The surprising truthful meaning backside 15 popular songs

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Some songs have a dissimilar pregnant than you call up.
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  • There are plenty of pop songs that are misunderstood past listeners, according to the artists who wrote them.
  • Rihanna's "Southward&M" isn't actually near sex (it'south about her relationship with the media), but Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" is almost sexual activity.
  • Semisonic's pop drinking anthem "Closing Time" is surprisingly nigh the birth of the lead singer'southward girl.
  • Bruce Springsteen'due south "Built-in in the United states," Disharmonism's "Rock the Casbah," and John Lennon's "Imagine" all have subconscious political messages.
  • Visit Insider'due south homepage for more stories.

If you've never read all the lyrics to sure songs or you've simply heard them in passing, there's a take chances you have no idea what they are actually virtually.

Many of the virtually misunderstood or misinterpreted songs have a catchy hook, killer chorus, and memorable melody, which tin can sometimes be a recipe for distraction where intended messaging is concerned.

Hither are some popular songs you lot've probably misinterpreted.

Rihanna's "S&Thousand" isn't actually about sex.

The famous Rihanna song has a hidden meaning.
Mike Coppola/Getty

If you thought Rihanna's 2010 hitting "S&M" was about getting kinky, yous might exist surprised to larn information technology's actually most her relationship with the media.

"The vocal can be taken very literally, but it's actually a very metaphorical song. It'south virtually the love-detest relationship with the media and how sometimes the hurting is pleasurable," Rihanna told Vogue in 2011, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. "We feed off it — or I do. And it was a very personal message that I was trying to go across."

REM's "The One I Dear" is not a love song.

The song is actually virtually a breakup.
Mark Mainz/Getty

Despite the fact that the second line of REM's "The One I Love" conspicuously indicates the song is about a bitter breakup — "This i goes out to the 1 I've left behind/A simple prop to occupy my fourth dimension" — listeners still seem to believe information technology's a heartfelt love song.

"It's a fell kind of song, and I don't know if a lot of people pick up on that," REM front homo Michael Stipe told Rolling Rock in 1987. "But I've always left myself pretty open to interpretation. It'southward probably amend that they only think information technology'due south a dear song at this point."

In a 1988 interview with the now-defunct Musician Magazine, Stipe said the song is "lyrically very straightforward."

"Information technology's very articulate that it's almost using people over and over once again," Stipe said.

The Goo Goo Dolls' "Slide" is near dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

There's a detailed backstory backside "Slide."
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A lot of people get hung upwards on thinking the Goo Goo Dolls' song is a cute rail about love, only the lyrics tell a much more complicated story.

"I was thinking a lot well-nigh the neighborhood I grew upwards in. 'Slide' is almost a teenage boy and daughter. They're trying to effigy out if they're going to keep the infant or if she's going to go an ballgame or if they're just going to run away," the ring's front-runner John Rzeznik told Billboard in 2018. "They're dealing with these heavy life choices at a very early age. Everybody grew up way too fast."

In an interview with Stereogum that aforementioned year, the singer further described the song's intended meaning.

"That was a not-so-apocryphal tale well-nigh some difficult choices and dealing with a very rigid civilization with a lot of demands put on the people who are role of that community, whether it was religious force per unit area, family force per unit area. Information technology was really interesting to me to examine all those things," he said.

Green Day'due south "Adept Riddance (Time of Your Life)" is a biting breakup song masquerading equally a feel-good track.

Green Day performing live.
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If you have fond memories of belting out "Skilful Riddance (Time of Your Life)" at your middle-schoolhouse graduation or during the concluding night of overnight camp with your friends, yous aren't alone. Many people seemed to misinterpret the lyric "I hope you had the time of your life" as an hostage ane, and ignore the showtime half of the song's championship.

Dark-green Day's lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, told Guitar Legends magazine in 2005 that he wrote the vocal while he was breaking up with his girlfriend who was moving to Republic of ecuador.

"I was trying to be every bit agreement virtually information technology as I could. I wrote the song as kind of a bon voyage. I was trying non to exist bitter, but I think it came out as a niggling biting anyway," he said.

Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" isn't about feeling dissatisfied. It's about drug addiction.

"Semi-Charmed Life" is past 3rd Heart Blind.
Ethan Miller/Reuters

It's pretty much a fact that "Semi-Charmed Life" is the best karaoke song of all time with its frantic tempo that tin can get out you lot breathlessly trying to keep up with the lyrics.

But you may not realize that song's stride actually reflects its narrative nearly the fell cycle of highs and lows that back-trail a drug habit.

"Information technology's a dirty, filthy song about snorting speed and getting blow jobs. It's really funny that people play it on the radio," Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins told Billboard magazine in 1997. "I think people hear 'Semi-Charmed Life' every bit a happy summertime jam. And that's fine with me. I don't recollect the song should exist so blatant that I have to come out and say 'couples who accept speed tend to break upward, then don't do it.'"

In a 1998 interview with Rolling Stone, Jenkins added, "Yeah, information technology's funny. I wrote a song most drugs and f---ing, and I'k pretty much almost clean living on the road. We can't even believe it got onto the radio. 'Coming over you lot' is simply really what it reports to exist: 'She comes effectually, and she goes downward on me.' It'south not cryptic."

Don McLean's archetype campfire song "American Pie" disguises its depressing nature with catchiness.

Don McLean is famous for "American Pie."
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The iconic and undeniably tricky 1971 song "American Pie" is known to inspire group sing-alongs at bonfires and karaoke bars, but lyrically it's rather dark.

The original release of the song clocks in at more than eight minutes long merely, by and large, people remember the song's rhyming chorus, which bids good day to "Miss American Pie."

They tend to forget that the lyrically dense song references the 1959 plane crash that killed legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson every bit "the day the music died."

According to The Guardian, Don McLean said in a 2015 interview that the lyrics are intentionally ambiguous.

"People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course, I did. I wanted to brand a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the country of club at the time," he said.

In 2015, McLean also put the vocal's original manuscript upwardly for auction at Christie'south Auctions and Private Sales and told the auction firm, "Basically, in 'American Pie' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but information technology is a morality song in a sense. I was around in 1970 and now I am around in 2015 there is no poetry and very little romance in annihilation anymore, so it is really like the final phase of 'American Pie.'"

Bruce Springsteen'southward "Built-in in the United states of america" is not a vocal that celebrates the land.

Bruce Springsteen began his musical career in the 1970s.
Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images

The catchy, repetitive chorus of Bruce Springsteen'southward 1984 hitting makes it piece of cake for listeners to overlook the song's bodily message, which is a critique of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

"But when you lot call up near all the young men and women that died in Vietnam, and how many died since they've been dorsum — surviving the war and coming back and not surviving — you have to call back that, at the time, the country took advantage of their selflessness. In that location was a moment when they were just actually generous with their lives," Springsteen told Rolling Rock in 1984.

Afterwards bourgeois columnist George Volition lauded the song's chorus every bit a "thousand, cheerful affirmation," and Ronald Reagan dropped the singer's name on the entrada trail, Springsteen said that he idea the American people'due south need to feel good about the US later on the Vietnam War was "gettin' manipulated and exploited."

He continued in the interview with Rolling Stone, "And that's why when Reagan mentioned my name in New Bailiwick of jersey, I felt information technology was another manipulation, and I had to disassociate myself from the president's kind words."

According to The New Yorker, Springsteen once chosen "Built-in in the USA" the "most misunderstood song since 'Louie, Louie.'"

Dolly Parton's "I Will Ever Love Y'all" isn't virtually letting become of an ballsy romance.

Dolly Parton wrote "I Volition Always Beloved You."
Mark Humphrey/ AP

The 1973 song (which was famously covered by Whitney Houston in 1992) was inspired by Dolly Parton's decision to move on from working with her mentor, musician Porter Wagoner, and his series "The Porter Wagoner Testify."

"I was with Porter for 7 years, and I learned so many things from Porter. We had 1 of those relationships where we were merely and then passionate about what we did; information technology was like fire and ice," Parton told the Tennessean in 2015. "We kind of butted heads all the time, but we loved each other. There was a neat passion at that place. And I wanted to leave the testify. I had told Porter that I would stay with the show for five years. I wanted to get out on my own."

Parton said she wanted to make Wagoner empathize how much she appreciated him, then she wrote the song to let him know.

Semisonic's "Closing Time" isn't actually an anthem for the concluding call.

Dan Wilson is the lead singer of Semisonic.
JASON REDMOND/Reuters

Just because bars are still playing Semisonic's "Closing Time" as the final song of the night doesn't mean the song is actually well-nigh the final phone call.

The band's singer Dan Wilson revealed the song is actually nearly the nascency of his daughter. Rather than write a cheesy song that was blatantly about the birth of his kid, Wilson hid the vocal'southward real meaning.

"And I hid it so well in plain view that millions and millions of people heard the vocal and bought the vocal and didn't go it. They think it's about being bounced from a bar, but information technology's about being bounced from the womb," he said on stage during his college reunion at Harvard in 2008.

Clash's "Rock the Casbah" was inspired by the 1979 ban on music in Iran.

The Clash wrote "Rock the Casbah."
Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images

If you've never saturday downwardly and read the lyrics to "Rock the Casbah," you might be surprised to learn that the song was really written as a response to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 broadcast music ban in Iran.

According to WCSX radio station, in a 1991 interview, late Clash forepart man Joe Strummer said he started writing the song after the band's managing director pleaded with them to write shorter songs.

"I started to wail nearly the muezzin and the sheiks and the oil in the desert. Somebody'd told me earlier that if you had a disco album in Tehran, you got xx lashes. And if you had a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Characterization whiskey, you got 40 lashes," he said. "I couldn't go this out of my mind, so I was trying to say fanaticism is nowhere. There'southward no tenderness or humanity in fanaticism. That's what I was trying to say in 'Stone the Casbah.'"

Bryan Adams' vocal "Summer of '69" is non referencing the year.

Bryan Adams is well known for "Summer of '69."
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Historically speaking, 1969 was a big year. That was the summer Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Woodstock took identify, and the Stonewall Riots happened.

But Bryan Adams' song "Summer of '69" isn't most any of that — information technology's virtually sex.

"A lot of people think it's virtually the year, just actually, information technology'due south more about making love in the summer," Adams told CBS' "The Early Prove" in 2008. "Information technology'southward using '69 as a sexual reference."

Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" wasn't written after he saw a human being let some other human drown — it's near his divorce.

The Phil Collins song is about the artist's divorce.
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The legends surrounding the backstory to Phil Collins' 1981 hitting are plentiful and likely grew cheers to a reference in Eminem'south song "Stan." Only "In the Air This night" isn't virtually, as Eminem put it, "that guy who could've saved that other guy from drowning, simply didn't."

"Unfortunately, none of it's true. I was but pissed off, ya know? I was aroused," Collins told Jimmy Fallon on an episode of "The Tonight Prove" in 2016, adding that he was going through an emotionally taxing divorce.

John Lennon's "Imagine" isn't but a song about unity and globe peace.

John Lennon was a fellow member of The Beatles.
AP Photo/Dave Pickoff

Almost people remember the 1971 ballad past John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band is about people putting bated their differences to change the globe, but the song — which was cowritten past his wife Yoko Ono — is more political.

Co-ordinate to a 2001 Rolling Stone article, Lennon once described the vocal as "about the Communist Manifesto, even though I am not peculiarly a communist and I do not vest to any movement."

The vocal conspicuously asks the listener to imagine a world without organized religion or possessions, only Lennon admitted that he intentionally tried to "sugarcoat" his message with the song'south sugariness.

"'Imagine' is a big hit virtually everywhere — anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, only because it is sugarcoated, information technology is accustomed," Lennon once said, according to biographer James Henke. "At present I understand what you lot take to do: Put your political message across with a little honey."

Sarah McLachlan'southward "Angel" is most someone who died from heroin addiction.

Sarah McLachlan'southward song is a meaningful tribute.
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Most listeners think the vocal is about a profound, personal loss — or recollect almost the commercials for the American Lodge for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — merely Sarah McLachlan revealed the song was inspired by the expiry of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, who died of an apparent drug overdose in 1996.

"I went to a cottage north of Montreal to relax and write. I read on arrival in Rolling Stone about the Keen Pumpkins keyboard histrion who had OD'ed in a hotel room," McLachlan wrote on Quora in 2014. "The story shook me considering though I have never done difficult drugs like that, I felt a flood of empathy for him and that feeling of being lost, lonely, and desperately searching for some kind of release."

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