# Songs you finally understand
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 28, 2012, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362 "2012-05-28T18:52:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/21 "2012-06-01T12:43:50Z")
\*\*Closing Time by Semisonic \*\*- everybody: “I know whoooo I want to take me home!!!”
Ahem - sorry.
Really about the singer (who wrote the song) waiting on the birth of his child. [Really](http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=6607)(link to Songfacts - but there is a youtube clip out there of Dan Wilson playing a solo acoustic version and explaining it, too - I linked to Song Facts so you wouldn’t have to wade through a full video).
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/22 "2012-06-01T12:55:57Z")
> [@Ponch8](#):
>
> I didn’t know that Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants” (“all that she wants…is another baby…she’s gone tomorrow, boy”) was about her actually wanting to have a baby. My opinion of “her” dropped by a mile when I found out.
Is it? It doesn’t really sound like it is from the lyrics…
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### Author:  [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/23 "2012-06-01T13:23:11Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#):
>
> I could never reconcile why a VAIN person would ever think a song bashing them was about them, so why would she say “you probably think this song is about you, don’t you?” A vain person isn’t going to believe a song saying bad things about someone is about them.
>
> Then one day it hit me. The song is about HER. Yes, she talks about all the wrong stuff he did, blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, she’s singing about her thoughts, feelings and emotions, and the guy probably isn’t getting ANY of that. He’s just hearing the song being about him.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding. Are you saying that:
1. The vain guy wouldn’t think the song is about him because it’s not flattering, and…
2. The vain guy thinks the song is about him even though it’s really about Carly…?
Aren’t those two notions contradictory? And if someone flew their Learjet a long way to watch a solar eclipse, that person will understand that the song is about them even if it isn’t totally flattering. (Which, BTW, sounds like something Warren Beatty would do, but not Mick Jagger.)
Well, even if I misunderstood your point I don’t think Carly is the main subject of the song. I think Ms. Simon came up with an overly clever line, (“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you”) and wrote a song to go with it.
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### Author:  [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/24 "2012-06-01T14:54:12Z")
“Where oh where could my baby be…” stuck in my head one night while walking my dog. Listened to the entire song later and realized that it’s about a horrific fatal car accident.
I thought “She Bop” was about a girl who liked dancing until my roommate told me otherwise when I was like 26. 😛
Likewise with “Dancing with Myself” - I thought it was about a guy who liked to go out dancing even if his friends didn’t.
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### Author:  [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/25 "2012-06-01T16:05:42Z")
> [@Soylent\_Juicy](#):
>
> I thought “She Bop” was about a girl who liked dancing until my roommate told me otherwise when I was like 26. 😛
>
> Likewise with “Dancing with Myself” - I thought it was about a guy who liked to go out dancing even if his friends didn’t.
I had the same revelation about “Turning Japanese” when I got old enough to know better.
There is an obscure **Barenaked Ladies** song called “You Will Be Waiting” that sounds like it’s about a relationship between a man and a woman… pretty typical stuff… I didn’t learn until many years later that it’s actually about the relationship between Canada and Quebec.
_You say you cannot live with me, you need your own identity
And now we air our laundry on national TV
And so you hate my arrogance, my smothering and sitting on the fence,
But I’m afraid of the hard permanence of letting you go free_
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/26 "2012-06-01T16:44:37Z")
Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a **ZZ Top** song that _wasn’t_ about a debauched sex act.
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### Author:  [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/27 "2012-06-01T17:11:44Z")
I just discovered that ‘I don’t like Mondays’ is about a girl who shot a bunch of her fellow students. When captured and asked why she did it, she replied, “I don’t like Mondays.”
I guess she shot them right down.
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### Author:  [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/28 "2012-06-01T18:18:43Z")
A colleague of mine used to play Sympathy for the Devil in our workplace of the time, and due to general tinnyness and lack of volume, the only words that I took note of were "Pleased to meet you,hope you guess my name ".
I thought that it was about someone who didn’t "fit in "at a snobby party.
It was only later that I understood what it was about when I heard it in normal surroundings, and pegged the lyrics.
I found it to be totally awesome and somewhat self relevant, as did my fellow workers.
Still think that its an incredible record.
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### Author:  [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/29 "2012-06-01T19:49:53Z")
Of course, one of the most obvious examples of this is “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. At first blush it’s a love song, but on closer listening you realize it’s actually about a stalker.
J.
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### Author:  [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/30 "2012-06-01T19:59:12Z")
> [@Soylent\_Juicy](#):
>
> “Where oh where could my baby be…” stuck in my head one night while walking my dog. Listened to the entire song later and realized that it’s about a horrific fatal car accident.
>
> =.
I’m listening to that song \*\*right now \*\*on my iPod! 😃
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/31 "2012-06-01T20:15:03Z")
> [@Rich\_Mann](#):
>
> I always wondered if Roxy Music’s 1974 song _Three And Nine_ was in some kind of code. A while back I heard it again and realized that it definitely was.
>
> The last line is, “Six and two threes now, more I cannot say.” Substituting letters for numbers gives you “FCC”, suggesting that the real meaning of the song had to be encoded to avoid censorship by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
>
> I’ve not been able to decode it any further, but there is a line that includes, “Three and nine to forty-five”, which gives the somewhat suggestive “CIDE”. But I can’t see how the previous lyrics could be read as “SUI”.
>
> Clearly further study is needed–the next time it comes up on shuffle.
I can’t interpret the whole song for you, but I am pretty sure that “three and nine” is an amount of money in British pre-decimal currency: three shillings and nine pence. It looks like the singer is being nostalgic for a time when you could buy a cinema ticket for that amount. References to “decimal romance” and “centigrade” bear out this interpretation (as it changed to decimal currency, Britain also changed from the Fahrenheit to the Centigrade temperature scale). Not long after Britain changed to decimal currency, we had the high levels of inflation of the 1970s, and ticket prices went way up.
I am not sure about the _six and two threes_ - possibly bus ticket prices, in pennies, for an adult and two children.
I once saw a Roxy Music concert advertised for _7 and 6_ (probably actually written 7/6), i.e., seven shillings and sixpence, which was very cheap for a concert, even then. I did not go, because I had never heard of them, and I thought the name sounded stupid. A few weeks later, they were stars. I have been kicking myself ever since for missing out on what was probably one of their first ever gigs.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/32 "2012-06-01T20:22:14Z")
> [@jharvey963](#):
>
> Of course, one of the most obvious examples of this is “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. At first blush it’s a love song, but on closer listening you realize it’s actually about a stalker.
>
> J.
Like many songs, it is deliberately ambiguous, but I think Sting has said that what he mainly had in mind was living in a totalitarian state, where you are watched all the time, as in _1984_.
Anyway, a stalker does believe he is in love, so there is really no contradiction there (although you can tell just from the music, never mind the lyrics, that something creepy is meant to be going on in the song).
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/33 "2012-06-01T20:29:12Z")
> [@billfish678](#):
>
> Knights in white satin…never reaching the end…
>
> I finally did realize after many decades that it was not “knights” dressed in white satin riding on horses on a never ending quest.
Me too, and although I have known better for quite a long time now, I still tend to visualize the knights in their white satin robes whenever I hear it.
> [@Nobody](#):
>
> For most of my life I never heard of roundabouts. A few years after hearing the term it dawned on me that’s what Jon is singing about in the YES song “Roundabout” :smack:. Of course knowing that doesn’t give the song any meaning, because it makes no sense.
You do realize, do you, that “roundabout” has two quite different meanings in British English, what Americans call a merry-go-round, _and_ what Americans call a traffic circle (which are much more common in Britain)? I think the song is playing off both meanings, which may make a little more sense of some bits (although not much, I will admit).
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### Author:  [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/34 "2012-06-01T20:51:03Z")
> [@Superdude](#):
>
> In 1992, in a small town on the Ohio River called New Albany (the town where I grew up), a 12-year old girl named [Shanda Sharer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanda_Sharer) was coaxed out of her house by schoolmates (4 teenage girls), kidnapped, beaten and sodomized with a tire iron, and finally set on fire while she was still alive. The amount of torment and torture that this girl went through is unimaginable.
Wow, I just read that, that is one fucked up case. Three of the four girls had been sexually molested (which was fairly obvious from the description of sodomizing her), and there was a lesbian love triangle playing out as the motivation.
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### Author:  [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/35 "2012-06-02T02:23:12Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#):
>
> Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a **ZZ Top** song that _wasn’t_ about a debauched sex act.
[TV Dinners?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1nMC6kLOYA)
> [@njtt](#):
>
> You do realize, do you, that “roundabout” has two quite different meanings in British English, what Americans call a merry-go-round, _and_ what Americans call a traffic circle (which are much more common in Britain)? I think the song is playing off both meanings, which may make a little more sense of some bits (although not much, I will admit).
I only knew about the traffic circle. But either way:
> [@YES](#):
>
> I’ll be the roundabout
> The words will make you out an’ out
> I’ll spend the day your way
> Call it morning driving
> Through the south
> In an’ out the valley
Means nothing other than, “Man, this is some good shit!” 😃
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/36 "2012-06-02T02:52:04Z")
> [@Nobody](#):
>
> I only knew about the traffic circle. But either way:
>
> Means nothing other than, “Man, this is some good shit!” 😃
Personally, I always assumed that they primarily had a merry-go-round in mind. The music seems to me to resemble a sort of fractured and dissonant sort of merry-go-round music. Looking at the other lyrics written down, though, I see the references to driving (but also to children), so perhaps the traffic circle meaning is in there too.
But yes, you are quite right, there is no way to make actual sense of it all. It is just another example of why _Yes_ always sucked pretentious donkey balls. Giberish lyrics and soulless music.
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### Author:  [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/37 "2012-06-02T04:38:28Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> Personally, I always assumed that they primarily had a merry-go-round in mind. The music seems to me to resemble a sort of fractured and dissonant sort of merry-go-round music. Looking at the other lyrics written down, though, I see the references to driving (but also to children), so perhaps the traffic circle meaning is in there too.
>
> But yes, you are quite right, there is no way to make actual sense of it all. It is just another example of why _Yes_ always sucked pretentious donkey balls. Giberish lyrics and soulless music.
:eek: I actually like their nonsensical songs written by a drugged out hippy trying to write “cosmic lyrics”, as he called them.
But anyway we’re getting off topic. I know I have a good example that I’m not remembering, so until then, I’ll offer a mediocre one.
For the longest time I didn’t realize that U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” referred to an actual event. :smack:
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### Author:  [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/38 "2012-06-02T08:00:11Z")
It took me years to realise “Spirit in the Sky” was a religious tract.
If ever I start to think I understand the meaning of “Blinded By The Light” you have my permission, nay request, to get a straight jacket.
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### Author:  [@Pandoranoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pandoranoid)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/39 "2012-06-02T09:21:27Z")
I always thought that ‘No Woman, No Cry’ was a bittersweet song with Bob singing to his heartbroken male pal about how at least now that he has no woman, he’ll have no further reasons to cry. Kind of a bromantic, you’re-better-off-without-her, love-hurts-but-friendship-rules thing. And ‘everything’s gonna be all right now’ was them sort of trying to shake off the break-up blues and celebrate life in spite of the pain. No, I obviously did not pay close attention to the verses.
When I finally realized the truth, it seemed somehow less poignant.
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### Author:  [@Electric\_Warrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Warrior)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-you-finally-understand/623362/40 "2012-06-02T09:36:57Z")
> [@Cicero](#):
>
> It took me years to realise “Spirit in the Sky” was a religious tract.
Well, if it makes you feel better, it isn’t a real one. Written by a Jewish dude named Norman Greenbaum who wanted to see if he could write a gospel song, and [dashed one off in 15 minutes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_in_the_sky).
I forget where I saw this, but apparently the lyrics are actually wrong from a mainstream Christian standpoint. It says “I’m not a sinner, I never sinned, I’ve got a friend in Jesus”, whereas Christian doctrine holds that all people sin, but are _forgiven_ by Jesus.
* * *
My submission for the thread is Rush’s “Passage to Bangkok”. I thought it was a song about touring the world. And well, it is a song about touring the world. For weed. In my defense, Geddy Lee’s vocals can be nigh incomprehensible at times.
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