3. Procol Harum - "A Winter Shade Of Pale"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA Listening to songwriter Keith Reid try to explain what the hell this bit of psychedelic, baroque pop is about is one of the greater joys in life. Because it becomes very clear after a moment of his rambling that Reid has no clue what it means, but is unwilling to back down from the position that it absolutely means
something:
"It's sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It's about a relationship. There's characters and there's a location, and there's a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there's a journey going on, it's not a collection of lines just stuck together. It's got a thread running through it."
If your bulls--t detector isn't going off after reading that, you may need to replace the batteries. It's admirable that Reid has tried to keep up the charade for so long, as it would have been much easier to admit it was likely the product of getting high and staring at the sky. Because Reid comes from an era of songwriters that revered the esoteric nature of lyricism, he even keeps things appropriately vague when describing his "process":
"I feel with songs that you're given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, 'Whiter Shade of Pale,' and I thought, there's a song here. And it's making up the puzzle that fits the piece you've got."
Translation: "F--k if I know, man."