this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

most of Rammstein, but specifically Mutter

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

In the other direction from most of them here, “Losing my Religion” hit a lot harder before I realized it was just about anger.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

Wait till you read and watch Take me to church

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones. It's a song about banging a slave, but I didn't know that as a kid.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 12 hours ago

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...
[–] [email protected] 10 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 minutes ago

Seriously? Well he could have made that more clear.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

Fuck, man, that is some depressing backstory.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Constipated by Weird Al. That changed me.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

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".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 15 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 19 hours ago

No, it's a song about a nice guy not getting his crush.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Sherman did nothing wrong.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 15 hours ago

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.....

[–] [email protected] 37 points 22 hours ago (13 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

"The sky was gold, it was rose, I was taking sips of it through my nose..." didn't clue you in?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Oh. Never mind, I'm old.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Hey there Delilah

The dude who wrote it is a creep

[–] [email protected] 23 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

It's also one of the most inescapable songs on public radio ever.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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...

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

“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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

Their song "Happy Nation" sounds pretty questionable to me, too.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots. Great music, love STP, but it's basically about raping someone.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 21 hours ago

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."

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