Cool Songs that people may not know what they are about

[flylock shox]

Although it has often been misinterpreted by the mainstream media as being just another urban soliloquy about teenaged angst, unrequited love, and man's struggle against racism and religious intolerance, Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" is really just about a guy who likes big butts and, sadly, is incapable of lying about it.

It really makes you think.

[fatso]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

Although it has often been misinterpreted by the mainstream media as being just another urban soliloquy about teenaged angst, unrequited love, and man's struggle against racism and religious intolerance, Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" is really just about a guy who likes big butts and, sadly, is incapable of lying about it.

It really makes you think.

ha ha... It's almost deceptive in its forthright narrative! lol...

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Layla is about Eric Clapton's jealousy and screaming lustful desire for George Harrison's wife.

This might be an in-thread fata, but I don't have the time to read through the entire thread right now.

Wonderful Tonight was written for her after he married her. I forget which song, but there's another one that in the lyrics he mentions "his best friend's wife" or something along those lines.

[I_H8_Crawford]

"Get Low" by Lil Jon took on even more meaning when I learned what "skeet" means.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Couple of Nirvana songs, but probably everyone knows about these:

- Smells Like Teen Spirit - title taken from something a friend wrote on Cobain's wall, apparently he smelled like Teen Spirit, a deodorant

- Polly - about a woman held prisoner/abused. I think it was based on a newspaper story

- Something In The Way - Cobain's experience of heroin

All true.

OT:

As well, Cobain was very verbal about the lyric writing technique used for about 90% of Nirvana's songs, which was inspired by a particular chapter in William S. Burrough's The Ticket That Exploded (AKA Nova Police III).

This chapter detailed a nearly groundbreaking chronology of changing time, personal perception and vantage point, and manipulating the world around you through pre-recorded noises played in areas and places they did not belong, or at times they should not exist. The entire chapter is written without punctuation and minimal capitalization. There is even a decreasingly rare tape of Burrough's reading this and other excerpts of his books over Cobain improvising on guitar, which were recorded a couple years before their deaths.

Cobain was moved to writing notebooks of poems and words, which he would then pour through and 'cut and paste' rhyming or similar themed lines into songs.

[North East Goon]

The Beatles songs were very simple in actuality. Dear Prudence was about Prudence Farrow sister of Mia Farrow and how she wouldnt leave her room. A Day in the Life, was John Lennon screwing with articles in the daily paper. The one strange meaning I found about one of the Beatles songs was Hello, Goodbye is about a man going insane.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Buzzard

A lot of the Beatles music was just that, music with a bunch of words thrown into match, meaning absolutely squat. They themselves have admitted that. Whether the words were drug influenced or not, I'm sure a lot were.

Lennon was supposed to have smirked to their producer after recording walrus, saying "Let them try to figure that one out".

Another one like this was "Glass Onion". Lennon came out later and said it was a deliberate attempt to screw with people who tried to decipher their lyrics into some kind of secret message. It was complete gibberish for the sake of gibberish.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Led Zeppelin's All of My Love was written for Robert Plant's son Kieran who died as a young child from a rare viral infection.

[guzzy]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Layla is about Eric Clapton's jealousy and screaming lustful desire for George Harrison's wife.

...who he ended up marrying with Harrison as his best man. He also wrote Wonderful Tonight for her.

[guzzy]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Led Zeppelin's All of My Love was written for Robert Plant's son Kieran who died as a young child from a rare viral infection.

and he dislikes (not regrets) releasing the song on the album because it didn't fit with the album. Every album they released had a theme, or a feeling to it. Plant thought that All of My Love took away from the theme of the album. The other band members love the song.

[guzzy]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I read an interview with Mike Patton (from Faith No More) before where he said that the song "Epic" was about masturbation. Sort of make sense I guess.

Other great songs about masturbation are "Flagpole Sitta" and "Blister in the SUn"

Both fanstastic songs

[guzzy]

Originally Posted by Dion

Phil Collins's "In The Air Tonight"

*Real Meaning*, Phil and his best friend were swimming at the beach and his mate began to drown so Phil asked a man to help and he said no "Thinking it was a joke" so phil watched his best friend as a kid drown and die. So later on Phil whilst on tour tracked this guy down and sent him front row seat tickets and first class air fair ticket to his tour and limosoine and everything, then when he started singing this song he put the spot light on the guy, and started singing, a few weeks later due to all the humiliation and publicity the guy commited suicide.

http://www.inthe70s.com/generated/lyricsmeaning.shtml

If i am not mistaken, this is an urban legend (I could be wrong). The song was a song and nothing more. It was not a true story that happened to Phil Collings. There is a website that I learned of from FFWD magazine that used to feature stories like this every week (straightdope.com). You send in a question and the guy researches the hell out of it. In the Air Tonight was researched and the guy talks about what the song means.

Very cool website

[troutman]

Few people know that My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas is really about organic chemistry. Here is a proper interpretation of the lyrics:

The most common acid and base classification for organic chemists is the Bronsted-Lowry acid and base definition. Bronsted acids are molecules that have the ability to donate a proton (in other words, a molecule which has an H+ that can be ripped off easily by a base). Bronsted bases have the ability to accept a proton (or can readily pull off an H+ from an acid). A proton, of course, is just a hydrogen atom, stripped of its lone electron (an H+ ion).