Well, duh! Suddenly realizing what a song is really about

Cafe Society
1

So I’m driving down the road, listening for the umpty-zillionth time to Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty album. The song “Rosie” begins, I’m kinda-sorta listening to the familiar lyrics…

And suddenly, for the first time in the decades I’ve been hearing it, I get what the song’s really about. :confused: :eek: :smack:

All right, go ahead; point and laugh. But I’m a female of 1949 vintage, raised in rather a, shall we say, sheltered milieu, in which Good Girls were not made aware of certain Facts of Life.

So, what blinding realizations about a song have you had?

2

“Love In An Elevator” by Aerosmith

I thought it was about sex in an elevator, so I wasn’t too far off. But apparently,
there is no elevator involved in the process of “going down”.

3

Ha! My husband and I did the same thing on a road trip years ago while listening to Rosie. I remember the first time I REALLY listened to Lola by the Kinks.

4

“Brand New Key” by Melanie

Melanie has acknowledged the possibility of reading sexual innuendo in the song.

Ya think?

Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together
and try them out you see

5

I myself have pondered the hidden meanings buried in the lyrics of “Inna Gadda Da Vida”.

6

There is nothing to match the sudden realization that “You’re So Vain” is about Warren Beatty.

7

Tequila.

:smack:

8

Funny. I always thought it was about me.

9

Not even Warren Beatty is vain enough to think he’d look good in an apricot scarf. QED.

10

Someone told me about “Rosie”, but I figured out “Red Neck Friend” (For Everyman) on my own.

11

Any chance in these posts you can say what the song actually means for the non musically inclined (read: me)

I don’t know what Rosie is about (although based on the color and context of the posts I have a guess)

Or Tequila (unless I’m being wooshed)

12

To learn the REAL meaning of the song “Tequila,” I had to watch Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure.

I had to buy the shoes, too.

:stuck_out_tongue:
Tequila

13

Under Adam Block’s Secret Subjects of 15 Pop Songs, “Rosie” is said to have been co-written with a roadie named Donald Miller. Rosie Palm or Rosie Palms is in fact a colloquialism for masturbation. Sometimes she is said to have a friend named Jill; the J is made with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, the I is the middle finger and the other two fingers make the L’s.
Source: Songfacts: Rosie by Jackson Browne

14

Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam is about a guy trying to deal with learning his brother died (via a yellow letter)… transcribed from an Eddie Vedder concert in Newark NJ, when asked “what are the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter”:

15

I was fourteen when the Stones released their cover of “Little Red Rooster.” I was embarrassed by how many years passed before I realized it wasn’t a song about a chicken.

.

16

It used to amuse me that when Every Breath You Take was in common rotation, everyone treated it like a romantic slow-dance song. I actually attended a wedding where the married couple had their first dance to it, b/c it was “their song.”

Lola’s a MAN, baby!

17

That reminds me of a couple more:

The Who: Squeezebox (not about an accordion)
Bull Moose Jackson: Big Ten Inch Record (not about a vinyl recording)
Dinah Washington: Big Long Slidin’ Thing (not about a trombone)
The Toppers: Baby Let Me Bang Your Box (not about borrowing a piano)

18

Heh. A cousin of mine did the “our song” dance at their wedding to “YMCA” – see, they’d met at the local Y, and they had no idea it was a gay hookup song.

19

Good thing it’s not.

20

Not an entire song, but in Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” I was about 30 before it dawned on me why the guy had to get up and wash his face.