Posting into the thread about rock songs which have to do with starting, continuing and breaking up relationships… well I was gonna put one song in but I figured I should check the title of it. Imagine to my surprise when the song was not in fact about a broken relationship, but was about a friends suicide instead. I never realized that and I had heard this song numerous times as it’s an older song and not completely uncommon.
So what songs did you not realize that they were actually about something else?
[sub]And for the curious the song I mistook was actually Fire and Rain by James Taylor[/sub]
Actually, “Fire and Rain” is about three different things–one for each verse (a suicide, heroin addiction, and the breakup of a band).
I thought Ben Folds Five’s “Brick” was about a young woman who’s teminally ill and she’s taking it better than her boyfriend is.
Devo’s Whip It was thought to be about sadism (presumably purely from the title), but is in fact a critique of corporate life, mission statements, et al.
REM say they’ve often been told “I fell in love to your The One I Love”, which they think is weird as it’s quite a creepy song about twisted people.
Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes is apparently about masturbation, not sunburn.
And there was a sort of rockabilly pop song called Poison Ivy that was popular when I was a small child; I can’t find out who by. Years later I found out it was about VD not stinging plants.
When I was kid, my dad and I would listen to ZZ Top (either albums or on the radio), and I never though twice about the song “Pearl Necklace.” Now, thanks to more “worldly experience” and of course, internet porn, I’m sure it’s about something entirely different altogether :D.
I don’t listen to country music much so I heard this one only once and I don’t know the title or who it was by. It’s a guy singing to his wife and kid, being sorry that he’s leaving them “but it has to be this way” – your typical country divorce song until the last refrain where it turns out he’s phoning from an aircraft. It’s never said explicitly, but it is presumably flight 93.
I had to pull over and bawl for a couple minutes. In fact I’m tearing up as I type this (I’m such a wuss) and it demonstrated the power of a simple song to get you right in the gut, sometimes.
I thought Brand New Pair of Rollerskates was about sex – you know, I’ve got skates, you’ve got the key so let’s try them out and see-- and I found out it was about rollerskating.
Going back a bit, my sister thought Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” (about the displacement of Australia’s native peoples) was about hot sex.
Nitpicks:
“Poison Ivy” was by the Coasters, a R&B group (“You’re gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion.”)
“Alsison” is not a happy song, but it’s not about a stalker or a killer. For that, you want Elvis’s “I Want You” or “Watching the Detectives,” respectively.
