Thank you so much for posting this. I have always disliked that song for the same reason, and when I mention this to others, they always give me a funny look. I’ve even specifically mentioned automaton and Stepford wife as possibilities, and can only wish I’d thought to add Maria to the list!
Brought to us by the band Three Days Grace, it gets a horrified giggle out of me every time I hear it.
I originally intended this thread to be about songs that were factually wrong, but I love the direction it’s taken with “scary-wrong” and other forms of wrongness, so go ahead and define “wrong” any way you like 
In the TMI category, there’s Hurts So Good. I didn’t really need to know that John Couger Melloncamp likes to get spanked. I wonder if he ever hooks up with Puddle of Mudd, who also feel the need to inform me of their affinity for erotic bondage (Dirty Cage)
The old traditional song Goodbye Old Paint bothers me:
Oh, when I die, take my saddle from the wall
Put it on my pony, lead him out of the stall
Tie my bones to his back, turn our faces to the west
We’ll ride the prarie we love the best
What, you want the horse to shlep your corpse around until, um, when? I mean, I don’t value a horse’s life over that of a human, but I do value it over a human’s corpse.
Burnadette by the Four Tops , which I think is meant to be perceived as just a passionate declaration of love, sounds to me like a paranoid rant by a drunk boyfriend beating on his girlfriend’s door. It’s psychotic.
Rock and Roll Heaven by The Righteous Brothers bugs the shit out of me because if there’s a Rock and Roll Heaven, none of the hacks who were involved with this farce are going to get in. There was a good song called Rock and Roll Heaven by the Flares, but sadly nobody plays that on the radio. Instead we get this placebo talking about the glory of rock. Fuck the Righteous Brothers, and fuck anybody who covers this garbage.
That was by Simon Cotter.
I am the egg man
I am the egg man
I am the walrus
Goo goo gajoob
Well, maybe you are the “egg man” but you ain’t no walrus.
On the VH1 show, Bands Reunited, when they were trying to reunite Extreme, they talked to Gary Sharone who said that the song lyrics are misunderstood. He claims (I forget exactly, but basicaly that) the song was about him and his then girlfriend and how she thought that he wasn’t doing enough to show that he loved her.
YES! I’ve allways thought that about that song. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
I stroke it to the East
And I stroke it to the West
And I stroke it to the woman
That I love best
I be strokin’
T. M. fuckin’ I.
Well, as long as we’re on the subject of older musicians liking girls who are too young for them, there’s always the entire Tears For Fears song “Call Me Mellow”. Sample lyric:
*If only I was half my age and she was older
we’d live on ice cream
on Coney Island
And though it’s gravity that drags down my balloon
she stays in orbit
way after midnight
Whoa, slip and slide…did she go all dewey-eyed?*
The funny thing about this song is that Roland Orzabal (the lead singer) is 43. “If only he was half his age”, he’d be 21 1/2. And the girl would still need to be older?! Just how young are we talkin’ here, Roland? 
Another entry in the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Paedophilia: Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl, by The Yardbirds
Good morning little schoolgirl
Good morning little schoolgirl
Can I go home with you?
Oh, won’t you let me go home with you?
So I can hug hug, squeeze squeeze
If you let me I can tease you, baby.
Like the man said, just like the old man in the book by Nabokov.
Oh yeah, and Thank Heaven For Little Girls by Maurice Chevalier. And thank hell for lecherous old Frenchmen.
That’s a cover of a traditional blues song. I think Willie Dixon is the original author. Anyway, how dirty the song really is seems to depend on which version you look at. Blues lyrics have a habit of changing dramatically when different people do them. The versions of this one that I’m used to make it clear it’s about a younger woman, but not THAT young.
“When you walk through a storm
hold your head up high,
and don’t be afrai–”
FLASH!!! CRACKLE!!! BOOOM!!!
'65 Love Affair
Okay, so you, like, had an affair with this chick in 1965, and now you want to hook up with her again, but she rejected you because…uh…she’s weirded out by the stuff you did with her then. Which was okay in 1965, but not now. Three words, buddy…NOT WORTH IT. C’mon, you can do better than this pathetic ditz!
We Built This City
Aside from the obvious issue of what the freak this song is about, I have to ask…San Francisco was built on rock 'n roll?? For crying out loud, at least go with something remotely plasuible! “Memphis” ring a bell?
Africa
This has about as much to do with Africa as Strikers 1945 has to do with World War 2. My guess is the songwriter was really hard pressed for a workable three-syllable word and eventually just flipped through the dictionary.
All Star
See Africa. I can’t believe the NBA actually used this to promote an all-star game. This is eseentially a somewhat slower One Week.
YMCA
Through the roughly 500 billion times I’ve heard this song played, I’ve always wondered…has hooking up with gay guys at the local YMCA ever been common practice, let alone now?
Almost Paradise
Ah… 1) Is almost paradise really a good thing? 2) What the frag does that mean, anyway?
Moonlight Shadow
Uh…no, he was not carried away by a moonlight shadow. He was frickin’ MURDERED. Also, there’s a difference between a natural expression of grief and obsessing endlessly over a dead person. Also, this song just plain creeps me out, and there must’ve been at least ten better ways a song titled “Moonlight Shadow” could’ve gone, you insane sicko violence-obsessed songwriter.
Agree with Ironic, but that one’s been beaten into the ground, so I won’t comment. I kinda feel sorry for her.
El Paso, of course, doesn’t hold up too well to scrutiny.
Let’s see, he’s got a crush on this chick who won’t give him the time of day (Check. that happens all the time). He calls out and kills the cowboy that she does love ( :eek: ). He hides out in New Mexico for a while, then gets lonesome for the girl whose boyfriend he killed (I gotta file that one under “Things that are just too freakin’ bad”).
So he goes back to the scene of the crime, and there’s a posse waiting to gun him down like the murdering son of a bitch he is (Hmmm, I wonder how they knew he was coming back). The posse mortally wounds him, and up runs Felina to give him a big smooch as he draws his final breath (Hey, you don’t suppose Felina somehow got word that he was back in town and told the posse herself?).
And we’re getting this story as he’s dying? This song represents his last words? Man. Last words really are overrated.
Come on everybody we got quiltin’ to do…
:eek:
The 4 Season’s “Oh, What A Night” has some really disturbing lyrics:
You know, I didn’t even know her name.
As I recall it ended much too soon.
Losing your viriginity to an anonymous person (a prostitute?) and suffering from premature ejaculation. What a subject such upbeat music.
*I shot the sherif
But I did not shoot no deputy *
Well, the deputy is dead. If you didn’t shoot him, who did?
*All around in my hometown
They’re tryin’ to track me down, yeah
They say they want to bring me in guilty
For the killing of a deputy, for the life of a deputy *
Strange that they should only want you for killing the deputy, but not the sherif.
*Sheriff John Brown always hated me
For what I don’t know
Ev’ry time I plant a seed
He said, “Kill it before it grows.” *
Plant a seed? WTF is that about?
A somewhat strange song.
Not when the song is really about her, or maybe both of them. It’s certainly not just about him.
Try seed = sperm.