4

Blondie's "One Way Or Another" Is About Debbie Harry's Actual Stalker

Private Stock Records

3

Prince's "Sister" Might Be Based On Real-Life Molestation

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We are not courting controversy here when we state, for the record, that Prince sure knew how to write a song about fucking. Statistically speaking, half of the people who read this were conceived to his work. But even he struggled to sound erotic on "Sister," a fun little tune about a 16-year-old boy being taught the ways of West Virginia lovin' by his older sister.

Actual incest is less blunt than this song. There are lines like My sister never made love to anyone else but me and Incest is everything it's said to be. One verse is dedicated to his sister's vaginal fluid. It's pretty much the grossest tale of sexual awakening this side of bad fanfiction and, according to Prince, it's based on his life: When Prince was 16, he was living with his 32-year-old half-sister in New York. And he would later describe the song as "autobiographical," "self-explanatory," "just an incident in my life," and, oh yeah, "pro-incest."

Warner Brothers Records
She should've done what everyone else did: fall in love with him from afar
while cursing the heavens that she can't have him.

Now, it's entirely possible that Prince was just trying to build his mythology and get a rise out of people, and we probably could have picked a better way to phrase that. But at the very least, we do know that he was very close with that sister, and he apparently saw no problem with writing a song about her where she deflowers him, introduces him to S&M and, at the end of the song, threatens to throw him out onto the street if he doesn't keep going along with it. So, whether it was literal or figurative, something about their relationship sure was fucked.

2

Arcade Fire Wrote A Song About Jessica Simpson's Creepy Dad

Trixie Textor/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Arcade Fire was Canada's chief musical export for a time, after Celine Dion but before Bieber. Hey, one out of three ain't ... bad? It's not great, but regardless. One of their songs, "Antichrist Television Blues," is about an extreme case of stage dadism -- an exploitative father begs God to make his 13-year-old daughter famous so he can spread the Good Lord's word and also, total coincidence here, make the dad filthy rich so he'll never have to work again.

And that ugly relationship was inspired by real-life pop star Jessica Simpson and her father/manager Joe Simpson, which we know because the song was at one point called "Joe Simpson" and was once introduced as "a song about what happens when fathers grow up to manage their daughters." That's not exactly subtle. The unflattering track is about a man sexualizing, exploiting, and profiting from his little girl, but it still barely scratches the surface of the weird relationship the Simpsons have.

Joe Simpson was a Christian minister before he decided to help his daughter get into the entertainment business, which would be fine if everything that came out of his mouth didn't make their relationship sound like a movie script that Lifetime turned down for being too sordid and ridiculous. Joe gave Jessica a purity ring when she was 12, and Jessica promised that he would be the only man in her life until she married.

Rolling Stone Magazine
It's nightmarishly possible this is actually how he had her do house chores.

1

Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing" Is About Scott Weiland's Girlfriend Being Gang-Raped

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"Sex Type Thing," aside from being how we described all of our college relationships, is pretty explicitly about rape. Lines like You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too and I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress aren't trying to hide anything ...

But you may not have known that it's not about rape in the abstract -- it's about the specific time singer Scott Weiland's ex-girlfriend was gang-raped by three high school football players. On the one hand, that makes it a powerful look at the entitlement some men can feel. And the fact that Weiland is voicing the rapist implies that he's well-aware that many men, including himself, are capable of doing dark things, which was a valuable message considering the song came out in the early '90s, when rock's attitude towards sex was mostly still "Whoo!" and occasionally "Uh huh!" On the other hand, it's pretty goddamn creepy that Weiland basically sang about raping his ex-girlfriend.

Atlantic Records
It's the kind of revelation that makes us really not want to know what's happening here.

We have no idea what the ex thought about the song, but at the very least she's probably not thrilled that people keep naming it one of the "sexiest" songs ever. One radio station even noted that it's "almost stalkerish," but only in the sense of, "Like you see a girl in a bar and you just need her, but you can tell she digs how aggressive your approach is." Nailed it, guys.

Patrick Coyne has a blog; it's called Florida Cousins, and he'd like you to stop by.

For more songs you actually have no clue what they're about, check out 6 Popular Songs You Didn't Know Have Dark Hidden Messages and 6 Famous Songs That Don't Mean What You Think.

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