Songs that on the surface sound one way, but are actually not

Cafe Society
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Of course we all know that Born in the USA- often thought as a paean to American patriotism is anything but.

But I was listening to Crow’s song “All I Wanna do” with the great chorus of 'Cause all I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one…"

But if you listen closely or read the lyrics, the idea of “fun” is getting buzzed on beer early in the morning and peeling the labels from beer bottles. wow.

I mean, I guess that could be “fun” if we use Mark Twain’s “Fun? yes, but of a mild sort.”.

I am sure that are more so SDMBers?

(PS, i didnt put the “beer” tag on this, where did that come from?)

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Auto-tagging is a feature of Discourse. Which the Mods have enabled for some tags. Use the word “beer”? Get the beer tag. Use the word “trump”? Get the trump tag. etc. As OP you can edit those if you notice soon enough. Otherwise ask a mod to fix it.


My actual contribution to the thread …
Lotta “romantic” songs of the 1970s are actually creepy stalker cringe. Limit case being this one-hit wonder:

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I see where you get that, but it is not as clear cut as the two examples I gave.

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He’s ~35, creepy-looking, been drinking, she’s 16 and pretty chaste-looking and he wants to take her out and show her “a love like you’ve never seen” and that’s not clear cut?

I’m no prude; I was in the sex biz. But that was pedophile stalker central. In fact he wrote it at age ~35 inspired by a 16yo neighbor kid. That was #11 of the Top 40 in 1980.

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Sure, but the lyrics dont show that. The artist is that old, but how old is the protagonist?

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Queen’s, “‘39,” seems to be a folky-type tune about a sailing expedition (maybe, 200-300 years ago?) but it’s really space exploration and FTL travel that bites the protagonist in the ass.

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Always struck me as a little amusing that Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” is treated like a party song when it’s the increasingly depressing account of some dude’s alcoholism.

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That is a good one. But he is finally admitting the break up was his fault, so maybe…

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“Hey Ya” by Outkast is a commonly cited example of this.

The song has a catchy beat and a bouncing video. But the actual lyrics are about how relationships never last and breakups are inevitable.

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Technical note: not FTL travel, but sublight travel at a high enough speed that the crew experiences the effects of special relativity, and ages far more slowly than the people whom they had left behind on Earth.

Brian May, who wrote and sang lead on the song, is an astrophysicist as well as guitarist. :slight_smile:

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“One Tin Soldier” sounds kind of like a generic folk song suitable for kids to sing (we sang it in grade school music class, for instance), but the lyrics say that you might as well lie, cheat and murder because there’s no god to punish you.

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R.E.M.'S “The One I Love” sounds like a love song from the title, but the line “a simple prop to occupy my time” makes it clear that it’s clearly not, but a song about emotional abuse. I heard that people pick it as a wedding song…

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‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police is another classic. Love song? Nope… it’s a stalker’s warning.

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Cool Video tho.

Right.

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Some people who don’t listen to the lyrics carefully think that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a religious song.

The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black sounds like a rollicking raga rock dance tune, while the lyrics are about soul-crushing grief and depression.

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Same thing with Pearl Jam’s Better Man, a song about an abusive partner. Some people really don’t listen to lyrics.

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The Kink’s Lola. Double entendre about physically falling in love with a transvestite or transexual, but one needs to listen closely to the lyrics to figure that out.