not being very appropriate for a wedding. I can’t bear to listen to it now, as my husband died suddenly the following year, and the only video I have of him is the wedding video, which ends with him dancing energetically to this song .

243

There’s a Toad the Wet Sproket song that is incredibly catchy about date rape. Part of the chorus is “Take her arms and hold her down and hold her down until she stops kicking.” Very disturbing, but moreso because the song itself is so damn catchy.

There’s a number of Barenaked Ladies songs that could make the cut. “The night I fell asleep at the wheel” caught me by surprise when I found myself singing “'cause I’ve never seen so much, never seen so much, never seen so much BLOOOOOOD!” before I stopped to register what the pleasant little ditty was about.

They never made it too big (but should have) but “The Pursuit of Happiness” had some happy sounding / creepy in reality songs like “Runs in the family” with lyrics like “Paula’s sister has legs as long as hers, maybe a little bit longer. They’re tan and shiny and newly grown and they fit so easily on her.”

Good call on “my Sharona” – especially since the next song on that album is called “That’s what the little girls do.”

244

“Brick” by Ben Folds has already been mentioned, but I thought that I’d add another, this one from his solo album, Rockin the Suburbs. In “The Luckiest,” a song about how lucky he is to have found his wife, there’s a verse that goes:

What if I’d been born
Fifty years before you
In a house on the street
Where you live?
Maybe I’d be outside
As you passed on your bike
Would I know?

A little creepy, to me.

And an 80’s song. Not so much CREEPY, per se, but a little out-of-sorts with the rest of the song. I’m referring, of course, to “Second Chance” by .38 Special.

A song about trying to convince his wife/girlfriend to forgive him after he’s cheated on her, and he sings “I never loved her…I never needed her…she was willing, and that’s all there is to say.”

Even as a kid, when this song played on the radio, I always found myself thinking, “no, that’s NOT all there is to say. She was willing. Why were YOU?”

And, on the topic of date rape, Sublime has a song called “Date Rape,” which tells the story of a guy who rapes a girl and goes to jail. But it’s got such a good beat that you may miss the message.

245

Well, a lot of people do see spanking as child abuse. You can usually tell who these people are by observing their undisciplined monster children.

246

I can’t beleive nobody mentioned “Don’t stand so close to me”, by the previously mentioned Police.

A teacher fooling around with his student…

Young teacher the subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her there’s longing
This girl’s an open page
Book marking - she’s so close now
This girl is half his age

Her friends are so jealous
You know how bad girls get
Sometimes it’s not so easy
To be the teacher’s pet
Temptation, frustration
So bad it makes him cry
Wet bus stop, she’s waiting
His car is warm and dry

Loose talk in the classroom
To hurt they try and try
Strong words in the staff room
The accusations fly
It’s no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by nabakov**

That book being Lolita , of course.

247

And then there’s always Aqualung …
a song about a pedophile hobo dying of pneumonia…

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My favorite ‘murder’ song is Garth Brooks - Papa Loved Mama

A story about a jealous husband’s revenge on a cheatin wife :slight_smile:
makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Papa drove a truck nearly all his life
You know it drove mama crazy being a trucker’s wife
The part she couldn’t handle was the being alone
I guess she needed more to hold than just a telephone
Papa called Mama each and every night
Just to ask her how she was and if us kids were alright
Mama would wait for that call to come in
When Daddy’d hang up she was gone again.

(chorus)
Mama was a looker
Lord, how she shined
Papa was a good’n
But the jealous kind
Papa loved Mama
Mama loved men
Mama’s in the graveyard
Papa’s in the pen.

Well, it was bound to happen and one night it did
Papa came home and it was just us kids
He had a dozen roses and a bottle of wine
If he was lookin’ to surprise us, he was doin’ fine
I heard him cry for Mama up and own the hall
Then I heard a bottle break against the bedroom wall
That old diesel engine made an eerie sound
When Papa fired it up and headed into town.

Well, the picture in the paper showed the scene real well
Papa’s rig was buried in the local motel
The desk clerk said he saw it all real clear
He never hit the brakes and he was shifting gears.

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Huh… I’ll be damn. I almost mentioned it but then backspaced over the second paragraph of my post. :smack: That’ll teach me.

From the link:

:eek: I did not know about that book. It all makes sense now. I wonder if that is also what Billy Joel refers to:

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The thing that gets me about this one is that I really think they didn’t do anything. That she fantasized about him, and he got a little too close, but he’s doing his best to resist temptation, which is on one hand, er, good, and on the other really damn creepy.

It seems to me the storyline is a little closer to:

Girl has crush on teacher
Girl tells classmates
Girl stays after school to study with teacher (teacher’s pet)
Girl perhaps starts doing the flirty coquetteish thing
Teacher tells himself no (This girl is half his age; it’s saying how old she is but also it seems like these would be the words going through his head…temptation, frustration, so bad it makes him cry sounds like he really isn’t acting on it)
Girl goes on flirting
Teacher does utterly boneheaded thing and picks her up from the school bus stop, presumably in front of all her friends, and gives her a ride home
This is where it gets fuzzy. Did he take her to HER home, wave goodbye, drive home, and take a cold shower…or did he take her somewhere else? I kind of think that he took her home, and I’m hoping this isn’t wishful thinking.
Girl gets teased in class about it by her friends (to hurt they try and try)
Teacher gets yelled at in staff room, girl gets brought in.

I haven’t read Lolita – I know the general idea, but I’m curious…does Humbert Humbert actually sleep with the girl? Is this obvious? Is it inferred, like it is in the song?

I remember the first time I really listened to the lyrics of that song…really ooged me out.

And of course, Smells Like Teen Spirit is just a freaky damn song. Especially when Tori Amos sings the slow, soft, kill yourself now version. :smiley:

And the Cardigans. Damn, I heard that song so many times in high school. I remember one time driving into town of an evening hearing that song and thinking “God, that’s sick…”

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Here’s a vote for Brooks and Dunn’s Rock My World, Little Country Girl. Oh, I hate this song SO much! It’s about a girl who “acts like Madonna, but she listens to Merle,” and “got an ‘A’ in math and never cracked a book.”

I always abbreviated the title and called the song Rock My World, Little Cnt*, because, IMO, that’s basically what the song means!

252

How about Nights on Broadway, by the Bee Gees? It’s sung from the POV of a guy who can’t accept the fact that his former girlfriend is not coming back, so he stalks her:

*Now in my place
There are so many others
Standin’ in the line
How long will they stand between us

Well, I had to follow you
Though you did not want me to
But that won’t stop my lovin’ you
I can’t stay away

Blamin’ it all on the nights on Broadway… *

253

A song from the 60’s
Cecilia
(he and his girlfriend in bed)
I go to the bathroom to wash my face
and when I come back someone’s taken my place

wow, that was quick!

Also Born a Woman
must go look it up on google

254

Born a Woman

It doesn’t matter if your rich or poor
or smart or dumb
a womans place in this world
is under some mans thumb
If your born a woman
youre born to be hurt
to be stepped on, lied to
and treated like dirt

(not the complete lyrics so Uke Ike won’t come get me)

255

That would be Cecilia by Simon & Garfunkel. It does have a happy ending, though. :slight_smile:

256

Another way to say it is “A dirty old man’s debauchery of his gum-popping, jailbait stepdaughter.”
Why is it that B & N won’t let ME write their reviews? :wink:

Yes he does. I don’t remember exactly how graphic the telling of the experience is, because I sold my copy long ago. It made me feel dirty, ya understand?

That’s a good point.

257

Randy Newman has a wonderful musical, called Randy Newman’s Faust, which is quite good and was staged once in CA and once in Chicago. The Chicago version was one of the best tellings of the Faust legend I’ve ever seen–the man knows his myths and the characters in the updated tale were well-drawn.

One song is ‘Sandman’s Coming’, a lullaby sung by Margaret to her baby–who she’s in jail for murdering:

Close your eyes now, little girl,
They don’t want to see you crying.
You never had a chance, you never had a chance.

In the musical, Amy Young let the bundle she was singing to fall, and it unrolled on the floor. It was an empty blanket.

There’s a rollicking fun song on Trouble in Paradise called “There’s a Party at my House” which is all fun and games until the last verse:

There’s a party at my house tonight
Everybody’s wound up nice and tight
They’ll be rockin’ and rollin’ till the mornin’ light
There’s a party at my house tonight…

Don’t forget to bring that little blonde-haired girl along
You know the one
Love to watch her jumpin’ up and down
Seem like her face gets all red and spotty
Like she’s been out too long in the sun

And that little blue vein right beneath her breast
Man, those nipples
Pink as a rosebud!
Hey, Bobby, get the rope
All right
There’s a party at my house tonight!

Yay, gang rape! You can bring the chips!

But Randy is also world-record-holder, I think, for the creepiest song EVER: In Germany Before the War:

A little girl has lost her way
With hair of gold and eyes of gray
Reflected in his glasses
As he watches her

Here’s Randy’s notes on the song from his GUILTY compilation:

And it’s the kind of song where the pauses and musical interludes are as creepy as the words, as your imagination fills in the blanks.

258

You mean a popular song that is about sex?! That’s shocking!

259

Well, that and the fact that Amy Fisher was dubbed the “Long Island Lolita” after she tried to bump off Joey Buttafuoco’s wife off by shooting her in the head. Ol’ Joey was throwing it in Amy, and she - if memory serves - wanted to stay with Joey.

That happened in 1992, and Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land was released in 1993. And Bill’s always had a way of working recent events into some of his songs. The obvious We Didn’t Start the Fire, but also in others.

260

The Wilco song “She’s a Jar” starts like this:

and ends with the same verse, except for the last line

Randy Newman has been mentioned numerous times in the thread, but nobody has commented on “Sail Away”, his song from the POV of a slave-ship captain: