Not really subtle, but it's different, right? With fortunate son, there's this weirder dynamic where you have to actually string the entire thing together to gather the meaning. I would say unless you went and asked someone to repeat the lines to you after the song is over and tell you what they meant, they would never really 'get' what the song is saying.

I was going to reply to the uwu pawb about that, but it's really difficult to put it into words. There's something about a really catchy song with really good flow and rhythm and melody and composition that does sort of turn your brain off. It 'bypasses' the logical language part of your brain's comprehension and just gets you grooving. If I were a bettor, I would put money on it being the same reason that people with stutters can often sing without issue: it's the same part of the brain (Broca's area, if you want to pull out my neuroscientist days) that issues the commands to the muscles of the mouth and tongue and such, but the area that is directing Broca's area is different (there's an area called Wernicke's area that is really heavily involved in the comprehension of language; it's on the left side of the brain, while a great deal of your musical appreciation bits are in the right side of the brain [and I'm definitely getting far out of my knowledge base here, it's been a great while since I did brain and specific tasks]). If you just listen/sing to the music, and never pull it up out of the memory banks and into your 'logical' part of the brain, you'll never really engage with the meaning of the music/song.

Anyway. I don't know quite how to describe it, but like nicki said, if you just sing the chorus of independence day, you'd probably not get the song's imagery, but the verses are more straightforward and easy to comprehend in mcbride's song than in creedence's. I'm just more surprised about it being misunderstood than fortunate son, I guess, more than I'm totally surprised.