Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.
In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry. It’s such a nice catchy tune that I enjoyed until my partner pointed out:
Have a drink, have a drive Go out and see what you can find If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel
Which, ew.
Sting. Every step you take. It’s actually angry and malicious. There’s an interview with Sting saying something to that effect.
Do you maybe mean “Every Breath You Take” by The Police? That’s a common answer to this kind of question. A lot of people think of it as cute and romantic at first, but the song really talk about the Big Brother (from George Orwell’s 1984): a state of constant surveillance watching “every breath you take, every move you make”.
I have no idea how anyone who’s even vaguely tuned into that song thinks it’s romantic.
Heck, there a folks out there that still insist that “The Boys of Summer” is about baseball.
Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace
I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace
I keep crying, baby, baby please
Oh, can’t you see
You belong to me?
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take?I understand the full lyrics, but most songs generally default to romanticism. If you’re not paying attention it’s easy to misinterpret.
If you’re not paying attention, you hear the “I’m watching you” part, which is creepy as fuck.
Yes that’s the one I’m talking about. I could have sworn I heard an interview about him talking about how it’s about someone stalking a former lover. Memory is weird that way. You’re interpretation is probably the one I’m going to go with from now on though I like that more.
I could see it being a bit of both. Lyrics are often inspired by something and describing something else. In this case, someone stalking a former lover could be seen as “going full 1984’s Big Brother” on them… and it makes sense with the whole romantic mood that the song has: the stalker sees themself as romantic and sings it that way, but when you look closer you realise it’s actually very creepy.
I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown Rats.
Mind, when I first heard it my English was not that good so I really only got the Chorus about not liking Mondays (and who does, eh?). Dismissed the “shoot the whole day down” as an idiom for something which I did not know.
Then at some point much later I realized it’s actually a school shooting.
I remember listening to Frank Zappa’s Bobby Brown when I was a kid, not knowing English at all. Great song but very inappropriate for kids, which my parents probably thought was funny.
Uncle Kracker - Follow me. I used to sing the shit out of it, because I just liked the tune. Until I learn there was a whole different meaning than just “I’m the better guy” lyrics.
I still humm it, but it hits differently.
5 minutes alone by pantera, I mean come on…
Nuttin No Go So
The original “football moves” clip went viral a long time ago, and the song goes along well with it. Took me a while to understand just how awfully reactionary the lyrics are.Despacito. Kinda weird lyrics.
Not so much found out about but songs that didn’t used to bother me now kind of bother me. I was a very big Stone Temple Pilots fan, Even though the rhythms slap the songs are a little too rapey these days for my taste.
Semi-Charmed Life, by Third Eye Blind. Basically, it’s a song about doing meth… Spent almost twenty years just singing the chorus with absolutely no idea what the rest of the lyrics were. Now, it kinda feels weird, ngl.
I, as a child, did a music class presentation on “my favourite song of the year” on this little ditty.
Whoops!
Edit: To clarify, then, much like now, I listened to the music and not the lyrics. I don’t know if that’s common at all, but the singing is basically another instrument to me, and I hardly ever pay attention to the actual words.
Much of the time I can’t even make out the lyrics, so I listen to music the same way
I think it’s fairly common to not always pay close attention to the lyrics. Most of the time, you hear a song on the radio, and you can’t always make out what it’s saying, but you’re still able to enjoy the music and the singing melody. Until you pay more attention or you seek out the lyrics, then you’re often surprised about what it’s saying, cause the lyrics weren’t the point when you used to listen to the song. It doesn’t mean that it’s world-changing or anything, but it just takes you by surprise.
I listen to music the exact same way. I will maybe pay attention to the chorus or catchy line, but a lot of lyrics are lost on me.
I’m the same way, actually.
ITT: People on the spectrum
Ok, uhhhh… you are saying here that difficulty understanding the words to music is an autism thing?
Woo woo! Auditory Processing Disorder!
YEP.
You’re not alone there, snoop had an album come out the year before and after that both sold as explicit but that album didn’t.
But it’s about how the excitement of meth, like that of a new relationship, fades and leaves the speaker wanting something more substantial while still fondly reminiscing about the good times.
The speaker thinks of the girl as a “sunburn” he “would like to save.” He describes meth as something that “will lift you up until you break.” I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use. So no reason to feel weird I think.
I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use.
There’s also an extra verse, which wasn’t in the radio edit, that I think further supports what you’re saying.
I guess you’re right, I just never gave the song much thought. It’s just that it kinda felt like some happy song and I never paid attention to what it was saying, then I looked them up one day, out of curiosity, and I guess it juat felt unexpected to me, and that’s why it felt weird. Thinking about what you said makes me want to give the song another listen with an open mind, I guess.
Not so much a song about doing meth as it’s a song about the ramifications of doing meth. “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” it mentions lockjaw at the end and even talks about watching the love of his life die to an od.
I didn’t know it was about Crystal meth for a really long time because I only heard it on the radio for many many years and they only played a clean version where the phrase “Crystal Meth” is cut out in a way that’s not really obvious it was edited so I just never understood the lyrics.
“The sky was gold, it was rose, I was taking sips of it through my nose…” didn’t clue you in?
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Nope. That song came out when I was ten, so I had no clue it was about anything like that until probably a decade later.
Oh. Never mind, I’m old.
I love people being surprised by this song when a verse literally says ‘doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break’.
"It won’t stop, I won’t come down
I keep stock with the tick-tock rhythm
I bump for the drop, and then I bumped up
I took the hit that I was given, then I bumped again
Then I bumped again"
That entire verse, but honestly rereading the lyrics, I’m amazed that got radio play in the Bible belt. I know it did, because I heard it uncensored in southeastern Indiana.
Fun fact: Semi Charmed Kinda Life made it into a late '90s Disney film about surfers. They didn’t even bleep anything because, I assume, they couldn’t understand what he was singing.
Another fun fact is that the original radio edit that charted is different from the album version / version that is on streaming these days. It lacks verse 3
And when the plane came in, she said she was crashing The velvet, it rips in the city We tripped on the urge to feel alive But now, I’m struggling to survive Those days you were wearing that filthy dress You’re the priestess, I must confess Those little red panties, they pass the test Slides up around the belly face down on the mattress one And you hold me And we are broken Still it’s all that I want to do, just a little now
“All that she wants” by Ace of Base. I read a deep dive into the band and it seems like they may have been formed after a neo-nazi group and that song might be about Jews trying to dilute the bloodline… so yeah kinda weird now.
Oh fuck, no way.
Ok, I read thenlink and the bassist was an opely total piece of shit before joining the band but I didn’t see anyhing about the AoB songs being hidden propaganda or the rest of the band’s history. Where does the speculation come from?
https://www.cracked.com/blog/how-90s-pop-band-secretly-sold-nazism-to-america
That was my first exposure to the theory, I’ve never been able to confirm nor deny it conclusively, especially since cracked.com back in those times was only mostly satire. Like 99% of the pieces were satire, and then they’d publish something that wasn’t satire, and this could be a good example of that. Either way, I bought their CD way back when.
That seems completely serious and not satire at all.
Since I never saw the videos, my assumption was that ‘wants another baby’ was wanting to sleep around with multiple partners as in ‘I love you baby’, not having a literal baby. The six pointed stars and the cradle is pretty fucking clear it is about a Jewish woman sleeping around to have multiple babies, and yeah that is apparently one of those ‘Jews are taking over’ racist stereotypes.
Now I’m guessing that the Sign is a swastika.
Thanks for the link, I’m gonna go throw that album in the trash and feel like a jackass for not catching on earlier.
Ooof, TIL…
Their song “Happy Nation” sounds pretty questionable to me, too.
What!!! I wish this wasn’t a thing. But thanks for the info. Arrrrgh though…
Mr Brightside by the Killers. The tune was good and felt energetic when it came about, but it’s about a guy being cheated on. Having had someone cheat on me around the time it came out it hit really close to home and I just don’t enjoy listening to the song.
The problem with being in the UK is that it’s so overplayed and I just have to tune it out.
It’s not. It’s about a guy who can’t beat jealousy and believes he’s being cheated on “except it’s all in [his] head”
Ah my bad. I thought the song was written by Brandon Flowers after catching his girlfriend cheating on him in a bar in his hometown of Las Vegas.
https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/the-killers/what-is-the-killers-song-mr-brightside-about/
During lockdown in April 2020, the frontman looked back at the video and noted: “It’s just a song about betrayal. I was betrayed and I was able to turn it into a masterpiece”.
From the article “The lyric is about a man who is obsessed with a girl that is seeing another man… and the thoughts that go through his head, imagining what they’re doing behind closed doors…” I guess I was wrong, it’s envy not jealousy.
No, it’s a song about a nice guy not getting his crush.
I second one of the other commenters who says that the song is about the perception of being cheated on. It’s funny, after the first day I ever went on with my partner that song played and for a little while we considered it our song, then eventually kind of faded as they both realized the song didn’t relate to us very well. Now I can look back years later, after going through a lot of therapy and self enrichment and I can realize that those kind of paranoia really did plague our early relationship. I’m glad that we were able to move on from it
Pretty much all Linkin Park songs.
Listened to it since elementary.
Around high school, I figured the lyrics were kinda dark.
Then the vocalist hung himself.
Sadly, Chester grew up being horribly abused and then using a lot of drugs. He was super close with Chris Cornell, who had also killed himself some months prior to Chester. Chester had been sober for a time but ended up staying the night alone after traveling and drank a little and hung himself on Chris’s birthday.
Mike Shinoda has stated in interviews that when he and Chester would write lyrics, they would focus on the emotion and not necessarily just the exact experience. So the lyrics would slowly evolve until they both could sing them truthfully while relating them to their own separate lived experiences, which is part of why they can be so universally related to - because none of their songs are truly only about one specific thing, but rather about the feelings people experience.
That makes sense. The thing about experiences and feelings, it’s something we can all related to which is why we love their music. Chester, we will never forget you.
Fuck, man, that is some depressing backstory.
I can hear that.
Staying sober at home with family can be hard enough, but when traveling, that’s hardcore mode.
Richmen North of Richmond.
I love the sound, and at first it sounds like a pro worker union song (and it kinda is).
But there’s way too much dog whistle… An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry
And then he slips in some super disappointing language about fat people on welfare.
An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry
I think that’s an uncharitable reading. Which is understandable, but still.
I think that there are a lot of people–myself included–that would like to be able to make a living doing something that seems to matter, or where you make something. Like, factory work sucks in most ways, but it still feels like you’re doing something. Spreadsheets and order projections? Staring at a screen all day, sending polite emails to people you’ll never meet about ways to spend a lot of money electronically?
This “new world” of work and socializing ain’t great. I think it snuck up on a lot of people, and now a lot of people are feeling like they don’t know how to navigate the new reality of depersonalization.
I agree. Nearly every lyric in that song, when isolated, sounds fine and agreeable. Even when he attacks people on welfare “if you’re 5’- 3 and 300lbs, taxes ought not to pay, for your bags of fudge rounds.” Isn’t wrong.
Taxes shouldn’t be used by fat cats to get fatter. But he isn’t saying that. He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire. He could have chosen to attack the elite, even if he only meant the ones to the North. He didn’t.
“It’s a damn shame, what the world’s gotten to, for people like me, and people like you.”
Sounds great. Now picture his audience. Who are they, and who are they thinking of when they hear that line?
This song is called “Richmen North of Richmond.” It’s the Northerner’s fault all these bad things are happening.
It’s that movie with Rowdy Piper and the glasses. You have to put them on to see the whole message. Dog whistling at its finest.
If he had made a few small changes it could have been a powerful pro-worker lament and I would be playing it to death. Instead it was #11 on Trump’s “Standing on the stage for 44 minutes swaying back and forth because America is so easy to con so why not?”
It’s a damn shame.
He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire.
I know a lot of people that are quite overall politically liberal that feel this way. I know a lot of people that get upset at the idea of inmates being given “free” educations in prison because they still have student loans 20 years after school. People that support the ideas of helping people up, that are fully on board with LGBTQ+ rights across the board, think DEI is a good idea, think it’s critical that women have bodily autonomy, and so on, but still have a knee-jerk reaction to things that they don’t fully get, or haven’t had explained to them.
I don’t know if he meant the song that way, or what. I do know that the people coming into the White House in a few months aren’t likely to make things any better for people like him. Or people like you. Or people like me.
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true.
But it is. Oh it is.
Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry
WTF? Don’t be sorry about that!
I know it’s just sort of a reflexive idiomatic politeness, but still, it is really important to make it absolutely crystal clear how irredeemably contemptible the “lost cause” shit take is, at every opportunity. Never, ever be polite about it!
Thank you.
“The south lost and slavery is bad, kindly get fucked.”
Sorry as a Canadian and a woman I just can’t not be polite…
Oh, no. We make an exception for Canadians. We know that if you stop being polite, Geneva is going to have to cut down a forest to write new regulations.
Sherman did nothing wrong.
Yes he did. Sherman stopped before he hung the traitorous leadership.
Yeah, never leave that job half done.
Shh, Don’t let Israel hear you!
Well, one that maybe went full circle for me is “bring the pain” by mindless self indulgence. At first, it just seemed like a really fun song that I loved. Then one day, a black dude was in my car listening with me, and he was like “wtf is this song about?”. That’s when it hit me that the song actually sounds REALLY racist. I looked up the lyrics and that just confirmed it for me. And then years later, I found out it was actually a cover of a method man song, and not really racist at all, I guess. But thats a weird one, maybe best not for white guys to be singing it…
Yeah I used to love MSI and never really listened to the lyrics closely. Dude covers songs by black artists and straight up sings the N word.
See also his cover of “Big Poppa”
The more I looked into Jimmy Urine, the more problematic it got, like grooming a teenage girl.
That second one sucks because I love Fighting with the Melody, it’s just such chaos
Ah, what? Fuck man, I listen to Jimmy Urine every day :-(
Fuck.
I saw MSI sometime in the mid to late 2000s. It was at a club in DC and Jimmy Urine said, sorry I can’t stay after the show and make-out with anyone because I got mono for some teenagers I made out with a few days ago.
It was very odd to announce in the middle of the set. I knew he was a year or so older than me and I found it very disgusting that he was talking about making out with teens so nonchalantly. Jimmy was probably about 30 at the time as I was late 20s.
The cover definitely goes hard though. I’m legitimately stunned to see MSI mentioned at all, especially at the top of a thread. I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for decades, and rarely if ever see anyone mention them.
Did you know Jimmy played a ravager in Guardians of the Galaxy?
I did. Apparently him and James Gunn are close friends. But he’s only in the second one.
I about shit when I saw him
Same. I don’t condone them but their songs go hard. I don’t fund them either since I downloaded the music. Did you listen to their most recent release?
No, but you’d better believe I’ll be bumping that on the way to work tomorrow. Even though they’re one of my top bands, I haven’t check much as of late since their last release was about 9 years ago, and I didn’t think it was too good.
