One of the most interesting things about music is that once it leaves the studio and enters your earlobes, it’s undeniably yours, no matter what the musicians might have had in mind when they put their ramblings to a gin-soaked napkin however many months ago. The Beatles might have written I Am The Walrus to make fun of fans who overanalyzed every song they wrote, but once it got out there, the absurdity made a lot of people dig deeper instead of changing their minds. After a couple of conversations about songs that meant something a little big different to us than the artist intended, we decided to put together a little article showcasing our favorites.

Remember Come Out and Play by The Offspring? I’d always been convinced the song was about underaged sex. If you take a look at the lyrics, you’ll know it’s not, but this song’s been on the radio about a million times, and every single time it seems like he’s saying :

Like the latest fashion
Like a spreading disease
The kids are slappin on their way to the classroom
Getting with it with the greatest of ease

And then there’s a lot of incomprehensible yelling that sounds cool, and then some stuff about bashing it up and police sirens and being under 18. Hey HEY! Right?

No. Turns out the songs about gang violence, and even shouts out that immortal line from The Warriors. Remember “Waaariors? Come out and plaaayay?” – I’d seen it so many times (not to mention those commercials for the Playstation game) that I can’t believe it never clicked.

There are other times that you don’t so much as bother interpreting the lyrics. Not like that stupid Blues Brothers song that humps Pachibel’s leg for three and a half minutes, but something that’s genuinelyy catchy, and has so much flow in the melody that it just washes over you. Remember Hey Sandy? It was the theme song to Pete and Pete, and the guy was singing so fast that you could barely make any of the words out. But damned if it wasn’t catchy, right?

Until you actually read the lyrics…

and realize it’s about Sandy Scheuer and the Kent State Shooting. Jaysusgawd. I’ll never be able to watch Nickelodeon the same way ever again.

Sometimes it’s not the meaniong of a song that you’re missing, but a little lyrical easter egg that you don’t fully grasp until you’ve printed the words out and looked at them. Frank Black does this all the time – Speedy Marie, Ana, and Robert Onion are all acrostics – but I think the coolest example of this is Tool’s Lateralus, which is written using the Fibonacci sequence. Instead of boring people who’ve already heard this song, I just stuck in this handy video that explains the song and plays it and drops in some cute pictures!

And of course, I think the songs that are most commonly misunderstood are the love songs. If you sing something really heartfelt sounding and play softly, million of brains will turn off and assume you’re playing a love song. It won’t matter if you’re signing about despression or your dead mum or a box of crackers, if you play it at the right tempo, it’ll pop up at a wedding. Musicians have known this and used it to great effect (see The Cure, Nirvana), but it’s even sneakier when someone who isn’t a snarly guitatrist does it. Posession? The Sarah McLachlan song?

Not a love song, you creepy bastards. It’s said the lyrics in the chorus are copied verbatim from a letter she got from a stalker. And you know, when you give stalkers royalty checks, they beeline right for the return address.

… anyway, the moral of the story is, read lyrics or look dumb.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 1:22 am and is filed under Echo Chamber . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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