Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
No, it’s a song about a nice guy not getting his crush.
I’m learning so much from these comments…
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, 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.
I’m the same way, actually.
ITT: People on the spectrum
I think it’s fairly common to not always pay close attention to the lyrics. Most of the time, you hear a song on the radio, and you can’t always make out what it’s saying, but you’re still able to enjoy the music and the singing melody. Until you pay more attention or you seek out the lyrics, then you’re often surprised about what it’s saying, cause the lyrics weren’t the point when you used to listen to the song. It doesn’t mean that it’s world-changing or anything, but it just takes you by surprise.
Much of the time I can’t even make out the lyrics, so I listen to music the same way
I listen to music the exact same way. I will maybe pay attention to the chorus or catchy line, but a lot of lyrics are lost on me.
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.
But it’s about how the excitement of meth, like that of a new relationship, fades and leaves the speaker wanting something more substantial while still fondly reminiscing about the good times.
The speaker thinks of the girl as a “sunburn” he “would like to save.” He describes meth as something that “will lift you up until you break.” I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use. So no reason to feel weird I think.
I guess you’re right, I just never gave the song much thought. It’s just that it kinda felt like some happy song and I never paid attention to what it was saying, then I looked them up one day, out of curiosity, and I guess it juat felt unexpected to me, and that’s why it felt weird. Thinking about what you said makes me want to give the song another listen with an open mind, I guess.
I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use.
There’s also an extra verse, which wasn’t in the radio edit, that I think further supports what you’re saying.
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…
The cover definitely goes hard though. I’m legitimately stunned to see MSI mentioned at all, especially at the top of a thread. I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for decades, and rarely if ever see anyone mention them.
Yeah I used to love MSI and never really listened to the lyrics closely. Dude covers songs by black artists and straight up sings the N word.
See also his cover of “Big Poppa”
The more I looked into Jimmy Urine, the more problematic it got, like grooming a teenage girl.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside. It’s such a fun song as the guy and girl go back and forth. Until you realize that he’s guilting her into sleeping with him. Eww!
There is a version out there where they try to tone down the rapey elements. Sadly, it’s pretty clunky how they do it.
No, it is about both people coming up with excuses for her to stay when social expectations mean staying scandalous and everyone else would gossip.
The original film the song appears (Neptune’s Daughter) in actually sings the song twice. The first one is very clearly “I want to leave” vs “but you can’t.” He literally takes the hat off of her head, and she seems very irritated throughout.
The second is a woman trying to stop a man from leaving, to the degree that he ends up putting her clothes on by mistake in an attempt to leave faster. And, as assault of men often is, it’s portrayed for laughs.
The entire song is someone refusing to take “no” for an answer. At no point does the typically female role ever make an excuse to STAY, only to LEAVE.
I think you are mistaking the desire to leave as a personal desire and not an obligation due to social pressure.
The socond set of back and forth is all about other people’s expectations and then hesitsting.
My mother will start to worry (beautiful, what’s your hurry?)
And father will be pacing the floor (listen to the fireplace roar)
So really I’d better scurry (beautiful, please don’t hurry)
Well maybe just a half a drink more (put some records on while I pour)
Watch the damn scene. She is trying to brush him off. She wants to leave, and he is not letting her. She is politely saying no, and he is politely forcing her to stay. Even if it is due to social pressure, let her fucking leave.
“Well maybe just a half a drink more” is said when he has just snatched the coat off her back and is still holding it. Her face is a picture of resignation, not coy flirtation. She then asks “say, what’s in this drink” and puts it down with a scowl on her face.
This is flirtatious by the standards of a Sean Connery movie.
Ughhh, no no no no no. It’s them debating on what excuse she will use so the community doesn’t slut shame her!
Nope. In the original scene in Neptune’s Daughter, she is actively trying to leave and he is doing everything he can to stop her. Note that she never makes an excuse to stay, only to leave.
The song predates that. https://www.goretro.com/2016/12/why-baby-its-cold-outside-is-not-about.html?m=1
Frank Loesser’s son, John, was interviewed about the song by the Palm Bean Post in 2010 that was reprinted on the official site for his dad. From the article:
“My father wrote that song as a piece of special material for he and my mother to do at parties,” says John Loesser, who runs the Lyric Theatre in Stuart, and is the son of legendary composer Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.)
Frank Loesser’s wife, Lynn, was a nightclub singer who had moved from Terre Haute, Ind. to New York in search of a career. She was singing in a nightclub when she met Frank Loesser around 1930.
The song itself was written in 1944, when Loesser and his wife had just moved into the Hotel Navarro in New York. They gave a housewarming party for themselves and when they did the number, everybody went crazy.
“We had to do it over and over again,” Lynn Loesser told her kids, “and we became instant parlor room stars.”
Performers started to take note of the song, and record covers of it. It’s also featured in the 1949 musical comedy Neptune’s Daughter as sung by Ricardo Montalbán and Esther Williams below. And in that movie, it takes an ironic tone since the movie takes place in a warm climate. It also earned Loesser an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
“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.
Oh fuck, no way.
Ok, I read thenlink and the bassist was an opely total piece of shit before joining the band but I didn’t see anyhing about the AoB songs being hidden propaganda or the rest of the band’s history. Where does the speculation come from?
Ooof, TIL…
Running to the Sea - Royksopp. Now that I know it’s about some sort of terrorist attack, I just feel weird listening to it now
The period between hearing and knowing what the song was about was nearly instantaneous but “Smack my bitch up” has an incredibly catchy tune.
It’d be really nice if they released an instrumental version one day.
When I first heard it my brain convinced me that the lyrics were “Snap my Picture” for some reason.
Then I saw the video.
For what it’s worth, that line is a sample from an Ultramagnetic MCs song.
Honestly, that’s worth a fair bit to me.
Yeah, I feel like what that insight “means” is in the eye of the beholder. It’s definitely not great in the context of the original song either, but it’s a bit less in-your-face.
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.”
I got that back when it came out and always wondered why folks treated it like alternative pop. It’s seems like a dark mirror on rape to me.
That is what it was.
It was criticizing something from the first person perspective like Nirvana’a Polly, or The Police’s Every Breath You Take.
Jump by Van Halen when found out that it’s about hanging yourself.
Well, I still like it but it’s with a double feeling.
From genius.com : “The original inspiration for the lyrics came from David Lee Roth watching a person on TV who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off of a building and Roth figured someone in the crowd must be thinking, “Go ahead and jump”. It was, however, not written about suicide – the song is about ‘jumping’ on the opportunity to hook up with someone.”
Though I can see where you got that.
The lyric “I jump up and nothing gets me down” jumping off a stool/chair but because of the noose he doesn’t get down.
But I can see your point.
I thought it was about starting a fight, like jumping someone.
TIL
I don’t know what the vast majority of songs I listen to are about. I have some genetic defect that makes it near impossible to hear lyrics. It all sounds like melody to me.
