Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.

  • takeheart@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    “Vamos a playa” by Righeira carries a lightweight, upbeat tune that vacationers might hum on the way to the beach. But the Spanish lyrics reveal that it’s about the devastation left behind by nuclear armaments. And the schism between trying to live an ordinary life whilst having a nuclear Damocles sword waver over your head. That it became such a world wide hit makes it all the more ironic. I love it all the more for it.

  • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry. It’s such a nice catchy tune that I enjoyed until my partner pointed out:

    Have a drink, have a drive Go out and see what you can find If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel

    Which, ew.

  • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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    6 days ago

    Sting. Every step you take. It’s actually angry and malicious. There’s an interview with Sting saying something to that effect.

    • nshibj@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Do you maybe mean “Every Breath You Take” by The Police? That’s a common answer to this kind of question. A lot of people think of it as cute and romantic at first, but the song really talk about the Big Brother (from George Orwell’s 1984): a state of constant surveillance watching “every breath you take, every move you make”.

        • ShortFuse@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
          I dream at night, I can only see your face
          I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace
          I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace
          I keep crying, baby, baby please
          Oh, can’t you see
          You belong to me?
          How my poor heart aches
          With every step you take?

          I understand the full lyrics, but most songs generally default to romanticism. If you’re not paying attention it’s easy to misinterpret.

          • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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            5 days ago

            If you’re not paying attention, you hear the “I’m watching you” part, which is creepy as fuck.

      • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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        5 days ago

        Yes that’s the one I’m talking about. I could have sworn I heard an interview about him talking about how it’s about someone stalking a former lover. Memory is weird that way. You’re interpretation is probably the one I’m going to go with from now on though I like that more.

        • nshibj@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I could see it being a bit of both. Lyrics are often inspired by something and describing something else. In this case, someone stalking a former lover could be seen as “going full 1984’s Big Brother” on them… and it makes sense with the whole romantic mood that the song has: the stalker sees themself as romantic and sings it that way, but when you look closer you realise it’s actually very creepy.

  • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • nafzib@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      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.

  • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      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!

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry

      I think that’s an uncharitable reading. Which is understandable, but still.

      I think that there are a lot of people–myself included–that would like to be able to make a living doing something that seems to matter, or where you make something. Like, factory work sucks in most ways, but it still feels like you’re doing something. Spreadsheets and order projections? Staring at a screen all day, sending polite emails to people you’ll never meet about ways to spend a lot of money electronically?

      This “new world” of work and socializing ain’t great. I think it snuck up on a lot of people, and now a lot of people are feeling like they don’t know how to navigate the new reality of depersonalization.

      • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I agree. Nearly every lyric in that song, when isolated, sounds fine and agreeable. Even when he attacks people on welfare “if you’re 5’- 3 and 300lbs, taxes ought not to pay, for your bags of fudge rounds.” Isn’t wrong.

        Taxes shouldn’t be used by fat cats to get fatter. But he isn’t saying that. He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire. He could have chosen to attack the elite, even if he only meant the ones to the North. He didn’t.

        “It’s a damn shame, what the world’s gotten to, for people like me, and people like you.”

        Sounds great. Now picture his audience. Who are they, and who are they thinking of when they hear that line?

        This song is called “Richmen North of Richmond.” It’s the Northerner’s fault all these bad things are happening.

        It’s that movie with Rowdy Piper and the glasses. You have to put them on to see the whole message. Dog whistling at its finest.

        If he had made a few small changes it could have been a powerful pro-worker lament and I would be playing it to death. Instead it was #11 on Trump’s “Standing on the stage for 44 minutes swaying back and forth because America is so easy to con so why not?”

        It’s a damn shame.

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire.

          I know a lot of people that are quite overall politically liberal that feel this way. I know a lot of people that get upset at the idea of inmates being given “free” educations in prison because they still have student loans 20 years after school. People that support the ideas of helping people up, that are fully on board with LGBTQ+ rights across the board, think DEI is a good idea, think it’s critical that women have bodily autonomy, and so on, but still have a knee-jerk reaction to things that they don’t fully get, or haven’t had explained to them.

          I don’t know if he meant the song that way, or what. I do know that the people coming into the White House in a few months aren’t likely to make things any better for people like him. Or people like you. Or people like me.

  • son_named_bort@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

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

    • Susaga@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      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.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    7 days 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…
    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I think pumped up kicks is actually a really poignant statement on how normalized gun violence is in the states, to the point where this song was all over radios and I’m sure all over high school dances and nobody thought twice about it. Like obviously the band did it intentionally but the fact that the point was missed so hard by everyone who sang along. It is like Hey Ya vibes to me, or smells like teen spirit for the older crowds. The point is to take these very serious ideas and use them to highlight people’s willful ignorance.

  • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    A cute girl I knew a few years ago got the Orion Experience (group) on my radar and I learned recently that while yes the songs are clearly about a sexual deviant (which is what made them cool bruh), it’s about that kind of sexual deviant, because Orion very much likes kids apparently

    That fucking ruins everything and they’re bops that I can’t get out of my head sometimes, so that’s nice

  • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

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

  • mx_smith@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • chetradley@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Sort of, Dan Wilson said he had the idea while writing the song because his wife was pregnant so he slipped it in as a double entendre. It’s like 90% bar closing with a couple lines alluding to being born: “Closing time, this room won’t be open till your brothers or your sisters come”.

  • omxxi@feddit.org
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    6 days ago

    Tears in heaven from Eric Clapton. I always liked this song, and didn’t have a special connotation. But after learning its backstory, now I just feel sadness when I hear it. :-(