10 Song Meanings Everyone Gets Wrong

All music can be subjective. Even if you think that your favorite band is one of the greatest bands to ever walk the Earth, chances are there’s someone else who thinks that whatever they’ve done is a stain on the music world. If you think that taste is subjective though, just imagine what it’s like actually trying to dissect what a song means.

Even though you might have the perfect version of what your favorite song is in your head, the only person who’s really going to know is the songwriter themselves, and it’s anyone’s guess as to whether they will want to actually talk about what their song is about. In terms of these songs though, there have been countless fans going around with the wrong idea.

As much as some of these songs should be a dead giveaway from the titles, the actual writer has come forward to say what their intent really was…and it turns out that we were miles off. From some classic underground songs to the greatest hits that have ever been created, everyone seemed to take these songs out of context, and ended up singing along to tracks which involve everything from death to abuse. Every artist likes to speak their mind through music, so just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into when you start singing along.

For as much as Britpop may have been raging back in England, it took a while for most of that excitement to get translated over to the States. It would be a while before Oasis had even cracked the album charts in the US, and even modern classics like Bittersweet Symphony seemed to be relegated to just one hit wonder status outside of their home country. Blur were a bit more eclectic than their peers, and Song 2 made Yanks sing along with a song that was actually making fun of them.

Having had some experience in the rock scene well before Britpop started, Damon Albarn had already felt a little bit jaded about the new form of alternative rock that was happening at the time, almost taking the kind of angst that Kurt Cobain was tapping into and trying to make their own knockoff version of it. Almost to make fun of it, Song 2 is exactly that, creating a track that means next to nothing and was all about trying to do a pastiche of the kind of alternative bands that were cluttering up the radio at the time.

And the little goof totally worked as well, becoming one of the bigger breakthroughs that the band had stateside despite having no creativity in the name of the song and openly mocking the intended audience. Radio rock didn't care about that though. They were too busy chiming in on the WOO HOOs to really pay attention to anything else.