Sometimes you hear a song over and over again without really understanding what it’s about. Then on the 10th, 30th, 50th listening it suddenly clicks, and you figure out what the song is actually about. It’s probably happened to everyone, right?
Example: I was listening to “Fly From Heaven” by Toad The Wet Sprocket tonight. I’ve owned the CD for fifteen years, and while this song isn’t a favorite, I’m sure I’ve heard it a couple of dozen times. If you asked me yesterday what it was about, I would have said that it’s from the point of view of someone whose brother Paul found Jesus recently, and is going overboard with the religion thing.
It didn’t occur to me until tonight that the Paul in question literally found Jesus - it’s about the apostle of the same name, and Jesus as well. Oh… checking the song meanings site, someone mentioned that the band talks about it on a dvd, and it might be from apostle James’ point of view. :smack:
So what songs have you discovered the meanings of only after really listening to them at last?
With all the Jesus metaphors I thought that U2’s “Pride (in the name of love)” was about Jesus for a long time before learning it was about Martin Luther King Jr. Man did I feel stupid, especially thinking about the “Shot rang out in the Memphis sky”. Jesus wasn’t shot, and he was never in Memphis. :smack:
Duke Ellington’s “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” I’ve heard this song my entire life, but it wasn’t until my chorus started rehearsing it that I realized all the lyrics are about light. For example:
*I never cared much for moonlit skies,
I never wink back at fireflies;
But now that the stars are in your eyes,
I’m beginning to see the light.
I never went in for afterglow
Or candlelight on the mistletoe;
But now when you turn the lamp down low
I’m beginning to see the light.
*
Lyle Lovett does this a lot. The most obvious for me was “Nobody Knows Me,” which sounds like a very sweet love song, but, after you listen carefully, it’s about his lover leaving him after he has an affair.
Similarly, “If I Had a Boat” makes little sense unless you realize it’s told from the point of view of a young boy (about 8 years old or so).
He once had a live request for his song “L.A. County” where the requester mentioned they had played the song at their wedding. He asked, “Did you realize what that song is about?” (it’s about a crazed ex-boyfriend killing his ex on the altar of a church as she married another man). The caller said, “Well, we changed the lyrics a bit.”
I must have heard the Four Seasons’s classic Oh, What A Night! about ninety million times, from the 45 record my brother had as a child up to seeing Jersey Boys five times.
I only reently realized it’s about a guy losing his virginity to a prostitute.:smack:
Funny, I was just thinking about starting a thread on this topic. The song on my mind was Brand New Key by 70s folk-singer Melanie:
This song was popular when I was a wee young’un, and my sister had the 45. I clearly remember one day when I & the girl next store were playing, and started singing the song - and my mother’s cleaning lady (who was a Mormon) told us to stop singing it because it was a “dirty” song. She didn’t explain herself, and I couldn’t understand what was supposed to be so objectionable about it.
Anyway, the song somehow re-entered my consciousness a few weeks ago, and I put it on my ipod. A few days ago, I’m at the gym and it began playing. Then, for some reason, I started thinking about rollerskates and how the locking mechanism was a small little slot at the bottom of the skate, and that the key was a little metal stick that you inserted into it. So, basically, Melanie was singing about how she wanted a boy to insert his firm, hard stick into her slot ----
:eek: OOOOoohhhh! That’s what was so dirty about it.
And it being “brand new” can be interpreted as being ‘never having been used yet’ (in other words “virgin”) I guess.
The first few times I heard Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, I thought it was a song that glorified teenage sex. But then, when I really listened to the lyrics, I think it is more of a “don’t have teenage sex” song. The ending has him wishing for the end of time so he could be free of her and his vow, and has her comparing their relationship now with their relationship back in the day. (“It was long ago and far away and it was so much better than it is today.”
One that just clicked for me recently was a track called “Retrieval of You” from The Minus 5’s “Down With Wilco” CD. For years I thought it was a peppy upbeat song about a guy going to pick up someone (his girlfriend?) from the airport. Then it finally hit me that he’s not picking them up, he’s kidnapping them.
It’s funny because the lyrics are pretty obvious, I just never really paid much attention and put the pieces together until recently.
Also a shout-out to Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Hokey Pokey (The Ice Cream Song)” which really isn’t about ice cream at all.
Not quiet the same, but when Buckcherry’s song “Lit Up” first came out MTV edited out references to drugs. They made “I love the cocaine” sound like “I love it” and I didn’t know they were singing about cocaine until I heard the song on the radio.
Yeah, I knew being lit up had to do with drugs, but never doing any myself and kind of being naive about drugs I had to hear the word cocaine before I knew exactly what they were singing about.
I’ve heard it for years and always figured it’s about a naive, inexperienced kid (“I left home just the week before…”) losing his virginity (“I never kissed a woman before…”) to an aggressive older woman, perhaps a prostitute.
Then one day, like a bolt out of the blue, I finally picked up on the last line at the very end of the song, after “I know what I am, I’m glad I’m a man”.
This discussion has been done before, but those lyrics together with the part “I don’t understand why she looks like a woman but talks like a man” should make it pretty clear that Lola is a transvestite.
I’d heard it since I was but a wee lad. Never picked up on what it meant until one day when I was in my 20’s I had a “duh” moment.
It starts with “He said I’ll love you 'til I die” and later says “they placed the wreath upon his door. And soon they’ll carry him away. He stopped loving her today.” “She came to see him one last time, and we all wondered if she would. It kept runnin’ through my mind, ‘This time he’s over her for good.’”