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Stallone actually even helped write the song:
Sylvester Stallone loved this song. When he heard the demo, he told the group it was exactly what he was looking for, but requested a mix with louder drums and asked if they could write a new third verse instead of repeating the first as they had done. The group did what Stallone suggested - they went about modifying the first verse and remixed the song.
Suggestions from an actor are usually not what bands are looking for when creating a song, but Stallone knew what he was doing. Jim Peterik said, "Stallone has a good ear for a hook. Just listen to his dialogues - he wrote those scripts. He came up with 'Eye Of The Tiger' for that script and those hook phrases like 'I'm going to knock you into tomorrow.' All that stuff is Stallone, he's a genius with dialogue. Songs are nothing more than dialogue set to music as far as I'm concerned."
Pink Houses by John Mellencamp (the "Ain't that America" song) isn't actually the patriotic circle jerk that NASCAR and other similar events will have you believe it is. John said this about his song in an interview with Rolling Stone:
"It's really an anti-American song," Mellencamp told Rolling Stone about "Pink Houses." "The American dream had pretty much proven itself as not working anymore. It was another way for me to sneak something in."
Actually, it’s based on the Greatest American Hero’s theme song, which has two writers already.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=24370
So if George put his twist on it, that makes 3, plus who knows how many producers.
Sorry, I had no choice.
The lyrics were inspired, in part, by an unfortunate news story in Stone Temple Pilots' hometown of San Diego, California about a missing young woman who was later discovered dead by local law enforcement ("And I feel, when the dogs begin to smell her..."). At a concert in Columbus, Ohio on May 17, 2008, lead singer Scott Weiland said that he and STP drummer Eric Kretz wrote the lyrics in a hot tub after hearing the news story.
Y.M.C.A.
It's not inappropriate per se, but it gets played at parties and such as a fun party anthem with people not really knowing it's true meaning, and it blows my mind.
In the words of David Hodo (The construction worker persona in the band): "Y.M.C.A." certainly has a gay origin. That's what Jacques was thinking when he wrote it, because our first album [...] was possibly the gayest album ever. I mean, look at us. We were a gay group. So was the song written to celebrate gay men at the YMCA? Yes. Absolutely. And gay people love it."
This is a load of shit. Kurt Cobain's lyrics on Nevermind were lines of poetry he had written earlier that were pieced together at the last minute. Funny enough, songfacts.com says that Kurt wrote it because people mindlessly sing songs without knowing what they're about, so he wrote a chorus that was ironic (he's the one who likes all the pretty songs and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he knows not what it means).
Alt-Js most famous song is about three men raping a transvestite prostitute with a broom stick, but we all still dance to it
Edit: if you're interested in what I'm talking about... http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=27770
This is one of the two songs in the game to be rerecorded due to the master track not being found. The other song being Anarchy in the U.K.
This is according to the Wikia and according to the original press info kit.
According to SongFacts, "Living Colour re-recorded this song for the video game Guitar Hero 3 with a faster guitar solo."
But like anything on the internet, find multiple independent sources before deciding if it's true or not.
Realising that that song was about ugly chicks made me realise that kids are exposed to so much shit they don't understand growing up and it honestly doesn't matter.
[edit] Several comments correcting me on this. I heard otherwise and it made sense but am happy to be corrected. In that vein of thought, from here
> We have yet to meet someone who can remember any words to this song other than the chorus, which is: "Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof." The song does have verses and even a hint of meaning - the lyrics are about disrespectful men who hit on women at a party.
I still believe in the main point of my comment but my example was poor which was how it was related to anything in this discussion in the first place so I'm sorry I brought it up.
Well you're in the right thread. from here:
>Buckley referred to his sensuous rendition as a homage to "the hallelujah of the orgasm." He explained in a Dutch magazine OOR: "Whoever listens carefully to 'Hallelujah' will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on earth. The hallelujah is not a homage to a worshipped person, idol or god, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. It's an ode to life and love."
'The line "Paul is a real estate novelist" is about a real estate broker who was a regular at the bar who always claimed to be working on a book. Joel figured Paul would never finish because he was always in the bar.'. From Songfacts
I love the melody of Brick by Ben Folds Five and never really tuned into the lyrics at first... and then I found out the story was about his girlfriend getting an abortion.
Since I love this song it's actually about a kid thinking about shooting up a school because he's an outcast. Its supposed to bring awareness to mental health. He's not actually shooting kids in the song. Although it has been taken off the air during times of school shootings, which I agree with.
The song "Cornerstone" by Arctic Monkeys.
Their lead singer Alex Turner is very clever when it comes to word use, using words with one meaning and spinning it so it has another meaning (like the line from Crying Lightning "you never look like yourself from the side, but your profile could not hide the fact that you were losing your throne". Profile can mean the outline of a person's face as seen from side view, but it can also be a description of a person (like an online dating profile)).
Cornerstone gets even cleverer than that with the word "close". He uses it four times in the song to describe four women...
"She was close. Close enough to be your ghost" - close = strong resemblance.
"She was close and she held me very tightly" - close = a short distance away.
"It was close. So close that the walls were wet" - close = uncomfortably humid.
"She was close... well, you couldn't get much closer" (in describing the sister of the woman he has been searching for) - close = denoting a family member who is part of a person's immediate family, a close relative, typically a parent or sibling.
Being able to do that with four homonyms of one word, and put it in a story that makes sense, is probably the cleverest use of it I've ever come across. Alex Turner was in his early twenties when he wrote it and he banged it out one quiet morning just to challenge himself. That man's a genius.
Before you graduate from high school, be sure to learn that with some songs, careful analysis of lyrics can yield more fruitful and poignant meaning. I only say this because (as a huge fan of The Who) I assume that when you say "Teenage Wasteland", you are referring to the song "Baba Oriley." If this is indeed the case, there is an incredibly detailed and intriguing backstory to it. Feel free to read up...or just gloss over it again, if you like...
>This song is commonly thought to be about masturbation, but it's really more about dancing by yourself. Billy got the idea watching Asian kids "Dancing With Themselves" in a nightclub. The kids would dance in a pogo style up and down.
"This song tells the story of a man who comes to Africa and must make a decision about the girl who comes to see him. He is enamored with the country, but must leave if he is going to be with her."
Read more in: Songfacts
They did take the notes for sure, but it was played live.
" The bass line on this song was played live by a 17-year-old named Chip Shearin, who got the gig for the session because his friend knew the studio owner, Sylvia Robinson. Shearin was paid $70 to re-create the bass line from the song "Good Times" for 15 minutes. He recorded the part with a live drummer, which formed the rhythm track for the song. When he asked Robinson what she was going to use it for, she replied: "'I've got these kids who are going to talk real fast over it."
Sheerin ended up playing some live gigs with the band and became a successful studio musician and composer of jingles"
I read it in their biography. But this link mentions it:
> The line, "We're coppin' from the local police" is about how the cops in Charleston, West Virginia, actually gave the band some pot they had confiscated.
Didn't really find much else. Don't know how reliable songfacts is.
<strong>Train - Drops of Jupiter</strong>
Edit: Sorry for the format.
In an interview with VH1, lead singer Pat Monahan revealed that he wrote this song about the death of his mother. Train released their first album in 1998 , and were touring that year when Monahan' s mother was dying of lung cancer - she was a heavy smoker. This was before the widespread use of cell phones, and Monahan made many stops to pay phones on the tour to speak with his mom during this difficult time.
In December of that year, his mother died, and in early 1999 Train was working on their next album when their record company started pressuring them for a hit. Monahan returned to his childhood home in Pennsylvania, and woke one morning with the words "back in the atmosphere" in his head. Beginning a time of healing, he started to compose the song. Said Monahan: "Loss of the most important person in my life was heavy on my mind, and the thought of 'what if no one ever really leaves? What if she's here but different. The idea was, she's back here in the atmosphere
Yeah, well it was supposed to be "brown skinned girl" and was about an interracial relationship. Van Morrison changed the lyrics so radio stations would play it. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2359
That's not really true either. "As an adult, he got that feeling again sometimes, entering a state of delirium, where he felt detached from reality. He told Mojo magazine (December 2009) that the lines, "When I was a child I had a fever/My hands felt just like two balloons" were autobiographical. He explained: "I remember having the flu or something, an infection with a temperature of 105 and being delirious. It wasn't like the hands looked like balloons, but they looked way too big, frightening. A lot of people think those lines are about masturbation. God knows why."
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1697
I've heard the story from his mouth in an interview too but I can't remember where. He described going home to write after a night of drinking, in a depressed state and realizing he'd become numb to his emotions and had a feeling similar to when he was sick as a child.
'The line "Paul is a real estate novelist" is about a real estate broker who was a regular at the bar who always claimed to be working on a book. Joel figured Paul would never finish because he was always in the bar.'
Morrison originally wrote it as "brown skinned girl," a song about an interracial relationship of his, but changed it to "brown eyed girl" at the behest of his label.
Slightly related fun fact: Queens of the Stone Age's sound guy used to dj dances for deaf people where they would hold balloons and stand next to the sub-woofers.
Also, in their album 'Songs for the Deaf', there is a hidden track, "Real Song for the Deaf", consisting of a pattern of low-frequency bass.
> The video was based on the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons, with elaborate costumes inspired by film, which was set in France during the 1700s. John Malkovich, who starred in the movie, also appeared in the video, as does Hugh Laurie, who went on to star in the TV show House. With the string section and harpsichord sound, the music fit the theme.
> My Hero
According to this site this is actually incorrect.
"This song is about the heroes Foo Fighters guitarist and lead singer Dave Grohl had in his life, who were ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Apropos for the man who was Kurt Cobain's bandmate, Grohl has explained that he has little use for hero-worship when it comes to celebrities - especially rock stars. The song is written from the perspective of a kid, but it reflects Grohl's beliefs.
Like many of his Foo Fighters tracks, many listeners assumed that this song was about Kurt Cobain, but Grohl has explained that it isn't."
It is and isn't.
All the reference to slavery has double meaning as users being a slave to 'Brown Sugar' heroin.
I think from the POV of the band heroin was probably the primary topic and the slavery stuff was a creative way of putting that across in a song. I can't see them sitting down to write a song and thinking;
'Let's write a song about slave rape... and fill it with drug metaphor'
In contrast,
'Let's write a song about all this heroin we're experiencing, and use slavery to relate to being a slave to addiction'
seems far more plausible.
Dunno how true, but I like this quote from here: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=22941
>Talking about writing this song in Rolling Stone, Foster said: "I was trying to get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid. It's a f--k you song to hipsters, in a way - but it's a song the hipsters are going to want to dance to."
Freewill by Rush. According to this, "the time signature alternates 6/4, 7/4, 6/4, 7/4, 6/4, 8/4 and repeats during the first verse."
That's actually not true about it being written for the movie. The song was written as a response to fan mail from kids saying they'd get bullied for liking Smash Mouth. So they wrote All Star as a way to support their fans.
Interview here: http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/smash_mouth_songwriter_greg_camp/
They also talk about Walking on the Sun
Suzanne Vega's explanation for this song: >On a 1987 Swedish television special, Vega said: "A few years ago, I used to see this group of children playing in from of my building, and there was one of them, whose name was Luka, who seemed a little bit distinctive from the other children. I always remembered his name, and I always remembered his face, and I didn't know much about him, but he just seemed set apart from these other children that I would see playing. And his character is what I based the song Luka on. In the song, the boy Luka is an abused child - In real life I don't think he was. I think he was just different."
Wait... is that why in the song "Take Me To Church" he mentions something about sharpening a knife?
Edit: well... the chorus makes a lot more sense now:
Take me to church
I'kll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life
Edit 2: Well then
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=6270
If you listen closely towards the end, you can her frontman Axl Rose having sex in the studio with the woman who helped inspire the song. Axl explained: "She kind of kept me alive for a while. The last part of the song is my message to this person, or anybody else who can get something out of it. It's like there's hope and a friendship note at the end of the song. For that song there was also something I tried to work out with various people - a recorded sex act. It was somewhat spontaneous but premeditated; something I wanted to put on the record. It was a sexual song and it was a wild night in the studio. This girl we know was dancing; everyone was getting real excited. The night could have gotten really explosive, lots of trouble for everyone, and I thought wait a minute, how can we make this productive. And this is what we got."
The bass player, Brad Smith, wrote the song and he specifically said that it wasn't about drugs. It's just about not wanting to get out of bed and face the day:
> So the song is about not being able to get out of bed and find excuses to face the day when you have really, in a way, nothing. It was like rock bottom. I wasn't even on drugs or drinking. It was just tough. It was just a tough point in my life. And the cool thing about that song, I think a lot of people do interpret those lyrics properly and can connect with it on that level, where "I don't understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there's no rain." It's just a line about, I'd rather it be raining so I can justify myself by laying in the bed and not doing anything. But it's a sunny day, so go out and face it.
http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/brad_smith_of_blind_melon/
>Singer Joe Strummer told an interesting story to Musician magazine in 1988 about how he proved that popular 1980s group Tears for Fears stole a line from "Charlie Don't Surf" for the title of their hit "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." He was apparently in a restaurant and saw Roland Orzabal, lead songwriter for Tears for Fears, and told him that "you owe me a fiver," explaining that the name of their hit song was an exact lift of the first line of the middle eight in "Charlie Don't Surf." According to Strummer, Orzabal simply reached into his pocket and gave him a five pound note, effectively admitting that this had been the case. Source
> The video was based on the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons, with elaborate costumes inspired by film, which was set in France during the 1700s. John Malkovich, who starred in the movie, also appeared in the video, as does Hugh Laurie, who went on to star in the TV show House. With the string section and harpsichord sound, the music fit the theme.
>The lyric, "Warm smell of colitas," is often interpreted as sexual slang or a reference to marijuana. When we asked Don Felder about the term, he said: "The colitas is a plant that grows in the desert that blooms at night, and it has this kind of pungent, almost funky smell. Don Henley came up with a lot of the lyrics for that song, and he came up with colitas."
Discovered this yesterday.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=46064
"The four-minute tirade is titled after the 2008 thriller movie Killshot, about married couple Wayne and Carmen Colson, who are targeted by an experienced Mafia hitman Armand Degas. Machine Gun Kelly's real name is Richard Colson Baker, and he often is called Colson in his private life."
I will say something positive about her:
> According to Yoko Ono, who controls the rights to John Lennon's music, the most frequent request she gets comes from musicians who want to record this song but change the "No religion, too" lyrics - a request she has always denied. (source)
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3104#
> The crashing noise you hear between the breaks of the guitar solo is the sound of windchimes tied to a 2x4 slapped against a wood table. The band confirmed this in an interview on WNEW New York in the winter of 2002.
Actually it's a song about folklore. Source
> In a 1995 interview with RIP magazine, Toadies lead singer Todd Lewis, who wrote the song, said: "It's just a story I heard long ago; it's just a really cool, eerie lake, and some stuff I heard and some stuff I just make up. I tend to do that. They dammed up this big river up there, and it's got all these spooky names like Hell's Gate. It's really cool."
The whole lake has some pretty creepy stories that revolve around it. I used to camp at a Boy Scout camp that is on that lake and I've heard plenty of those stories. Ghosts, murders, and unexplained drownings are some of the most common of the stories.
Honestly, I’ll just go on songfacts when I want more info. Genius is more crowdsourced than songfacts and they seem to have a lot of people making their own interpretations rather than information and quotes from the creators.
The song was written as a response to fan mail from kids who would get bullied for liking Smash Mouth.
Interview with the writer: http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/smash_mouth_songwriter_greg_camp/
TIL?
Edit: did 'some' digging; there is some debate over the line "But remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too" which has been interpreted as either sex (as you say) or (what I think is more likely as it flows more with the repeated biblical allegory) of referencing Mary's immaculate conception
Edit 2: The last few verses of the song are not in the popular copy/rendition by Pentatonix so in their form it IS a 'worship song' more so than the original song...
So as far as I can see it is literally about closing time at the bar but he's apparently using that as a metaphor about child birth. He's still talking about closing time at a bar though.
So the childbirth thing got into but it's still very much what it is on the surface too.
There are two dirty versions of this song. > Before the Slim Shady LP was released, an uncensored version was available on the Internet. The original lyrics on the dirty version of the song were: "Raping lesbians while they're screaming, 'Let's just be friends." The version on the CD was changed to "Running over pedestrians while they're screaming, 'Let's just be friends.'"
Also, supposedly a reference to a film studies teacher Black Francis had at UMASS. "The Pixies met and formed while students at UMASS Amherst. Frank Black wrote debaser after watching Un Chien Andalou in Film Studies Professor Don Levine's Avant Garde Film class. The Bunuel film is a staple in the long running course. Levine is famous among his students for giving away the endings and memorable momments in all of the class's films. It is rumored among the Film Studies Department at UMASS that debaser is actually about Levine being the debaser and spoiling all of the films including Un Chien Andalou and more specifically the slicing of the eyeball." source
The truth of this song is equally bone chilling Maynard is an incredible artist I can't find the original article where he talks about it... (Read it in a tool tribute series of magazine) but here is a link where it is talked about http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=6301
A few more details
EDIT
WELL SHIT, sadly just as Difang was gaining much-deserved international acclaim, he passed away (blood poisoning due to a centipede bite) in March 2002 at the age of 82. His wife who, whose vocals accompanied Difang's chants, passed away a month later.
I heard Neil explain the song once. It was written about a person that worked on his land in Woodside before he owned it I believe. He kept him on because of his wealth of knowledge.
Well shit, we're both wrong. According to Wikipedia, it was just influenced by the general upward trend of youth violence, and though one of the band members had a cousin at Columbine, it wasn't specifically about a school shooting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_Up_Kicks http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=22941
Uh, no it isn't. It's about an affair Jane Wiedlin had with Terry Hall from The Specials...
>Let's see, in 1980 we were playing at The Whiskey on Sunset Strip, and The Specials were in town from England, and they came to see us, and they really liked us and asked us if we would be their opening act on their tour. I met Terry Hall, the singer of The Specials, and ended up having kind of a romance. He sent me the lyrics to "Our Lips Are Sealed" later in the mail, and it was kind of about our relationship, because he had a girlfriend at home and all this other stuff. So it was all very dramatic. I really liked the lyrics, so I finished the lyrics and wrote the music to it, and the rest is history.
This image looks like it was taken from the song 'Bicycle Race' released on 13th October 1978. It also goes side by side with 'Fat bottomed girls' released at the same time.
Here's the link to the Wikipedia article I found about the song, video, locations and explanations to everything: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Race
Hope it helps you out.
EDIT; I'll update this particular comment with extra link to hopefully help you out a bit more.
One of the guys who wrote the song has polio and was wheelchair-bound. He spent his wedding watching his new bride dance with other men since he was physically unable to.
>The misperception that boycotts ended apartheid
Boycotts helped to end apartheid in South Africa, along with other strategies. For example The targeting of Sun City, a whites only resort, turned into a much bigger cultural movement.
>...armchair activists who liked to perceive that they were making a difference despite minimal contributions (e.g. by protesting a rugby match).
If you're protesting a rugby match you can't be much of an armchair activist.
Here's her explaining it. She really related to the story as a whole of two very different people finding true love in one another. The story is what inspired her to write the song. But she wanted it be hopeful and have a happy ending, so she changed it.
>Swift expanded on this song's invocation of the story of Romeo and Juliet in an interview with the Los Angeles Times October 26, 2008. Said Swift: "I was going through a situation like that where I could relate. I used to be in high school where you see [a boyfriend] every day. Then I was in a situation where it wasn't so easy for me, and I wrote this song because I could relate to the whole Romeo and Juliet thing. I was really inspired by that story. Except for the ending. I feel like they had such promise and they were so crazy for each other. And if that had just gone a little bit differently, it could have been the best love story ever told. And it is one of the best love stories ever told, but it's a tragedy. I thought, why can't you... make it a happy ending and put a key change in the song and turn it into a marriage proposal?"
The song Limousine by Brand New is about the tragic death of a 7 year old flower girl whose limousine was struck by a drunk driver going the wrong way.
Sources:
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=7781
The crash itself: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/nyregion/2-days-after-li-crash-mother-tells-of-brutal-loss.html?referer=
We can't talk about brand new and not mention the awesomeness that's Limousine.
You're so free, yeah you were right about me,
Can I get myself back from underneath this guilt that will crush me?
And in the choir I saw a sad messiah,
He was bored and tired of my laments,
'said I died for you one time but never again.
and the backstory
“Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?” By Stevie Nicks was written about Joe Walsh’s daughter Emma; whom tragically passed away. The full story is linked and it’s well worth reading.
I did see an interview people people close to him who discussed that, where they explained his minimal appearance in the video was because at the time a lot of black performers were left on BET. It wasn't that it'd be difficult to get a video, but difficult to get one on MTV which was a big deal.
It clearly worked because "The video featured lots of animated mannequins, and was very popular on MTV, winning five video music awards in 1984: Best Art Direction, Best Concept, Best Editing, Best Special Effects, and Most Experimental Video. Along with Michael Jackson and Prince, Hancock was one of the first black artists to get significant airplay on MTV, but he barely appears in the video (he is shown briefly in one of the television sets), which was by design." - http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=22025
I can't believe the article doesn't say that the Wonder Girls were the first idol group to make it into the Billboard 100 with Nobody. Especially because the article was written by Billboard... if anyone cares about Billboard's rankings it should be them.
Edit: NVM I'm an idiot
I don't know why you've been downvoted. He is clearly saying "Little Greenback", since, you know, that rhymes with "back" and "track". It was printed wrong on the album and stuck.
>One of the more misinterpreted songs of all time, word was that "Turning Japanese" refers to the Asian facial features people get at the moment of climax during masturbation. In a VH1 True Spin special, they asked The Vapors about this song, and they explained that it is a love song about someone who lost their girlfriend and was going slowly crazy. Lead singer Dave Fenton said: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to." It was inspired by Fenton's relationship problems.
From here
Clint Eastwood got its name because the song samples The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Song 2 was just a working title.
When that song came out, pretty much everyone I knew listened to it obsessively because it was based on a true story that happened at a high school about an hour or so from where we lived.
Actually, it was written for a woman he loved and called "For Therese" but was misread as "Fur Elise" because his handwriting sucked.
But yeah, it's very simple.
Just looked it up, found this:
>Despite being an instrumental, the song tells a complete story, complete with plot and characters. It's based on some nightmares Alex Lifeson experienced.
>"Danforth and Pape" (Part VII) is an intersection in downtown Toronto. It is well known for being somewhat chaotic during rush hour.
>Villa Strangiato is a real place in Italy. It was the home of the late Barone (Baron) Strangiato, an Italian nobleman, but it is not a major Italian landmark.
I don't get the part about having a plot and characters but I'll try to look into it more and come back if I find anything.
When I saw the title, I thought that the self post was going to be a question of "who was the baby?" Since the baby's at least 12 or so by now, I wonder who it could be. Someone close to Brock?
It's a shame that you hate somebody based on urban legend.
>Collins wrote this song about the anger he felt after divorcing his first wife Andrea in 1979. He was so devastated that he left Genesis for a short time. All the original songs on the Face Value album, including the followup hit "I Missed Again," were at one time intended to be "messages" to his first wife in an attempt to lure her back to him.
>The lingering tension caused by the divorce led Collins to the title, as these negative feelings were "In The Air," and effecting not just the couple getting divorced, but the entire family. Collins explains the lyrics, "If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand," by saying the drowning is symbolic.
>The meaning of this song became a pervasive urban myth. The story, which is not true, is that Collins watched as a man who raped his wife drowned. Another version has Collins writing this about about a man who watched another drown, and singing it to him at a concert. Yet another variation claims that when Collins was a young boy, he witnessed a man drowning someone but was too far away to help. Later, he hired a private detective to find the man, sent him a free ticket to his concert, and premiered the song that night with the spotlight on the man the whole time. We repeat, these stories are not true. (SongFacts)
John wrote and sang that actual part.
WTF? Downvotes? It's true. John wrote and sang that line.
Read Ray Coleman's Lennon for verification.
FURTHER verification: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=121
It's the song Better Than Revenge, and an explanation for how we know it's about Camilla Belle is here. Notable is the "she's better known for the things that she does on the mattress" line.
If I remember correctly, Manson was totally obsessed with becoming a recording artist and basically spammed everyone with his music, even though it wasn't all that great (just kind of generic).
EDIT: Also, here's some info on the relationship between Neil Young and Manson
I love this song! But, not sure that's what's it's about... According to Songfacts: >This is about a Russian family where the son wants to join the revolution but his father wants him to stay home and work on the farm. Stevens made up the story, but his relationship with his own father was an influence on the song. When he appeared on The Chris Isaak Hour in 2009, Stevens said: "He was running a restaurant and I was a Pop Star, so I wasn't following the path that he laid out. But we certainly didn't have any antagonism between us. I loved him and he loved me."
Literally any song written by Maynard James Keenan. He is a lyrical genius, but I'm also biased.
Tool's song Lateralus is based on the Fibonacci sequence, the rhythm and beat of the song and the lyrics too!
-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY
(This isn't the best explanation of it, but it's what I could find right now)
Also by Tool, Forty-Six and 2 is based on reaching a higher level of existence by gaining two extra chromosomes
-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OufK0647p1U
And the other band he's a part of, A Perfect Circle's entire Thirteenth Step album is based entirely on what drugs do to you and how they make you feel, like the "12 step system" to recovery.
-http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4625
(I knew all of these facts on my own, but just in case anyone wanted to get better wording on any of it! (: )
I really appreciate the answer given by /u/goblinish, but as it turns out... there's an actual answer to your question!
> The lyrics, "And he's talkin' with Davy who's still in the Navy and probably will be for life" were inspired by David Heintz. His daughter Lisa told us: "He met Billy Joel in a pub in Spain in 1972 while he was in the Navy. He married while he was in the navy, had three children. He passed away in 2003 of ALS. It really hurts when I hear this song played on the radio and they leave this part out."
Here's what I wrote some time ago about Cornerstone, and why it's one of the cleverest lyrical pieces of work in the English language...
Their lead singer Alex Turner is very clever when it comes to word use, using words with one meaning and spinning it so it has another meaning (like the line from Crying Lightning "you never look like yourself from the side, but your profile could not hide the fact you knew I was approaching your throne" (thanks for the correction of the end of that line (see below)). Profile can mean the outline of a person's face as seen from side view, but it can also be a description of a person (like an online dating profile)).
Cornerstone gets even cleverer than that with the word "close". He uses it four times in the song to describe four women...
"She was close. Close enough to be your ghost" - close = strong resemblance.
"She was close and she held me very tightly" - close = a short distance away.
"It was close. So close that the walls were wet" - close = uncomfortably humid.
"She was close... well, you couldn't get much closer" (in describing the sister of the woman he has been searching for) - close = denoting a family member who is part of a person's immediate family, a close relative, typically a parent or sibling.
Being able to do that with four homonyms of one word, and put it in a story that makes sense, is probably the cleverest use of it I've ever come across. Alex Turner was in his early twenties when he wrote it and he banged it out one quiet morning just to challenge himself.
That man's a genius.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1744
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1744
The song is supposed to be Marley consoling the woman. Telling her not to cry because things will get better. That's almost the opposite of reprimanding someone for crying.
according to this he wrote it - I'm assuming he wrote the lyrics but not necessarily the tune- which may be what you teachers, friends, uncles, sister is talking about.
So if this is true he can definitely claim that HE wrote this song, as he is referring to the lyrics (singing).
"Someone suggested they do 'Twist and Shout' with John taking the lead vocal. But by this time all their throats were sore; it was 12 hours since we had started working. John's, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time. The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes (a brand of throat lozenges), had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went." Source
I saw a post on Reddit a while back saying that John critized Paul about writting silly love songs and Paul responded with "Silly Love Songs".
This is inaccurate. John liked a lot of Paul's songs, and they were love songs. For example, John not ony liked "Here, There and Everywhere", he helped Paul add "I love you" to 'Michelle"'s bridge. John also wrote some wonderful love songs - i.e. "Don't Let Me Down", "This Boy" and "In My Life".
It was because of the media that was critiquing Paul that Paul said "what is wrong with giving the world some silly love songs?"
Edit: The post I'm talking about which has no proof whatsoever
I don't think we know for sure(although The Secret Message is a pretty good giveaway), but this might be interesting.
> ...It was with this guy I was dating and he was about to go off to college and I was thinking about all the things that I knew would remind him of me. I didn't really think of Tim McGraw personally when I wrote this song. It was a song where I was listing personal things. One of things that I listed was that my favorite song is by Tim McGraw." Swift added: "The guy I wrote Tim McGraw about, I dated him for about a year and we are still friends, but we don't talk that much because his new girlfriend isn't too much of a fan. He really thought it was cool that, even though we weren't going out anymore, I remembered our relationship nicely. I think that he was happy that I didn't write 'Picture To Burn' about him, another song on my album."
OP! Information about the song:
"Dottie West, who would later record a cover of this song, originally turned it down because it was too provocative."
"Kristofferson got the idea for this song after reading an Esquire interview with Frank Sinatra. When asked what he believed in, Frank replied, "Booze, broads, or a bible... whatever helps me make it through the night."
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=6497
I'm looking for another analysis for you bc... EWWW!
Well TIL (and looking at the speculation learned it is still unsettled, particularly as Jeff Lynne seems to say it’s actually about lost love).
I picked it as a well known song to recognise the band whose name was the real thrust of the setup.
Probably not. As with WP, the factoids are mainly entered bit by bit by users / readers over the course of many years. Often these will come from things like DVD extras, biographies and 'making of' books. By comparison, it takes a lot more dedication and work for small sites and blogs to come up with all that info themselves, so it's almost always borrowed from the open-source style sites.
Incidentally, here's another cool open-source site I recently found, although certainly not as well-known as IMDB and WP:
Psychedelic Rock is defined as influenced by or associated with mind altering drugs. A famous example is Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." "The Chain's" lyrics don't fit the description. song facts
I realize this is petty, but the song means a lot to me seeing it was an important song in my imaginary movie soundtrack when I was in high school.
I love this song, interesting fact about it:
"Daryl Hall was shocked to find out that the infamous serial killer David "Son Of Sam" Berkowitz claimed he was inspired to murder by this song. It is unlikely that this song actually compelled Berkowitz to kill, as it was released after he started his killing spree, and Berkowitz cited many influences, including his neighbor's dog, when asked why he killed. Nonetheless, it was very disturbing for Hall and Oates to have their song associated with Berkowitz, and they made reference to this in their 1980 song "Diddy Doo Wop (I Hear the Voices)" from their Voices album in the lyrics: "Charlie liked The Beatles, Sam he liked Rich Girl."
The lead guitar player on this was not a Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section player. It was Forrest McDonald, a young man just passing through who happened to stop in the studio that day.
When we spoke with David Hood, he told us the story: "He happened to come in the parking lot in his mother and daddy's car with them, and Jimmy was out on the back porch. I believe his first name was Howie, but he probably goes by another name. But anyway, that's very true.
He came into the parking lot one afternoon and Jimmy was out on the back porch. And he says, 'Well, I'm a guitar player and I'm wanting to learn how to play on recording sessions. And I think I'm good.'
Jimmy says, 'Well, got your guitar with you?'
He says, 'Yeah.'
Jimmy says, 'Well, come on in.'
And they put him on the track.
His mother and daddy never even got out of the car. They sat in the car in the parking lot with the air conditioning running. And they put him on the track playing guitar and it's on the record, it stayed on there. It was a good enough part that they kept it on there."
This was actually the promotional video for "Lady Madonna".
>The Beatles recorded "Lady Madonna" at the same time they were recording the promotional film for this. In the video for this song, The Beatles are actually singing "Hey Bulldog" (for the most part). They went in to shoot "Lady Madonna" and John changed it at the last minute to "Hey Bulldog." If you watch the video montage for "Madonna" closely, there's even footage from the Get Back sessions thrown in.
It was, just not for any movie. It was written to support their fans who would send them mail about being bullied because they liked Smash Mouth.
http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/smash_mouth_songwriter_greg_camp/
Also some elements of Simon & Garfunkel's song Cecilia. I had to look it up because I seemed to recall them talking about Cecilia in reference to that song back in the day when it came out.
It's not specifically about Abby, it's actually about a specific other girl he dated and then had a bad breakup with, and the aftermath of looking for rebounds. Here's a little more of what he's said about it. It's pretty interesting that this is such a high-energy upbeat song but that it comes from a negative inspiration from Adam's perspective. Also funny how much Adam likes writing about parking lots. He also had a line in Hello Seattle "I fall asleep in hospital parking lots and awake in your mouth".
From Dan MacIntosh's interview with Glen Phillips:
>It's always an embarrassing song to talk about from a lyrical standpoint, because maybe a couple of weeks before I wrote the lyric, I had gone on a trip with my wife up to Orcas Island and hung out at Doe Bay hot springs with a bunch of hippies - it was great. But it was a five-minute lyric. It was supposed to be a scratch lyric...So I wrote down literally the first thing that came across my mind. The lyric and the chorus, I have no idea what it means, unfortunately. Then I tried rewriting it and nothing ever really worked. I tried to make the chorus mean something, and eventually said, "Well, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about." So we just left it as is. It was the least-conscious, least-crafted lyric.
Dude, http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4532 First sentence "Originally, this was "Let's Get Retarded," which is how it appears on the album. When it was released as a single, it was changed to "Let's Get It Started" so it would get radio play. "