Another masturbation song–“Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello.
Well, it depends on your relationship. I tend to giggle when I hear that it’s someone’s song…
as I hear Fields of Gold - Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl and they were in love. He left. He’s back, and he’s watching her and the guy she married’s children play in fields of gold that remind him of when the two of them were in love.
If memory serves, quite a few of early U2 songs are actually about heroin, specificly poor broken-sprited housewives in Irish slums who become junkies out of misery. (This, of course, was when U2 was concerned about having a message, rather than being ironic pop commentators.) The ones that come to mind most readily are “Bad” and “Running to Stand Still.” (I no longer have any U2 albums due to a roommate with sticky fingers, so I can’t think of more off the top of my head.)
Re: Clapton song about having an affair. Are you maybe thinking of “Layla” which was about his affair with George Harrison’s (then) wife?
“Sexuality” by Billy Bragg: “Safe sex doesn’t mean no sex, it just means use your imagination”.
“When I Need You” by Leo Sayers is apparently about masturbation, also.
The singer is far away but he tells his girlfriend to ‘hold out and do like I do.’
"When I need you
I just close my eyes and I’m with you
And all that I so want to give you
Is only a heartbeat away…’
(not to mention, all over the sheets)
“When I need love
I hold out my hand and I touch love…”
**Leo, ease up!**no, no, no, NO!!! Norwegian Wood is not about sleeping with the girl. It is not about being led on. It is about being in a really uncomfortable situation where the girl is trying to seduce the singer and he wants to get away because he doesn’t like her. She tells him to sit anywhere, knowing that the only place to sit is the bed, sneaky little vixen. He stalled her as long as he could, “biding my time, drinking her wine,” until she forced the situation by suggesting they go to bed. Instead of sleeping with her, he crawls off to sleep in the tub. The next day, this royally sucky girl is dumb enough to leave him alone in the house, which he burns down.
I have heard that “Norwegian Wood” refers to a type of Scandanavian furniture that was popular (though briefly) at the time, but then it wouldn’t make sense that there was no place to sit…wait, but couldn’t it be desks and cabinets and tables and stuff, just no chairs?
Pool Shark (Sublime) is definitely about heroin…“tying on the dinosaur used to be so cool, but now I’ve got the needle and I can’t shake it.”
The song that started this whole thread is so great because Reed made it sound really cheesy and overblown to drive home the sarcasm. He spent a whole day high on heroin, with which every addict (at least the ones who write songs about it) has a love hate relationship. He didn’t enjoy his day at all.
Masturbation? “He’s my best friend” by Jellyfish. Great gags all through the song about the guys cock.
“My hand’s a five-leaf clover
It’s Palm Sunday over and over”
and
“You don’t need a brain to have a stroke of genius
Or a beautiful girl to let down your curls”
Maybe this one is played out, but Elvis Costello’s “Allison” is about a guy murdering his girlfriend, though a lot of folks seem to think it is a love song.
Although it’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer, my favorite song about masturbation has got to be “Orgasm Addict” by Buzzcocks. Now if only I could get back my copy of “Singles Going Steady” that I loaned to a friend…
I doubt any authenticity to the claim, but I’ve heard more than once that Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” was about anal sex. After reading the lyrics, I can see how some people might make the leap in logic, but I haven’t found any sites verifying this.
I never took this song as being about drugs either. As anyone familiar with Dylan’s lyrics knows, they are often quite enigmatic and open to many interpretations, and especially in the sixties, not often literal. Thus, if Dylan were going to write a song about getting stoned, surely he would not mention the very act thoroughout the song, would he?
Then again, Dylan, being the crafty songwriter that he was at that time, was certainly aware of the public’s facination with his lyrics, and may actually have been singing about drugs, but hoping to avoid the stigma created by such a song by using the method suggesting above.
Any thoughts?
Remember that extremely annoying ‘Mambo # 5’ song that was incredibly popular about a year ago but fortunately hasn’t been heard recently? Well, anyway, I interpreted that as a song about being a cannibal. but that just might be because I hated it.
“Trout” by Neneh Cherry and Michael Stipe. It’s pretty transparent though, except for the title.
-fh
Someone didn’t hate that?
This is such a great topic!
I think what happens is that the song sounds good musically, and you know how it’s easy to not hear all the words to a song, so I can understand why people might pick a certain song for a wedding. Maybe everyone at the wedding will be so absorbed in the goings-on that they won’t really pay attention to the lyrics.
My fading memory tells me that at the time this song came out, it was said that the title had something to do with joints…but I forget the exact connection, and don’t know if this was for real or just someone’s speculation.
Thanks- I napstered both those songs and you’re right!! occasionally someone DOES write about something other than drugs or masturbation. I thought I’d found the only song-hehe!
I don’t see it.
He’s biding his time hoping if he puts up with her blathering on till two in the morning, she’ll sleep with him. Then when she finally proposes bed, she add she “works in the morning” i.e., she really better be getting to sleep now.
If he didn’t want to be there (and didn’t want to sleep with her), what?, he couldn’t come up with an excuse to leave before 2AM? That’s way beyond polite. Biding ones time usually implies one is waiting for something. And why else does she mention having to get up early? Not to mention, he’s so mad at her that he burns her house down because she WANTS to sleep with him? Oh yeah, people who find me attractive just make me so mad…
“…that sneaky little vixen”? Got issues with sexually agressive women, Kyomara 
?
So why would he light the house on fire? I always thought it meant he lit a joint. It’s already established that he’s not working that day, so why not?
Well Sarah McLachlan’s Angel is easy enough to mistake for a love song. It doesn’t come out and say it’s about drugs and dying (the guy overdoses according to the info I heard… that’s why he’s “in the arms of the angel”) It can easily be mistaken for a love song. Probably didn’t help it was on a soundtrack full of love songs…
Maybe someone can help me out with the band’s name which I can’t remember, but there was a catchy little tune about ten years ago called “Wild Wild West,” which had a line going something like “Gimme love, gimme (this), gimme (that), gimme gimme safe sex…”
I recall another line in the song going “Living in the 80s, heading for the 90s.”
Sir
That theory has been proposed. But is sounds to me like he burned her house down. “So I lit a fire. Isn’t it good? Norwegian wood.” That is, the same stuff her apartment/furniture was made out of.
Why? Well, sexual fustration can do funny things to a person (hell, right now I’m thinking of burning my own house down just for kicks). But one of the reasons I think the song “really” ends that way is what I know of John Lennon’s perverse sense of humour.
Oh and Ginkgo, just because I love that song so much myself (if we could only figure out it’s hidden message…) I must point out that “Orgasm Addict” is not (only) about masturbation, but compulsive sex of all kinds (“you’re making out with school kids, winos and heads of state…”)