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.
“Opens up one eager eye” is an incredibly eldritch lyric.
Ay dios mio! I never knew this and always thought of it as cheesy vacation song.
In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry. It’s such a nice catchy tune that I enjoyed until my partner pointed out:
Have a drink, have a drive Go out and see what you can find If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel
Which, ew.
Sting. Every step you take. It’s actually angry and malicious. There’s an interview with Sting saying something to that effect.
Do you maybe mean “Every Breath You Take” by The Police? That’s a common answer to this kind of question. A lot of people think of it as cute and romantic at first, but the song really talk about the Big Brother (from George Orwell’s 1984): a state of constant surveillance watching “every breath you take, every move you make”.
I have no idea how anyone who’s even vaguely tuned into that song thinks it’s romantic.
Heck, there a folks out there that still insist that “The Boys of Summer” is about baseball.
Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace
I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace
I keep crying, baby, baby please
Oh, can’t you see
You belong to me?
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take?I understand the full lyrics, but most songs generally default to romanticism. If you’re not paying attention it’s easy to misinterpret.
If you’re not paying attention, you hear the “I’m watching you” part, which is creepy as fuck.
Yes that’s the one I’m talking about. I could have sworn I heard an interview about him talking about how it’s about someone stalking a former lover. Memory is weird that way. You’re interpretation is probably the one I’m going to go with from now on though I like that more.
I could see it being a bit of both. Lyrics are often inspired by something and describing something else. In this case, someone stalking a former lover could be seen as “going full 1984’s Big Brother” on them… and it makes sense with the whole romantic mood that the song has: the stalker sees themself as romantic and sings it that way, but when you look closer you realise it’s actually very creepy.
Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones. It’s a song about banging a slave, but I didn’t know that as a kid.
Similarly, watching the music video for Africa by Toto changes the entire vibe of the song. It’s about wanting to bang a black woman. Bless those rains, I guess.
Based on the lyrics I always thought it was about werewolves.
Wait until you find out about “Stray Cat Blues.”
most of Rammstein, but specifically Mutter
For me it was Mein Teil. I’m used to most of Rammstein’s dark stuff, but man, this one is deeply disturbing.
Lyrics for those who are curious and not squeamish
https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-rammstein-mein-teil-english-translation-lyrics
In case people were unaware, this references a real event where a man posted an ad for a man willing to be killed and eaten.
I just listen to the Left Podcast on the Left episode about him.
Here’s another song that explicitly references it. Better song too, IMO.
at least it was consensual, not like Wiener Blut or Ich tue dir weh
Not sure, if I stopped listening to mainstream music around that time, but uh, both of my examples are from 2011, apparently:
- Kind of a classic response to this question, is “Pumped Up Kicks” from Foster The People. It’s got that upbeat melody, and the lyrics are this:
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet.- And my other example is “The A Team”, apparently originally from Ed Sheeran, and apparently also with an upbeat melody. I think, I only ever listened to a cover version. But yeah, it’s about drug use and sex work, and how those kind of necessitate each other…
I think pumped up kicks is actually a really poignant statement on how normalized gun violence is in the states, to the point where this song was all over radios and I’m sure all over high school dances and nobody thought twice about it. Like obviously the band did it intentionally but the fact that the point was missed so hard by everyone who sang along. It is like Hey Ya vibes to me, or smells like teen spirit for the older crowds. The point is to take these very serious ideas and use them to highlight people’s willful ignorance.
In the other direction from most of them here, “Losing my Religion” hit a lot harder before I realized it was just about anger.
Closing time by Semisonic I thought it was about going home with someone after a night out at the bar. It’s about the lead singers child being born.
Sort of, Dan Wilson said he had the idea while writing the song because his wife was pregnant so he slipped it in as a double entendre. It’s like 90% bar closing with a couple lines alluding to being born: “Closing time, this room won’t be open till your brothers or your sisters come”.
Did he sing about his wife’s womb as a pub that’s closing and expelling the drunkards?
Seriously? Well he could have made that more clear.
Constipated by Weird Al. That changed me.
Constipation blues - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
A song about true pain.
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. :-(
I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown Rats.
Mind, when I first heard it my English was not that good so I really only got the Chorus about not liking Mondays (and who does, eh?). Dismissed the “shoot the whole day down” as an idiom for something which I did not know.
Then at some point much later I realized it’s actually a school shooting.
Someone should make a spotify Playlist of all of these songs
Hard Habit To Break by Chicago is pretty straightforward, but I liked it on the radio as a kid because it’s peppy and has an orchestra.
Decades later I get access to music service libraries and give it a listen.
I was a jerk and you left me, and now you’re with another guy. I’m not sorry. I’m not going to do better. But I have an orchestra!
I still like it, but have perspective now.
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.”
deleted by creator
I remember listening to Frank Zappa’s Bobby Brown when I was a kid, not knowing English at all. Great song but very inappropriate for kids, which my parents probably thought was funny.
