Why do songs have meanings

Well, you can relax, because none of that is true. The Suzanne that Taylor sings about is Suzanne Schnerr, a childhood friend of Taylor who committed suicide while he was recording his first album. As for the flying machine in pieces, it has nothing to do with an airplane. Taylor was name-dropping his former band, The Flying Machines, which ended in less than amicable terms.

There was no plane crash, or at least there wasn't in this James Taylor classic. It's probably impossible to hear this song anymore and not think of Shrek or any of its sequels.

But believe it or not, "All Star" really had nothing to do with lovable green ogres voiced by Mike Myers. There've been many theories that the Smash Mouth mega-hit was a warning about climate change. How about yours? The first song on Destroyer , arguably KISS's best album, is widely considered a party anthem and a tribute to the city of Detroit. But it's also a tragic tale of a teenage fan who learned too late that there are worse things than being late to a KISS concert.

Lead singer Paul Stanley admitted that the the song wasn't all fist-bumping rock celebration, but was actually inspired by a real KISS fan who died in a car crash, hitting a truck in a head-on collision while speeding to make it to a show on time. Clapton has never been so syrupy sweet as in this love ballad to his future wife Pattie Boyd, also known as ex-Mrs.

George Harrison and the woman who once had Clapton "on his knees" in "Layla. But while this tune doesn't seem to be anything but unabashed adoration — does Clapton do anything but tell his lady friend that she looks wonderful and she is wonderful and he loves her so very much?

What is that all about? Rumor has it that "Wonderful Tonight" was written when Boyd and Clapton were getting ready to attend a party hosted by friends Paul and Linda McCartney, a celebration of Buddy Holly's birthday. Boyd was taken longer than usual to get ready, and every time she tried on a new outfit, Clapton said, "You look wonderful. Can we please go now? It's hard to listen to this Parton classic —made famous by Whitney Houston in the early 90s—and not think it's about a romantic relationship coming to an end.

But when Parton originally wrote it in , she meant it as a farewell to her mentor and longtime singing partner Porter Wagoner. She played it for him as a way of breaking the news that she was about to go solo and their professional relationship was over. Or as Parton explained it years later, "It's saying, 'Just because I'm going don't mean I wont love you. I appreciate you and I hope you do great and I appreciate everything you've done, but I'm out of here.

You would think that a song with a title like "Losing My Religion" would at least be tangentially about religion. But R. It was an old Southern saying, he claimed, "the same as being at the end of your rope or reaching the final straw and snapping. Is that also an old Southern saying? We're afraid to ask.

All we know is that we'll never be able to hear this song again without thinking of a very annoyed waitress. This may be the most shocking revelation of this list. That's right, it was "written about a guy who was the heir to a fast-food fortune," Oates admitted several years ago. We don't know about you, but this is going to take some time for us to digest. It'd be like finding out that the Prince song "Darling Nikki" is really about a guy named Nicholas.

It was the first big hit for Paul Simon as a solo artist, and the title came, as he admitted in a Rolling Stone interview, from a menu. And I said, 'Oh, I love that title. I gotta use that one. Whatever your interpretation of this U2 song , it's probably wrong. There have been all kinds of explanations, offered by fans and the band alike, and they've all been wildly different.

Some have suggested that it's about the band feeling fractured, or the Edge's marital problems, or Bono's memories of his troubled relationship with his dad after the death of his mom. The only thing Bono will say with any certainty about the song is that it's "a bit twisted, which is why I could never figure out why people want it at their weddings. I have certainly met a hundred people who've had it at their weddings. I tell them, 'Are you mad? It's about splitting up!

Nobody seems to remember that the song is actually called "Good Riddance" and that the "Time of Your Life" part is actually in parentheses. His girlfriend was moving to Ecuador and he wasn't exactly happy about it.

And yet, for the end of time, this song will be included in montages trying to be wistfully nostalgic and romantic, in which the "Good Riddance" part will be ignored and the "I hope you had the time of your life" line will be repeated without bitterness.

All Rights Reserved. Open side menu button. Collins swears by the story that he pulled together the lyrics in a snap during a studio recording session, and laughs off the rumors swirling around the origins of "In the Air Tonight.

At its heart, one of The Clash's most scathing political statement is less a song about the state of British politics and more a song about Joe Strummer's personal fear of drowning. In a dissection of "London Calling" published by the Wall Street Journal , Mick Jones mentioned the band's nervousness regarding a London Evening Standard headline about the possibility of the Thames River overflowing and flooding London. How did The Clash react to the news?

According to Jones , "We flipped. That nagging fear of drowning propelled Strummer's first few drafts of the song's lyrics, at least until Jones stepped in to broaden the scope until "the song became this warning about the doom of everyday life.

A highlight from the McCartney songbook and written at his kitchen table in Scotland , Sir Paul penned "Blackbird" about the American Civil Rights Movement, drawing inspiration from the racial desegregation of the Little Rock, Arkansas, school system.

It wasn't necessarily a black 'bird,' but it works that way, as much as then you called girls 'birds' A perennial choice for the best prom song , Green Day's acoustic ballad was originally meant to be anything but a romantic affair.

Brooding frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the number about a girlfriend who was moving away to Ecuador, and titled the song "Good Riddance" out of frustration with the breakup.

Not that the misinterpretation of the ballad as a high school slow dance number fazes Armstrong. That's fine. No list of misunderstood songs is complete without " Born in the U. As Songfacts points out , "Most people thought it was a patriotic song about American pride, when it actually cast a shameful eye on how America treated its Vietnam veterans Springsteen explains that the song's protagonist is "isolated from the government, isolated from his family, to the point where nothing makes sense.

Another song whose meaning was obscured by its party anthem vibes, this Calypso-lite tune featured a delightful and then annoyingly ubiquitous call-and-response question that never got answered. Asking who let the dogs out became low-hanging comedy fruit after the song's release in , which meant most people missed that it was "a man-bashing song.

Everyone's having a great time Yippie-Yi-Yo , and then jerks start treating women like objects, and it ruins everything woof, woof, woof. The surface-level reading of the flighty pop song is pretty standard: Forbidden young love, the thrills of disappointing your parents, and a boyfriend imploring you to run away with him.

So it's not exactly Taylor Swift's "Love Story. There's an entire subgenre of music whose lyrics are ignored because the instrumentals are so fun, and "Macarena" may be its queen.

Not understanding Spanish also gave listeners another reason to gleefully swing their hips while the duo sang about a young woman who cheats on her boyfriend with two of his friends while he's enlisting in the Army. Not great, Macarena! Sadly, our well-meaning soul mate is preparing their romantic overtures to a song about a stalker. But I tried to inject a little bit of levity into it to make it more lighthearted. Psy's crowning earworm with its invisible horse dance was Korea's first massive global musical export, and it came with its very own goofy music video where the elements of Psy's big-money lifestyle are revealed to be something absurdly pathetic.

Without knowing Psy or Korean culture, it's easy to think he's simply making fun of himself, but the song and the video are both mocking a specific lifestyle of chasing the appearance of wealth without taking care of your core needs.

The hollow commercial attitude is typified in the song by the Gangnam district think Beverly Hills where trust-funders eat cheap food in order to afford expensive coffee that they conspicuously down in one sip instead of savoring. As the song satirizing the pointless pursuit of material reached unseen YouTube success, Psy told The Atlantic , "Human society is so hollow, and even while filming [the music video] I felt pathetic.

You just donated to your local pet shelter. We get it. It's an uplifting song about finding solace at your lowest point through the comforting arms of an angel, a sweet message carried by McLachlan's heavenly voice and soothing piano tones. Historically speaking, was a big year. That was the summer Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Woodstock took place, and the Stonewall Riots happened.

The legends surrounding the backstory to Phil Collins' hit are plentiful and likely grew thanks to a reference in Eminem's song "Stan. I was just pissed off, ya know? I was angry," Collins told Jimmy Fallon on an episode of "The Tonight Show" in , adding that he was going through an emotionally taxing divorce. Most people think the ballad by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band is about people putting aside their differences to change the world, but the song — which was cowritten by his wife Yoko Ono — is more political.

According to a Rolling Stone article, Lennon once described the song as "virtually the Communist Manifesto, even though I am not particularly a communist and I do not belong to any movement. The song clearly asks the listener to imagine a world without religion or possessions, but Lennon admitted that he intentionally tried to "sugarcoat" his message with the song's sweetness.

Most listeners think the song is about a profound, personal loss — or think about the commercials for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — but Sarah McLachlan revealed the song was inspired by the death of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, who died of an apparent drug overdose in Though the song was everywhere in , many people had no idea what the Hanson brothers were singing about.

The whole song's about the fact that almost everything in your life will come and go very quickly," Zac Hanson told Australia's "Kyle and Jackie O Show" in World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more.

A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Stephanie Marcus. There are plenty of popular songs that are misunderstood by listeners, according to the artists who wrote them. Semisonic's popular drinking anthem "Closing Time" is surprisingly about the birth of the lead singer's daughter. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. The Goo Goo Dolls' "Slide" is about dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

It's about drug addiction. Don McLean's classic campfire song "American Pie" disguises its depressing nature with catchiness. Semisonic's "Closing Time" isn't actually an anthem for the last call. Clash's "Rock the Casbah" was inspired by the ban on music in Iran.

Bryan Adams' song "Summer of '69" is not referencing the year. Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" wasn't written after he saw a man let another man drown — it's about his divorce. John Lennon's "Imagine" isn't simply a song about unity and world peace.

Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" is about someone who died from heroin addiction. Loading Something is loading.