Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones. It's a song about banging a slave, but I didn't know that as a kid.
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Similarly, watching the music video for Africa by Toto changes the entire vibe of the song. It’s about wanting to bang a black woman. Bless those rains, I guess.
Not sure, if I stopped listening to mainstream music around that time, but uh, both of my examples are from 2011, apparently:
- Kind of a classic response to this question, is "Pumped Up Kicks" from Foster The People. It's got that upbeat melody, and the lyrics are this:
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet.
- And my other example is "The A Team", apparently originally from Ed Sheeran, and apparently also with an upbeat melody. I think, I only ever listened to a cover version. But yeah, it's about drug use and sex work, and how those kind of necessitate each other...
Hard Habit To Break by Chicago is pretty straightforward, but I liked it on the radio as a kid because it's peppy and has an orchestra.
Decades later I get access to music service libraries and give it a listen.
I was a jerk and you left me, and now you're with another guy. I'm not sorry. I'm not going to do better. But I have an orchestra!
I still like it, but have perspective now.
Closing time by Semisonic I thought it was about going home with someone after a night out at the bar. It’s about the lead singers child being born.
Constipated by Weird Al. That changed me.
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.
Fuck, man, that is some depressing backstory.
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
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.
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Hey there Delilah
The dude who wrote it is a creep
Dang. Just looked it up. It's a song about a girl he met once and was dating someone else, but he still wrote a damn ballad and sent her a copy. Then she had to live her life surrounded by a song about a stranger's feelings for her.
And looking at the lyrics, they're sweet if said about a long-distance partner, but really weird to sing to a vague acquaintence.
It's also one of the most inescapable songs on public radio ever.
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 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?
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.
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, 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.
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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...
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Stinkfist - Tool
You think from the title it would be obvious. Never thought why it was named like that until after I realized what the song was about.
It's about anal fisting, yes, but only as a metaphor for the desensitization caused by modern life. It's got layers
“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.
Their song "Happy Nation" sounds pretty questionable to me, too.
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Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots. Great music, love STP, but it's basically about raping someone.
Scott Weiland was compelled to write the lyrics after an incident in which a girl he was dating was raped by three high school football players after a party. Thus, Weiland has stated the song is an anti-rape statement, not a song simply about sex, saying: "This song is really not about sex at all. It’s about control, violence and abuse of power."
Weiland found himself in the position of defending "Sex Type Thing" to individuals who took the first-person approach he used in the song ("I am a man, a man/I'll give ya something that ya won't forget/I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress") literally. "It was, 'All right, the "Cop Killer" controversy's dead, let's try to find something else,' " says Weiland, who has been outspoken in the press about women's rights and contends that he wrote the song in the mind-set of what he has called "the typical American macho jerk" because he didn't want to sound peachy. "I never thought that people would ever seriously think that I was an advocate of date rape."
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This song is cute and happy but the lyrics are absolutely devastating and make me cry. https://open.spotify.com/track/2E3hdMguyNDQswLXyUotYR
https://genius.com/Bloc-party-signs-lyrics
[Verse 1]
Two ravens in the old oak tree
And one for you and one for me
And bluebells in the late December
I see signs now all the time
The last time we slept together
There was something that was not there
You never wanted to alarm me
But I'm the one that's drowning now
[Verse 2]
I can sleep forever these days
Cause in my dreams I see you again
But this time-fleshed out fuller face
In your confirmation dress
It was so like you to visit me
To let me know you were okay
It was so like you to visit me
You're always worried about someone else
[Bridge]
At your funeral I was so upset
So, so upset
In your life you were larger than this
Statue statuesque
[Chorus] (x2)
I see signs now all the time
That you're not dead, you're sleeping
I believe in anything
That brings you back home to me
I hate this song. Literally sobbing at the fear of the state my mental health would be in if my wife suddenly passed.
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I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t know Weezer’s “Hashpipe” is about male prostitution.
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