“Bitches Ain’t Shit” by Dr Dre. Yeah, I know.
One of the most hilarious moments of my high school career was when I went to a junior dance and the DJ played “Excitable Boy”. It was boppity, no-one listened to the lyrics, no-one commented on the song choice …
I would feel free, if I cared what Blunt said about his song. Songs mean what they mean to the listener. And I’d bet a very small % of listeners think the ‘You’re Beautiful’ protagonist is a dick based on the song itself.
How do we even know Blunt was serious and not just trying to (re-)generate buzz?
The guy who has been maybe most infamous for ‘explaining’ his songs might be Peter Townshend. It got to be in almost real time for every song. Sometimes a song is ambiguous and people are idly curious what the idea was, me too sometimes. But songs generally shouldn’t need and often don’t benefit from explanations by their writers IMO.
While I don’t agree that “songs mean what they mean to the listener”, I’d say in this case Mr. Blunt is full of shit. I’d almost bet that I read a different quote from him about this song, and IIRC he did say he was fucked up but I don’t remember the bit about him being a jerk and macking on some chick in front of her boyfriend. I could swear he admitted it’s a song about unrequited love. In any case, there is no way he could reasonably expect a listener to get from the song what he claims in the link.
“Demolition Man” by the Police also has a nasty piece of work as a protagonist.
“Down by the River” – Neil Young
“Hey Joe” – the Seeds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and others
“You May Be Right” – Billy Joel
The subject of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” has been discussed on these boards several times. When I first heard it, it reminded me of a famed scene in Citizen Kane, in which an old man remembers seeing a pretty girl on the ferry for just a few seconds, fifty years earlier. He never talked to her, never got to know her, never saw her again… but he still thinks of her regularly.
I KNOW how weird and silly this sounds, but at various points in my youth, I HAVE seen a pretty woman on a subway car, in a bank, in an airport, wherever, then fantasized about meeting her, dating her, marrying her, living happily ever after… and then watched her leave, and laughed to myself about the elaborate dream I concocted about a complete stranger in just a few seconds!
In one of the other posts, someone provided a link showing that James Blunt had explained the song as a true story of encountering an ex-love briefly on the London Underground, reliving their relationship for a second or two, then letting her go without saying a word. That seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation. So does the explanation linked here saying the song is about a nut who’s fixated on a beautiful stranger. But BOTH those explanations can’t be true! So… maybe Blunt has told contradictory stories about the song’s meaning, or maybe one of the cites was invalid.
Now that it’s unclear what Blunt “really” meant, I’ll go back to my interpretation. It suits me, even if it’s NOT what Blunt intended.
Like I said, he’s a dick.
“Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms.
Guy needs a place to crash, asks his ex if he can crash at her place. Tries to bootstrap that into a fuck for old times’ sake, and then into rekindling their relationship. You can almost hear her responses:
Guy: “You know it might not be that bad, you were the best I’d ever had.”
Ex: “Trust me, that doesn’t go both ways, I’ve had lots of guys better than you.”
Guy: “Tomorrow we can drive around this town, and let the cops chase us around.”
Ex: “Tomorrow, I’m getting up and going to work, just like any other day. That’s why I have a place of my own. I leave at 8am, so you’re out of here by 7:30 or I call the cops. And you’re sleeping on the couch, and the knob on my bedroom door had better not turn during the night either.”
I still can’t believe this song occasionally gets airplay even now. I’d like to have forgotten its existence years ago.
“In the darkness by the riverbed, they waited on the ground for one more member who had business back in town” but we never find out what happened to the Jack of Hearts. Rosemary, who had been “lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died,” put that penknife through Big Jim’s back, but was it before or after Big Jim ventilated the Jack of Hearts with that Colt revolver?
Yeah, I’ve listened to that song a time or two over the past 43 years. 
The end of the quote attributed to Blunt “It’s about a guy who’s high as a f*cking kite on drugs in the subway stalking someone else’s girlfriend when that guy is there in front of him, and he should be locked up or put in prison for being some kind of perv.” sounds to me like Blunt was speaking at least partly tongue in cheek or outright joking, or high on drugs during the interview for all I know. Somebody belongs in jail because of a romantic fantasy about a stranger who is ‘taken’? That sounds ridiculous, to me.
And I’d stick with basically a song means what it means to a listener. Some people have weird takes on things, others are free to think other people’s takes are out to lunch. I just don’t think the artist has any special right to impose his or her interpretation of their work. Once it goes out the door, it belongs to the listener, in that artistic sense, IMO. Of course subject to extreme exceptions like anything else (how about if I say the song is rallying me to Nazi-ism and the writer swears it has nothing to do with that, etc).
I like these “dick” songs more than the typical songs that are just mindless recitations of loving sentiment towards the subject of the song…because they’re a more honest reflection of the realities of life!
“I Bet My Life” by Imagine Dragons:
*
Now remember when I told you that’s the last you’ll see of me
Remember when I broke you down to tears
I know I took the path that you would never want for me
I gave you hell through all the years*
But now he wants her to forgive him and take him back.
I wouldn’t want to do it with another man either, but not so badly that I’d rather kill someone else instead.
Yeah, I know what he meant, but it’s not what he said. 
Wins the thread. I hated that song, and thank goodness I haven’t heard the damn thing since 1993 or whenever it was on the charts. Unlike “Hey Jealousy,” I had been able to forget that that song existed.
I think it depends on the song. With some of them it’s just normal human fallibility (e.g. Mamas and Papas’ “I Saw Her Again”), with others, it’s genuine depravity (e.g. GnR’s “I Used To Love Her”).
I disagree with you that that one wins the thread. I submit “One In a Million,” also by Guns and Roses. NSFW:
God yes, this song, in addition to being terrible musically, makes me want to punch the protag.
I love the Gin Blossoms and Hey Jealousy is actually my first song with my husband (basically an in-joke starting when we were 19.) But that album New Miserable Experience is about the regret and shame induced by alcoholism. So in Hey Jealousy he’s showing up wasted, saying he regrets leaving her behind and indulging in the fantasy of them being together again. It’s pretty pathetic, but I think, intentionally so. The singer later committed suicide.
So many things qualify, but in the interest of diversity, I’ve got
Aerosmith’s Rag Doll
(not that this is even the most misogynistic song they have, but the protagonist knowing the woman he is using is suffering makes it particularly egregious… that album, Permanent Vacation has some of their best songs musically, but they are pretty much all awful thematically.)
Then there’s Destiny’s Child and ‘‘Confessions’’ … um, to summarize.
‘‘Hi honey, I thought you should know, that last time we got in a fight I invited your friend over and fucked him, and, um, this other time, I stole your credit card, charged a vacation on it without your knowledge and during the vacation pretended to be single and fucked this other guy… but it’s cool, I’m totally doing the right thing and telling you.’’ And then the refrain is essentially, ''I mean, I was mad, what did you expect me to do?"
The thing that bothers me about ‘‘Confessions’’ is there doesn’t seem to be a hint of self-awareness and in the context of the album I think it’s meant to be taken seriously.
Nitpick:
Regarding “Hey Jealousy,” the author was the band’s lead guitarist, Doug Hopkins, not the lead singer, Robin Wilson.
But you’re right that Hopkins killed himself.
Thanks! I think New Miserable Experience is a tragic masterpiece.
You have to feel bad for Doug Hopkins. Fired from the band he helped found, having addiction issues, and the band gets popular from songs that he wrote.
Thought of another.
Sweet F. A. by Sweet:
Well it’s Friday night and I need a fight
If she don’t spread I’m gonna bust her head
Even as a teenager it made me WTF.
mmm
Hell, whoever sings “Scarborough Fair,” meaning it, is an abusive, manipulative son of a cucumber.