Songs you didn't "get" as a kid

[Simmerdown]

@Ellen_Cherry

I just thought of another Fleetwood Mac song I didn’t understand: Rhiannon. As a 12-year-old in 1976 rural Kentucky where everyone was named Lisa, I had never heard the name Rhiannon and wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me it was a name. Anyway, I thought they were singing —

*Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win? Will you ever win?

Will ya evvvvvvvvvaaaaaaah?
Wi’ ya evvvvvvvvvvvahhhhhhh-uhhhhhhh?
Will ya evvvvvvvvvaaaaaaah?
Wi’ ya evvvvvvvvvvvahhhhhhh-uhhhhhhh?*

Man, it was decades before I found out it wasn’t Will ya evvvvvaaaaah?

Also, Brass in Pocket by the Pretenders had the lines:

Don Pardo, I’m gonna use it, and Been drivin’, Dieter leanin’. (You mean, this Dieter?)
(Actually got bottle, and* Detroit leanin’* – which still doesn’t really make sense to me)

And also from Elton’s Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting: We’d get our bodies oiled as a diesel train…

[Meyer6]

As a kid I was always a bit disturbed by Elanor Rigby when she’s “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” - I pictured a disembodied face floating in a jar on a shelf by the doorway. Ewww.

My dad listened to Eric Clapton a lot when I was a kid, and I thought

@Eric Clapton

She don’t lie
she don’t lie
she don’t lie
cocaine

was

It’s alright
it’s alright
it’s alright
it’s okay

which I would sing occasionally with great gusto. Needless to say my dad never corrected this one.

[Freudian_Slit]

Meyer6, I thought that, too. In fact I know at one point I would hear people talking about the Clapton song Cocaine and not know which one it is. Then I found out that I’d known it the whole time, but I just didn’t know it was called Cocaine or what he was really singing.

[Nobody]

@Musicat

You mean it’s not about an ice cream cone on a hot day? That’s what my parents told me.

Your parents lied to you? :eek: You go and give them a piece of your mind! :mad:

@Khadaji

She *is *kinda creepy looking, but the view of her is too small to really determine much. Close up.

Upon closer inspection she clearly is a witch. We need to find her and burn her.

@Quercus_alba

Here’s one that Lawrence Welk apparently “didn’t get”. (If you watch it to the end–and I’d hardly blame you if you didn’t!–he refers to it as a “modern spiritual”…well, I suppose…)

Damn, that is hilarious. Thanks for the laughs.

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@Nobody

ZZ Top song “Tush”

Even into adulthood, I thought the line

I said lord take me downtown, I’m just looking for some tush.

was

I said lord take me downtown, I’m just looking for some touch.

Tush is an archaic English word for a boar; I thought the song was about boar-hunting in Texas.

Feel free to mock.

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@Mr.Kobayashi

The aforementioned Papa Was a Rolling Stone and Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone I thought were about the band The Rolling Stones. In my mind it made sense…

If it makes you feel any better, Kris Kristofferson’s Blame It On The Rolling Stones is referencing the band.

[crypto]

@ShibbOleth

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It’s about how his lady friend has feet that are always cold. That’s it. I love the part of the song where he describes her body as South America. Best use of Tierra del Fuego in a song, ever.

ok, apparently, I didn’t get this song as an adult, either. :smack:

[Nobody]

@Slow_Moving_Vehicle

Tush is an archaic English word for a boar; I thought the song was about boar-hunting in Texas.

Feel free to mock.

Nah, I’m misheard lyrics far worse than than that. In “Danger Zone” sung by Kenny Loggins, they way he says

Highway to the danger zone

The way he pronounced danger zone, I thought he was saying

Highway to the 90th hour

Now that’s mock-worthy.

[Indyellen]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

Can’t make a decent margarita without salt.

Well, I know that NOW. When I was 10, though, it didn’t make much sense. Dad was a gin & tonic man at that time.

[VarlosZ]

Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Until I was maybe 15 I thought that the whole baseball announcer interlude in the middle of the song was just an exercise in randomness.

[Polycarp]

Would someone alert Lord Mondegreen that his lady wife is needed for cleanup in aisle four?

[Ellen_Cherry]

snicker

Speaking of Margaritaville, it always perplexed me why he’d sing about stepping on a Pop-Tart.

[Electric_Warrior]

@Meyer6

As a kid I was always a bit disturbed by Elanor Rigby when she’s “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” - I pictured a disembodied face floating in a jar on a shelf by the doorway. Ewww.

Oh my god.

The jar is A MAKEUP JAR.

I always just thought it was some kind of bizarre metaphor. No, they meant AN ACTUAL JAR.

:smack:

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Indyellen

Well, I know that NOW. When I was 10, though, it didn’t make much sense. Dad was a gin & tonic man at that time.

:smack:

[billfish678]

“Nights in white satin… never reaching the end…laaa laaa laaaaaa”

From which song by who?

As a kid, I always pictured something like fancy knights dressed up like klu klux klans men on galloping horse back heading to some never ending quest in a far away land.

Only years later did I realize it was a viagra commercial so to speak.

[Nobody]

@billfish678

“Nights in white satin… never reaching the end…laaa laaa laaaaaa”

From which song by who?

Moody Blues.

[snowmaster]

@VarlosZ

Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Until I was maybe 15 I thought that the whole baseball announcer interlude in the middle of the song was just an exercise in randomness.

The way I hear it, Phil Rizzuto had no idea they wanted his signature voice to be used in such a double entendre way and was pretty pissed about it.

[Infovore]

@billfish678

“Nights in white satin… never reaching the end…laaa laaa laaaaaa”

From which song by who?

As a kid, I always pictured something like fancy knights dressed up like klu klux klans men on galloping horse back heading to some never ending quest in a far away land.

Only years later did I realize it was a viagra commercial so to speak.

My mother used to tease me about that song (I like it, she doesn’t): whenever it came on, she’d chuckle about all those gay knights, running around dressed in white satin.

[HelloKitty]

@KennerTheGreat

It took me a while to realize that the woman with whom Rupert Holmes arranged a secret rendez-vous in “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” was his own wife.

It also took me awhile to realize that not only was the singer looking for someone new in the classifieds, so was his wife!! That’s how she knew to show up at the romantic location of O’Malley’s bar.

Also, regarding Afternoon Delight…my middle school brain also thought it was literally about fireworks in the afternoon. So why did we think fireworks would be so great to watch in the middle of a sunny day??? :dubious:

[overlyverbose]

I think I must have been the only adult to take so long to register the lyrics to Greased Lightning in the movie Grease. I’m talking about the bolded part:

Go grease lightning you’re burning up the quarter mile
(Grease lightning go grease lightning)
Go grease lightning you’re coasting through the heat lap trial
You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream for grease lightning
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go

Purple french tail lights and thirty inch fins
oh yeah
A Palomino dashboard and duel muffler twins
oh yeah
**With new pistons, plugs, and shocks I can get off my rocks
You know that I ain’t bragging she’s a real **** wagon **
Grease lightning

I watched Grease for the first time in middle school, watched it severa times in high school and it was only when I was 25 and watching it again with a friend who’d never seen it that I said, “Wait, what?! How did I miss that?”