5 Famous Hidden Song Meanings (That Are Total B.S.)
Because songwriters worry more about catchy rhymes than deep meaning, song lyrics can be more abstract and esoteric than Jackson Pollock farting chalk dust into a napkin. The problem is that some fans swear that every nonsensical song has some deeper interpretation just waiting to be decoded. That's why so many classic songs have mythical (and often dark and disturbing) alternate meanings that fans insist are true.
They're almost always wrong. For instance ...
#5. "Hotel California" -- It's About Satanism, Right?
Whether you know "Hotel California" as "that weird Eagles song" or "that weird devil-worshiping song" probably depends on how religious your parents were.
When "Hotel California" was released in 1976, everyone heard it but no one really knew what it meant. The lyrics talked about trying to "Kill the beast" and "Stab it with their steely knives," and included the ominous line, "You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave." Honestly, it kind of sounds like they're singing about using the reference section in a library full of giant monsters, since those are the books you can technically check out but aren't permitted to remove from the building.
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"Lookin' it up in the local libraaaary!"
That was when someone noticed something odd about the album cover, which features a picture of the band in some luxury hotel courtyard with crowds of people in the background. Above the crowd, looking out from a balcony on the upper left, is a shape whose face you can't fully see, but vaguely looks bald, goateed and threatening.
It Will Pass
"Hey, sorry everyone, but is the ice machine down there?"
Naturally, people came to the conclusion that the figure on the balcony was none other than Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, author of The Satanic Bible and proud parent of a son that he freaking named Satan.
He even had "Anton + Satan = BFFs" tattooed above his ass.
Now that Anton LaVey was found, the lyrics seemed to make sense: "The Beast," "You can never leave" "This could be heaven or this could be hell." "Hotel California" is a song about Anton LaVey converting people to his church of Satanism, from which they could "never leave." The "truth" about the song persists to this day, found in Internet forums, an old issue of The Milwaukee Sentinel and the nothing-if-not-reputable website Jesus Is Savior.
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They're on to your globe-spanning Satanist conspiracy, Eagles.
Actually ...
"Hotel California" has pretty much nothing to do with Satanism. The Eagles have admitted it was a way of speaking out against the greed and hedonism of the music industry in the 1970s (i.e., the drugs, money and women they themselves were drowning in). The photographer responsible for the album cover said the picture expressed "faded loss of innocence and decadence," which is pretentious-speak for "a bunch of assholes standing in a lobby."
"What about the face in the window?" you say. "I heard somewhere they didn't even know it was there. Maybe it wasn't Anton LaVey, but really ... a ghost." Unfortunately not. As Snopes points out:
"The shadowy figure was a woman hired for the photo shoot."
centrosangiorgio.com
That is kind of a lot of hair for a bald man.
Yep. The person mistaken for a bald, goatee-sporting antichrist was, in fact, just some lady who had nothing to do with anything and wouldn't even have been memorable were it not for the poor lighting of the photograph and the bafflingly deliberate decision to separate her from the rest of the group, presumably because she showed up late for the shoot and/or got Don Henley's name wrong.
#4. Isn't "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" About an Acid Trip?
Mention the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" to a group of people and inevitably one of them will start talking about LSD. And, in fact, we're wagering that most of the people in our readership who know the song only know it as "That song that's secretly about doing acid." After all, it's coded right there in the title, right? Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
In 1967, John Lennon alone accounted for nearly 40 percent of the world's LSD consumption.
And then you get lyrics like this:
"Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain/ Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies/ Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers/ That grow so incredibly high."
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So incredibly high.
Clearly it's alluding to an acid trip. And this isn't exactly a stretch: The Beatles, remember, were a band that wrote songs about an octopus inviting people to the seabed to visit his garden, people who believe they are Arctic blueberry animals and general dick-twisting insanity.
Really, we're not sure that most of what the Beatles did wasn't about goddamned acid.
Actually ...
Shockingly, "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" is about a girl called Lucy, in the sky, with some diamonds. See, John Lennon's son Julian drew a picture of his best friend Lucy surrounded by diamonds in the sky, and John liked it enough to name the song after it.
Wonderlane
Although to be fair, the kid was clearly on acid when he drew it.
The Beatles freely admit to using drugs as inspiration for songs, and odds are LSD was one of them. But as for this particular song being a metaphor for the drug itself? Sorry, but no. John Lennon said, "It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until someone pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It's not an acid song."
This didn't stop the BBC from banning the song, which, considering they were OK with a song about a child who murdered the fuck out of everyone around him with a goddamn hammer, seems a little hypocritical.
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Don't worry, folks. "I Am the Walrus" is still definitely about drugs. All the drugs.
#3. "Puff the Magic Dragon" Is Totally About Smoking Pot ...
Hopefully, you don't need to be told anything about "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary, but if you do, please click the link. Even for a children's song, it seems overly bizarre and surreal, so of course it wasn't long after its release in the early 1960s when people started trying to dissect the lyrics:
"Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea/ And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee/ Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff/ And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff."
People don't hug like that sober.
Remember, this was the '60s, a time when pretty much everyone was smoking weed. So with "Puff the Magic Dragon," aside from the obvious "chasing the dragon" metaphor, people figured that's what the song was about. "Puff," i.e., to smoke, "dragon," as in "draggin[g]" or "to take a drag" and "autumn mist" being the fog of pot smoke.
"Little Jackie Paper," the little rascal he was, was obviously a reference to rolling papers. Sealing wax, fancy stuff -- bongs, clearly. People have managed to find meaning in pretty much every line in the song, and we must admit, it seems pretty convincing. And it makes sense that a folk rock trio like Peter, Paul and Mary would aim a song at the rapidly growing hippie movement.
BassPlyr23
Here they are in 2006, looking more like math teachers than doobed-up radicals.
Actually ...
We're sorry to drag you down to earth like this, but "Puff the Magic Dragon's" writers never intended any hidden meanings. In fact, they were pretty upset about the rumors, claiming the song was about:
"... a loss of innocence and having to face an adult world ... I find the fact that people interpret it as a drug song annoying. It would be insidious to propagandize about drugs in a song for little kids."
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But what about their 1970 hit, "Hops the Frothy, Full-Bodied Llama"?
"I can assure you, it's a song about innocence lost ... What kind of mean-spirited SOB would write a children's song with a covert drug message?"
Mary goes on to say that if there were drugs to be mentioned, they'd be mentioned up front:
"Believe me, if he wanted to write a song about marijuana, he would have written a song about marijuana."
Peter, Paul & Mary
We look forward to hearing from Peter, Paul and Peter's bong soon.
Actually kind of hard to argue with that.
Yes, and we should all accept the Beatles explaination about "Lucy". Just like they said the whole "Paul is dead" thing was just coincidence, and people hearing what they wanted to hear. That is, of course, until they came out years later and said "Of course we did all that s**t on purpose! What are ya, stupid?" Fool me once...
Reply"Do you realize what that song is about, Bill? *beat* It's about a dragon!" - Hank Hill on Puff the Magic Dragon.
Replycracked's music analysis is always quite embarrassing. it always fits into the mold of "the song "we love hot dogs" is about hot dogs because we asked the writer and he said it was about a porn film he saw called "hot dogs."" when, in reality, unless the song actually mentions anything to do with a porn film, there's no reason to believe that the writer didn't write the song whilst stoned and eating a hot dog, and then got embarrassed about it at a later date and claimed he actually wrote it about a porn film (because, of course, he's now a porn director and its in his interest to promote pornography). yeah
Reply"isn't about hot dogs"**
Fast forward to this month's Uncut interview with Paul McCartney, who explains that "A song like 'Got to Get You Into My Life,' that's directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time." "Day Tripper," he says, "that's one about acid. 'Lucy in the Sky,' that's pretty obvious. There's others that make subtle hints about drugs, but, you know, it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music."
Reply:/
But Paul didn't write Lucy in the Sky...
Then again, #1 has the word "japan" in it.
Replyhotel california was related to satanism because the first church of satanism was a hotel in san francisco (owned by anton) they didnt related the two things just because a figure in the cover...
Reply'Blister In The Sun' by The Violent Femmes is all about masturbation ...
ReplyWhat about James Taylor's "Fire and Rain?" Not actually about a plane crash.
ReplyTurning Japanese isn't about masturbation. Conversely, every Japanese song is about maturbation.
ReplyWhat people have to understand is that controversy helps the music industry immensely. The "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory lasted so long because some of the hidden messages about the band member's death were staged intentionally (such as Paul's candle being snuffed out on one of the album covers). Can you imagine how much money an artist would make if people kept buying their albums to check the cover art for pentagrams, or play them backwards to see if the chorus is really a Satanic chanting of the word "marijuana"? That's why songs tend to be controversial - because people believe everything in them is real.
ReplyThere is no Beatles album with a candle on it, so you're kinda talking out of your ass on that one.
I saw a show on VH1 a few years back were the Vapors themselves admitted the song was about masturbation. It was a show about finding out the truth behind industry myths. It's where I also learned that 'Blister in the Sun' is not about masturbation, but about some girl Gordon Gano had a crush on who said his hands were small like a girl's.
ReplyYou guys know that the artists (a) sometimes lie and (b) aren't by-definition right about the meanings of their songs, right? I'm just sayin'...
ReplyOh! I know a big one. Some Fuyndies think the Pussycat Dolls song "Doncha" is about group sex.
ReplyOpinion is divided, however, between those who've only read that one line, and anyone who's ever actually heard the song. Or read the rest of the lyrics. Or looked at that one line and said, "Wait a minute, no it's not!"
I always thought "Hotel California" was about drug use. The alleged Satanic undertones never crossed my mind.
Reply#1 is bullshit. They come up with some lame reason as to why it's not about masturbation even though it clearly is (& the fact they've previously said it is) everyone starts saying 'oh well I've said all along it wasn't. Utter bollocks.
ReplyLucy in the Sky with Diamonds has, as far as I am aware never been up for debate. John always talked about his son and where the idea came from...people just like to find hidden meanings where there isn't one.
tru dat about #1. but also with lucy in the sky, it might not be explicitly about acid, but its definitely influenced by it, or rather pretends to be because that was very fashionable at the time. s**t lyrics anyway- for john lennon at least
Or...you know...the messages could be from the unconscious mind of their writers?
ReplyIs it true that "Good Girls Go to Heaven" is about masturbation?
ReplyTo be honest, I thought the song was about "Dirty Japanese"... I really thought so.
ReplyOK so turning Japanese just went from school boy funny to FBI, sex offender creepy...
ReplyWhat strange hell does the author live in that songs are only allowed one universally accepted meaning & personal interpretation does not exist?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIf a druggie noticed I was writing this comment at 3:03 AM he might thing I'm on drugs. A non-druggie might assume I cannot sleep. Take it from me, the author: the comment is about whatever it means to you, man. I don't care. My agent and I just really want you to buy it.
"Take it from me, the author: the comment is about whatever it means to you, man. I don't care. My agent and I just really want you to buy it."
Obviously not, since in many of these cases the artists themselves spoke out against these interpretations. They apparently weren't comfortable with "death of the author".
It's one thing to have a 'personal interpretation', but it's completely different to 'radically insist that your personal interpretation is definitely the same one that the author intended, like, totally'.
The point is that people aren't claiming that the meaning is their 'interpretation', but that it is in fact the absolute intended meaning that the author had in mind, despite what the author says to the contrary.
No amount of 'personal interpretation' gives you the right to claim that the author is wrong about the meaning behind something that they themselves wrote.
the death of the musician must come at the birth of the listener haha. which is why everyone has to stop saying "the meaning of this song is this..."