Meanings behind songs that people don't seem to know...

Chain Reaction by Diana Ross is about sex, possibly even a threesome.....
I'm in the middle of a chain reaction
You give me all the after midnight action
I want to get you where I can let you make all that love to me
I'm on a journey for the inspiration
To anywhere and there ain't no salvation
I need you to get me nearer to you
So you can set me free
We talk about love, love, love
We talk about love
We talk about love, love, love
We talk about love
You make me tremble when your hand moves lower
You taste a little then you swallow slower
Nature has a way of yielding treasure
Pleasure made for you, oh

@Kimura I thought Golden Brown was to do with autumn leaves. How could I possibly know it was about heroin if I'd never heard of it.

You may scoff but growing up in a small Scottish seaside town in the 70s was my lived experience.

Same with sex language. Again I've no idea what most of it means.

Omg someone mentioned purple rain but didn't say what it's about !

I always think this too. I think some songwriters just come up with a load of phrases that sound alright together and then pretend it has meaning when actually it just happened to rhyme (see every oasis song and over reliance on the word shiiiiiiine). I firmly believe that John Lennon just plucked words out of the air that fitted in with Macca's tunes. Most are pretty nonsensical. In fact you can see it in action on the Peter Jackson documentary from a few years ago. They all sat in a studio and randomly came up with lines to a song that sounded good. There was very little deep thought going on.

I've never even heard of the song Golden Brown. But: "The needle tears a hole" from Hurt' would make me think of a girl losing her virginity/hymen. The penis being the needle. That would be my automatic first thought.

Well, I'd like to thank this thread for taking me down a music rabbit hole.

I did know about Golden Brown but, honestly, some of these others 😬

I am very old, and in my early teens I loved the music of Tamla Motown (still do). One day after school I was sitting on our stairs singing 'Hickory Hollow's Tramp' and my mother came out of the kitchen and said, 'do you know what you are singing about'? I said no, I was just singing. She said 'well, don't sing it again'. It was only when I grew up that I realised what the song was about:

"Oh the path was deep and wide from footsteps leading to our cabin,
Above the door there hung a scarlet lamp,
And late at night a hand would knock, and there would stand a stranger,
Yes, I'm the son of Hickory Hollow's tramp'.

It's a fab song and a very compassionate tale of how prostitution was his deserted mother's only choice.

I can understand people not getting lyrics like "...on the ship, tied to the mast" from Golden Brown as drug references...but what did you think 'Golden Brown' was?

"The needle tears a hole" from Hurt...what did you think he was singing about, his sewing kit?

None of the ones mentioned here are particularly subtle.

I have the type of mind that focuses only on the music and never the lyrics. SO many of these have totally passed me by 😳😂

I think I have a different attitude to this as I grew up in a non-English speaking country, but at 10 I was happily singing Like a Virgin

Songs were songs, I didn't pay attention to the lyrics.

And even now, I listen to Japanese music and so many of them have super dark lyrics while the song is a lovely pop song. for example - https://open.spotify.com/track/19Dk8XpEQzAdbqdIPkWuRe?si=99ca4e08625140aa

He was brought up in the south and loved the black music that was around so that’s where he got his sound. He was shocking to the pearl clutchers because he was white but sang and moved in the ‘black style’ of the time.

@ShiningforLeeBertie

She explains how the song came about here

My dad told me that when people first heard him on the radio, they assumed he was black. He was described as a white man who 'sounded black' apparently so it probably also alludes to that.

Vert clever song.

But I agree with them! I had no idea either, for the same reason. Not only have I never taken any drugs at all but I genuinely don’t know anyone who has! Not everyone is au fait with the seedy side of life!

(+www.mumsnet.com/i/contact)&ssv=bm91c2VyaWQ=&ssw= www.songfacts.com/facts/tori-amos/cornflake-girl

• This song is based on a book by Alice Walker called Possessing The Secret Of Joy, which details the practice of female genital mutilation in areas of Africa. In an interview with NME Classic Songs, Tori recalled discussing the issue with a friend:
• "We were talking about the fact that the women are betrayed, by a grandmother, a mother, or an older sister - that the women you trust the most are taking you into this butchery. And we had a term for those people, those girls that would turn on you, that wouldn't be there for you, that would maybe expose something you trusted them with, and really let you down - a complete wreckage. So those girls were called Cornflake Girls."

My Heart Is Broken by Evanescence is about victims of sex trafficking.

Bring Me To Life was written after Amy met her future husband and he twigged how unhappy she was in an abusive relationship.

Have you listened to the podcast about Winds of Change, by Patrick Radden Keefe? It’s all about the theory that the song was written by the CIA as part of a conspiracy - it’s really interesting!

It did inspire the name of a early human ancestor specimen of an Australopithecus - Lucy.

Dark blonde to light brown. I loved that better.

Tori Amos has said herself that it is about FGM, particularly in Africa, and those girls being betrayed by the women in their family, those who they most trusted, and this idea was inspired by the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker.

There are some photos online of him before the black velvet days and hee was a sandy blond.

We had drug education classes in the early 1990s but still took drugs. But were at least better informed about it!

The best class was when we had an alcoholic come to talk to us. I've never forgotten what he said about how it creeps up on you (he was a journalist) and about functioning alcoholism. Before then I'd got the impression that alcoholics were people on park benches drinking from a bottle in a paper bag.

Again it didn't stop me from drinking to excess in my teens and 20s but it did help me realise when I was drinking too much at home with work stress in my early 40s.

Yes. For some reason I thought the actor in the ad was his dad 😁

And being bought drinks by our teachers in the pub - imagine that now. And didn’t think anything was wrong with it!

It’s about faith. It’s a vision of the end of the world and purple signifies a mix of red and blue blood in the sky. Prince was quoted as saying that the song was symbolic of a journey through difficult circumstances - the emotional and spiritual process of being with a loved one during turmoil and relying on faith to guide you through the rain.