10 Songs Everyone Misunderstood As Kids

Youth tends to always put an innocent tint on music. No matter what genre you listened to when you were younger, these songs would come on to brighten our day, each of them talking about the fun-loving energy music can give the listener. Then again, no song is innocent when it comes to popular music.

Whether it was the 60's or just a few years ago, there have been plenty of songs that have had a darker subtext hidden underneath the more metaphorical language. Sure, the melody may be infectious and exciting, but one look at the lyric sheet may tell a completely different story. Suddenly, these great tunes you've been hearing since you were little are suddenly about death, destruction, and sex.

Even if these tunes may have seemed happy-go-lucky at a young age, maturing into adulthood is when you discover the innocence of your childhood was not as clean as you may have thought. These are the songs that made us bob our heads in the car, but it's a much different scenario once you look under the hood. Let's pull back the curtain a bit and see what these stars were really singing about.

Out of all the grunge bands to come out Seattle, Pearl Jam had a sound that seemed the least tortured. Compared to the frail beauty Nirvana's ragers or the Hellish soundscape of Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam was the perfect slice of classic rock for any kid to start out with. "Alive" became the band's anthem and a great sing-along in concert for everyone to chant along with.

So why is everyone gravitating towards this messed-up song? Don't get me wrong, the chant of "I'm still alive" is a great chorus line that seems to breathe life into the listener, but Eddie Vedder has gone on record for a different kind of interpretation. Originally written as part of a song trilogy, "Alive" tells the story of a kid who realizes the man he thought was his father was in fact his stepfather, with his birth father just recently dying.

After his mother tells him of his father's demise, she begins to make sexual advances towards her son. The original trilogy ended with the man going crazy and eventually sentenced to death after a killing spree. Pearl Jam may have sounded less dark than their contemporaries, but these lyrics were certainly not for the faint of heart.