h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems to me there are many songs that have gotten very famous, but completely misunderstood. One example is "Born In The USA" which was meant as a criticism of USA. Now it is seen a tribute to the country. Or Imagine, which was apparently played at the millenium thingy, right after the Bishop of Canterbury's speech. And at other religious gatherings as well.

Can you think of other songs that seems to have gone horribly wrong?

"Every Breath You Take" by the Police seems to be widely accepted as quite a nice love song but the actual lyrics seem quite dark and bitter which I think was the intention. I might be wrong though.

Slightly disappointed, misread the subject and thought this was failed snogs. Oh well!

k

The Beatles - Lucy In the sky with diamonds. Famous for being a song about acid, even though the beatles maintain that it about something completely different.

Van Halen - Jump. Actually about suicide, although many 80s film productions used it as a happy song.

What about the Children and need song "Perfect Day"? Wasn't that about heroin or something

'Jerusalem' was written with definite Socialist leanings ('dark satanic mills') but seems to have been hijacked by the Conservative, Middle-England, 'vicars on bicycles and cricket on the village green' brigade.

The band Rammstein from Germany is often thought to be singing 'You hate me' in their song, 'Du hast.' In fact, they are saying 'You asked me... and I said nothing.' You can check it out in detail here A680861.

Yelbakk - proud of how subtly he managed to make referrene to his latest Edited Guide Entry.

Re: The Beatles-they would say that, wouldn't they. Besides it was McCartney who says that, and Lennon wrote it, so work it out for yourself.
Virtually any religious song by the Violent Femmes-always assumed to be sarcy and unpleasant, when actually they are good old god fearing boys...

Then there's songs that one way or another have lost their original purpose. "Free Nelson Mandela" springs to mind...

Or Uptown girl, didn't they get divorced?

Re: The Beatles. The band have, I think never denied that "Tomorrow Never Knows" was about LSD and "Got To Get You Into My Life" was about Marijuana. The only reason they would vehemently deny that "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" was about LSD must be, bizarrely, that it's true.

"You're Gorgeous" by Baby Bird (big hit in the UK in 1996) had comically dark overtones about vapid love, yet was bought as a lovesong because of it's "You're Gorgeous" chorus.

Another example - The Verve's "The Drug's Don't Work" is supposedly about the death of Richard Ashcroft's father. It has nothing whatsoever to do with recreational drug use. This didn't stop a whole bunch of music papers telling us about how the song was about the "post-E generation" and other smart-ass claptrap.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, by Eric Idle, from Life of Brian, sung when all hope is gone. Except by Manchester United fans, who used to sing it when they scored a goal.

Do you think so? I always felt Jerusalem to be very left wing. I suppose it could have been picked up by the Middle-Englanders who pine for the old days of vicars on bicycles etc.

I have it on good authority from a scholar of Blake, that the 'dark satanic mills' in the original poem didn't so much refer to the factories that were springing up at the time (industrial revolution and all that), as to the processes of church and state, and that Blake was more concerned with internal than external revolution. It also had some leanings toward the French revolution, which had occured not long before Blake started work on 'Jerusalem'. I wish I could explain it more clearly, but I had a hard enough time picking that much of his rather, shall we say, loftily written email

Don't Stand So close to Me - The Police, all about dodgy teacher/pupil lust.

Golden Brown, Stranglers - drugs (heroin or dope, never can remember)

Seasons in the sun - anti war song

Lighter shade of pale - Proco harem - absolutely no meaning to the lyrics at all and music heavilly derived from (insert classical composer name here - I forget)

Pass The Dutchy - Musical Youth - Joint smoking

And many more...

CH



PS for a web version of Look on the bright side visit

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Damm, that post missed the start (I was writting it yesterday when the sever went down and saved it)

What I said at the start is that although some songs didn't "fail" their lyrics were simply totally ignored and the songs became popular without a true realization of the content.

CH

While it may seem bizarre to sing "Imagine" at a Millennium event alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech, you will find on close examination of the bishop's religion that it stands for exactly the same things: abolition of the old order, no possessions, no war, universal peace and a brotherhood of man.

Every Breath You Take is definitlely a sinister song about one person totally controlling another, in a 1984-style setup: "Every smile you fake, I'll be watching you".

'Pass the Dutchy' isn't actually about drugs, as the lyrics were *heavily* changed from the original 'Pass the Kouchie' by The Mighty Diamonds. A Dutchy, I believe is a cooking pot?
I've always assumed that 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was about drug use-in fact, that was so obvious to me that I never bothered to ask the guy who wrote it on the two or three times I've met him...

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Under the Bridge, it was all about a point in the singers life when he hit rock bottom trying to score heroin under a bridge in Los Angeles.
How the All Saints were able to relate to this story always confused me slightly.

Beyond a certain point, no singer can relate to every song they sing, in that their own experience cannot match. There's been an awful lot of gay men singing boy/girl songs very convincingly, a lot of happily married singers doing the Darling Don't Go Line, and a lot of adulterers doing the Love You Always routine....

There's not going to be much that your average 17 year old boy band can sing with any sincerity, is there? And a remember a lot of nicely brought up middle class types trying to do the Billy Bragg type thing in the 80's without much conviction... Pop and politics - do they ever work well together?

Clang!

Was that a name I heard dropping?

k