Vipercat on 4/10/2010 at 15:11
Ever wondered just what Wang Chung meant by "'take your baby by the wrists, and in her mouth an amethyst" or what AC/DC where singing about in "Highway to hell" well now you can find out check out (
http://www.songfacts.com/) Song Facts
Matthew on 4/10/2010 at 15:36
Ooh, interesting. Thanks!
demagogue on 4/10/2010 at 16:48
There are a number of (
http://www.google.com/search?q=song+meanings&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) sites doing this. SongMeanings.net is another old established one I remember. I remember surfing some of them back in 2001 when I first got to NYC.
I do like hearing people's interpretations, including but not only "official" ones (alternative interpretations can sometimes be just as good). Somewhere I have a long list of song meanings I liked that opened up the song to me, or were surprising, clever or otherwise interesting ... but I can't find it now. It probably had a lot of songs from guys like Peter Gabriel (Mercy Street was based on an Anne Sexton poem), Leonard Cohen ("Anthem" is quite Buddhist oriented; and is "Hallelujah" really about an orgasm?), Sting, Josh Ritter, Paul Simon, Depeche Mode, NIN, some early Dave Matthews, and tons of miscellaneous songs. I remember most of the songs on the "Flood" album for They Might Be Giants having funny or clever interpretations (Twistin' is about your gf wanting you hung, Whistling in the Dark is about free will, Particle Man has a distinguished history of nerd-debate, need to look up what "Road Movie to Berlin" and "A Rock to Tie a String Around" are about since I can't remember.)
henke on 4/10/2010 at 18:41
Yeah that's a good site. Two other good info-about-songs-sites are (
http://www.whosampled.com/) www.whosampled.com, and (
http://www.coversproject.com/) coversproject. Where you can find out what samples a song uses and who covered what, respectively.
Vernon on 4/10/2010 at 20:44
Quote Posted by demagogue
Twistin' is about your gf wanting you hung
hanged? this is important
catbarf on 5/10/2010 at 01:07
I've seen a lot of bullshit made up reasons for various songs. One that stands out to me is 'In The Air Tonight' by Phil Collins. The urban legend is that Collins saw a guy drown in a pool, and another man didn't help, so he gave that guy a front row seat to his concert and played the song specifically to him. Which is completely made up.
Then there are those looking for homosexual subtext in Dio, or Satanism in Lordi, and all kinds of other shit. Lyrics are a big part of music for me, so I try to learn the lyrics and their meaning, but there are so many conflicting explanations on the Internet that it can be hard at times.
Tocky on 6/10/2010 at 03:13
Well that sucks. I would have prefered to believe that KT Tunstalls song Black Horse and The Cherry Tree was about losing her virginity to a black guy and then regreting not marrying him because when she came back he was a player. It fit so perfectly. I'm still not convinced. It's too perfect. She's lying about the meaning.
Shug on 6/10/2010 at 08:28
I've visited songmeanings.net quite a bit; unfortunately there's a bunch of people who feel it important enough to tell us that every song on there is about a drug experience
Chimpy Chompy on 6/10/2010 at 08:41
Okay so Blue Oyster Cult's Astronomy is either about a guy granted superhuman powers by mysterious gods from another dimension or... a lesbian encounter. But every 2 posts we have to stop and argue about whether or not Metallica suck.
Tocky on 7/10/2010 at 04:13
All I know is that song oh oh oh It's Magic is sung half the time "it's magic" and half the time "it's my dick" and the singer for Pilot is somewhere still chuckling over it with ELOs lead singer who sang Strange Magic but every so often sang it "I gotta strain my dick". Listen close and tell me it aint.
