I Do Not Think That Song Means What You Think It Means - Page 2

To play devil's advocate...

What's ultimately more "definitive": The artist's intent when he/she creates a song, or the meaning of that song as interpreted by the listener?

More generally - is making something creatively about the intent of the creator or about the interpretation of the reciever?

LOL.

I LOVE Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" (which has become cliche, I know - sorry I'm a bit ahead of the curve on that one), and strongly considered it for my wedding song, but I figured that starting off your marriage with a song with that subject matter wasn't the best karma.

I recall a wedding back in the '80s that had Def Leppard's "Love Bites" as the wedding song. It's another case of not listening; but "Better Man" fucking boggles my mind, as it's one of the few songs were Vedder actually enunciates, and I don't know that I'd be thrilled to be dancing with my new wife as the words

"She lies and says she still loves him
Can't find a better man..."

...are coming out of the speakers clear as a bell.

To quibble, you don't appear to be advocating one or the other (perhaps that's the devilish part of your post), but that's an interesting question.

To me, it somewhat depends on how CLEAR the artist makes the message in the song - it's pretty apparent that protest songs like "Fortunate Son" and "Born in the USA" have been grossly misappropriated by those who are utterly clueless - George W Bush loving "Fortunate Son" is thoroughly fucking laughable, because while it's a FANTASTIC tune, if Fogerty had known W existed when he wrote the song, it could have been addressed at Bush specifically. In this case, where the artist CLEARLY states his intent with no degree of ambiguity, anyone misinterpreting/misappropriating the song should be punched in the balls/cunt.

However, when you have people like Kurt Cobain (plenty of others, he's just the first to pop into my head) who not only write lyrics that are VERY open-ended as far as meaning goes, but also mumble the delivery so that the actual words said, never mind the intent, is almost indecipherable, I think they lose a chunk of their right to complain that something has been misinterpreted - when you write something that can work in two or more ways, or operates on a couple different levels, and what a person gets out of the lyrics depends on what they bring to the table, you really have to just shrug when someone completely misses the point you were going for.

Chavez said all I was gonna say, probably better than I could say it.

In the case of a tune like 'Better Man', there's no excusing a misreading of the lyrics. At least it's pretty obvious to me that it's no damn love song, even if the specific nature of the lyrics may not be definitively concrete. As I've learned during my 28 years of living, people just don't read or listen very carefully.

Ditto to people who do not listen carefully. My cousin for years, thought the song "Squeezebox, by The Who was about a wife who was a nympho.

He never picked up on the line the 'squeezebox she wears on her chest' He just thought the rest of the song was about a guy's wife who couldn't get enough sex and kept everyone awake with her 'squeezebox' a word he thought was just a euphemism for her pussy.

I guess the 'In and out, in and out' in the chorus threw him.


He also thought wrestling was real.

I thought it was Meaty's refusal to stop eating junk food.

Has your cousin seen Freaks and Geeks? There's a whole episode devoted to The Who, with Squeezebox having a hilarious scene.

I never thought it was a euphemism for "pussy" but I don't think the interpretation of the song as being about a nympho wife is completely off-base ("Squeeze me, please me like you do, I'm so in love with you - mama's got a squeezebox daddy doesn't sleep at night"); I mean, Townshend vehemently denies that "Pictures of Lily" is about masturbation and it's like "fine, but THINK about it, Pete"

Of course, I argue with my wife once a month that ABBA's "Fernando" is about soldiers going gay in the heat of the moment.

Jawbreaker's 'I Love You So Much Its Killing Us Both' was written by Ron Goldman.

Of course Squeezebox is about a nympho. It's barely double entendre.

It is amazing to me that people think "Little Red Corvette" is about a car, to the point where they incorporated it into an auto ad.

A good example of people only listening to the chorus of a song and ignoring the rest of the lyrics. A general rule of thumb: If the chorus is catchy as hell, the song must be about said chorus!

I didn't even know the name of that song (silly me, I listen to all the lyrics). It just always struck me as a bit of a push-the-envelope song because of the Trojans lyric, especially since there are always such sexual images coming from Mr. Jehovahs' Witness/Seventh Day Adventist.

TRUE STORY: When I was about 6 or 7, my teacher led the entire class on a rousing rendition of "Squeezebox". He specifically told us that it was about a woman who played an accordian. Man, that guy was on thin ice.

Could be. I suppose it depends on whether the narrator is a man or a woman and whether that "something in the air that night" was freedom or nookie. For a less ambiguous take on the subject, see the Decemberists' "The Soldiering Life."

It's Prince. The man's lyrics were so sexual, they had a hearing about it. I'm also pretty sure he found JC after he wrote 'Darling Nikki.'

In the "My Hometown" file of songs that are misconstrued as delightful little odes to small town America, I submit "Jack and Diane" by one Jonathan Cougar Mellencamp.

Accuse me of not listening closely, but a red Corvette IS the titular vehicle.

The title just doesn't let you know that the singer is getting laid in said car.

Okay, that makes my interpretation way dirtier. I thought the Corvette was a metaphor for the girl he's singing about. Hence the "baby you got to slow down."

Was this guy being sneaky or was he just a dolt?

I just checked the lyrics, and you're right.


Of course, which would you prefer to sell your product - a song about sex (Little Red Corvette)? Or a song about jonesing for smack (Lust for Life)?

"When u drove me 2 the place // Where your horses run free //
cuz I felt a little ill // When I saw all the pictures // Of the jockeys that were there before me"
I presumed, meant they had sex at her place.

With the lyrics:
"Im gonna try 2 tame your little red love machine"
and
"Girl, u got an ass like I never seen // And the ride... // I say the ride is so smooth // U must be a limousine""

I presumed that like "squeezebox" the "little red corvette" was NOT a car.

I've read through this thread and I haven't seen the grandaddy of these sorts of songs mentioned yet.

"Every Breath You Take" by the Police.

For the longest time the band I was in would try to explain that maybe the bride and groom's song should be something else at the reception due to the lyric of the song. Eventually, we quit worrying about it and just figured "shut up and take the damn gig".

No, it's perfect for when the bride leaves the groom and he stalks her.

werewolves in london is actually about vampires in dublin.

Eventhough it's intentional, The Darknesses' "Growing on Me" is great. I know people who take it as a love song, when in actually it's about a nasty case of pubic lice.

Then again, anyone who takes the Darkness seriously should get their head checked.

The pubic lice is a metaphor for the relationship, so yeah it pretty much still is a love song, just a tongue-in-cheek and deceptively dirty one.

Sure. But Filter didn't do that. If Filter did that, I'd respect it.

Not to derail the thread but you're going to have to explain this one to me.... how has Live turned into a contemporary Christian band? They have always had an underlying spiritual tone in their lyrics, but nothing overtly Christian. Have they gone soft? Pretty much. Do they have too many ballads? Yep. Have they turned Christian? I don't think so.

In the liner notes of their last album, Ed described one of his songs as "Telling his daughters about Jesus". Hey, I don't begrudge their religions, but spelling it out clearly like that seemed like a pretty contemporary christian band thing to do. That, coupled in with the fact that Pat Dalhiemer is barely heard in the mix anymore, they haven't played anything above 80 bpm recently, and they just sound schmaltzy to me now. Again, it's also a knee-jerk reaction from me because I used to love the band so much, and now I wish they could erase that boring monstrosity of a recent album from their catalogue and call it a day.