Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.
“Vamos a playa” by Righeira carries a lightweight, upbeat tune that vacationers might hum on the way to the beach. But the Spanish lyrics reveal that it’s about the devastation left behind by nuclear armaments. And the schism between trying to live an ordinary life whilst having a nuclear Damocles sword waver over your head. That it became such a world wide hit makes it all the more ironic. I love it all the more for it.
99 luftballoons is similar.
The 80s was oddly dark.
Ay dios mio! I never knew this and always thought of it as cheesy vacation song.
most of Rammstein, but specifically Mutter
In the other direction from most of them here, “Losing my Religion” hit a lot harder before I realized it was just about anger.
Wait till you read and watch Take me to church
Tears in heaven from Eric Clapton. I always liked this song, and didn’t have a special connotation. But after learning its backstory, now I just feel sadness when I hear it. :-(
Well, as I said, I never paid attention to the lyrics before I looked them up. 🤷♂️
Such an upbeat 90s pop song with lyrics like “doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break.”
Do you remember the name of the movie?
Someone should make a spotify Playlist of all of these songs
Canon in D (piano version) sounds like a cool relaxing music. But I learned people use it for weddings. Ruined it. I don’t want any of my music to be tied to something stupid like weddings.
Ok, I’ll bite.
Why are weddings stupid?
hey, isn’t that the guy that was left at the alter when his fiancé ran off with his dad?
Oof. That sounds rough.
yeah, poor guy lost his father and sister in the same day.
??? Lol must be thinking of someone else. I havn’t been using lemmy for a year
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.
Fun fact: Semi Charmed Kinda Life made it into a late '90s Disney film about surfers. They didn’t even bleep anything because, I assume, they couldn’t understand what he was singing.
I love people being surprised by this song when a verse literally says ‘doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break’.
"It won’t stop, I won’t come down
I keep stock with the tick-tock rhythm
I bump for the drop, and then I bumped up
I took the hit that I was given, then I bumped again
Then I bumped again"
That entire verse, but honestly rereading the lyrics, I’m amazed that got radio play in the Bible belt. I know it did, because I heard it uncensored in southeastern Indiana.
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.
Much of the time I can’t even make out the lyrics, so I listen to music the same way
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.
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.
I’m the same way, actually.
ITT: People on the spectrum
Woo woo! Auditory Processing Disorder!
YEP.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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
“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?
https://www.cracked.com/blog/how-90s-pop-band-secretly-sold-nazism-to-america
That was my first exposure to the theory, I’ve never been able to confirm nor deny it conclusively, especially since cracked.com back in those times was only mostly satire. Like 99% of the pieces were satire, and then they’d publish something that wasn’t satire, and this could be a good example of that. Either way, I bought their CD way back when.
That seems completely serious and not satire at all.
Since I never saw the videos, my assumption was that ‘wants another baby’ was wanting to sleep around with multiple partners as in ‘I love you baby’, not having a literal baby. The six pointed stars and the cradle is pretty fucking clear it is about a Jewish woman sleeping around to have multiple babies, and yeah that is apparently one of those ‘Jews are taking over’ racist stereotypes.
Now I’m guessing that the Sign is a swastika.
Thanks for the link, I’m gonna go throw that album in the trash and feel like a jackass for not catching on earlier.
Ooof, TIL…
Their song “Happy Nation” sounds pretty questionable to me, too.
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…
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.
I saw MSI sometime in the mid to late 2000s. It was at a club in DC and Jimmy Urine said, sorry I can’t stay after the show and make-out with anyone because I got mono for some teenagers I made out with a few days ago.
It was very odd to announce in the middle of the set. I knew he was a year or so older than me and I found it very disgusting that he was talking about making out with teens so nonchalantly. Jimmy was probably about 30 at the time as I was late 20s.
Ah, what? Fuck man, I listen to Jimmy Urine every day :-(
Fuck.
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.
Same. I don’t condone them but their songs go hard. I don’t fund them either since I downloaded the music. Did you listen to their most recent release?
Did you know Jimmy played a ravager in Guardians of the Galaxy?
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.
I can hear that.
Staying sober at home with family can be hard enough, but when traveling, that’s hardcore mode.
Fuck, man, that is some depressing backstory.
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.
Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry
WTF? Don’t be sorry about that!
I know it’s just sort of a reflexive idiomatic politeness, but still, it is really important to make it absolutely crystal clear how irredeemably contemptible the “lost cause” shit take is, at every opportunity. Never, ever be polite about it!
Sherman did nothing wrong.
Yes he did. Sherman stopped before he hung the traitorous leadership.
Yeah, never leave that job half done.
Thank you.
“The south lost and slavery is bad, kindly get fucked.”
Sorry as a Canadian and a woman I just can’t not be polite…
Oh, no. We make an exception for Canadians. We know that if you stop being polite, Geneva is going to have to cut down a forest to write new regulations.
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.
