I felt like this was recently done, so I did some due diligence searching the SDMB. I found " Pop Culture Stuff Everyone Seems to Misunderstand" from last year, which includes some songs among a whole lot more stuff. But I think there are enough misunderstood songs to merit their own category…
Anyway, I heard a snippet of " The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" just recently somewhere, maybe on a commercial, and it’s been stuck in my brain this morning. This song has been used in many teen-comedy style movies, and everyone thinks it’s this happy, optimistic song, but I remember hearing somewhere that the guy from Timbuk3 who wrote the song actually meant it as a sarcastic, grim prediction of nuclear holocaust. The only line in the song that offers any clue of that though, is the first line “I’m studying nuclear science…”.
Then there’s Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” famously used by the Reagan campaign as a ‘rah-rah patriotic’ song, but is clearly not if you pay any attention to the lyrics in the verses.
And of course, “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, a favorite of many weddings, but is actually a song about a creepy stalker. Romantic!
I believe that Ronald Reagans campaign used John Cougar Mellencamp’ s Little Pink Houses in their campaign rally’s, not realizing that the song was about how dysfunctional the American Dream had become.
'Cause the simple man, baby
Pays for thrills
The bills the pills that kill
Another good misunderstood song example. Reminds me of an article I read once, an interview with Mellencamp, I think in Rolling Stone magazine.
The article started out describing the setting-- Mellencamp had his buddy with him, and they were busting each other’s chops, arguing about the line in LPH “I remember when you could stop a clock”. His buddy said, “you got that wrong, John, that expression means she’s so ugly she breaks the clock!” Mellencamp maintained “no, it means she used to be so beautiful she was clock-stopping!”
His buddy was right, though. An example of an artist misunderstanding his own lyrics!
According to Madonna, the intent of “Material Girl” was to satirize the materialism of the 1980s. But with satire there is always a risk that people will take it literally, and most people who heard the song took it to be Madonna literally singing about her love of material possessions.
Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash” is about a peeping tom, but people seem to like it as a love song.
“I watch you there through the window and I stare at you. You wear nothing but you wear it so well.”
Also, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” seems to be popular with churches (cite: I’ve been to a church service that used it) but it’s not really a church song. Yeah there’s religious imagery but there’s also sexual imagery. And Leonard Cohen is Jewish.
Along those same lines, I’ve been to my grandparents’ Mennonite church when they sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Also misses the mark, considering the “Imagine no religion” part.
Which brings to mind the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for your Right to Party” which was, I understand, supposed to be a satirical takedown of frat-boy style party culture, and became a frat-boy party anthem.
The song The Lady is a Tramp. Mainly heard out of context as it was not in the film Babes in Arms. But if you listen to the Broadway album it makes sense. The lady is a drifter on the road who does not move in high society thus she is mocking upper class attitudes.
The second verse of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” is about the song’s protagonist, presumably the band, visiting a strip club in Texas, and the performers may well have been prostitutes, depending on how one interprets the lines.
I don’t know that this is “misunderstood” so much as “overlooked.” I’ve heard this song in a lot of movies, but I noticed when they used it in the trailer for one of the Cars movies, second verse included.
I’ve heard that for a long time, but they really shouldn’t have made THAT video if this was their intent. Later Beastie Boys were much smarter…
ETA: and for completeness, one of the widely misunderstood songs that always come up in these threads: “The One I Love” by R.E.M., one of the best anti-love songs ever, but often taken for a proper love song. I don’t know how that happens though, with lines like “a simple prop to occupy my time” and “another prop to occupy my time”.
I feel similarly about Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.” I don’t know how widespread the perception is, but I know I’ve heard at least one DJ on an oldies station call it “one of the most beautiful love songs of all time.”
And it’s so not a love song. At least not a positive one, with lyrics like “if she’s bad, he can’t see it,” “he’d give up all his comforts and sleep out in the rain,” and “if she’s playing him for a fool, he’s the last one to know.” The message is basically that when a man loves a woman, bad things happen to him.
How anyone can consider it a love song is beyond me, but it seems that at least some people do.
Chalk me up to one of those who misunderstood the lyrics for a long time. In my defense, the first two lines before the line “A simple prop…” or “Another prop…” are:
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I’ve left behind
So I interpreted it as, the singer left someone he now realizes really loved, and subsequent relationships are a ‘simple prop’ compared to what he lost. But Stipe backs up the anti-love interpretation.
The song advocates Christ-like values: feeding the hungry, living for today, universal comity. While criticizing those who use religion to push their agendas: literalists, nationalists, warmongers, the wealthy. It’s a great way troll right-wing Christian nationalists; unfortunately a lot of people think that that version of Christianity is the only one.
I always heard that as stop a block, as in stopping traffic. Just listened again and it still sounds like block, but ‘clock’ is the official lyric. Weird, but this is a singer who made ‘sport’ sound like ‘smoke’ too, so maybe he’s just a mumbler.
I always heard it as ‘stop a clock’, but I also always heard the ‘Cherry Bomb’ lyrics as ‘That’s when a smoke was a smoke’. I don’t know if it’s because of a mumbly pronunciation on Mellencamp’s part, or it just sounds like a phrase from an old cigarette ad or something. It’s news to me that the word is ‘sport’, but it checks out. Ya learn something new every day…
