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

[Arlanymor]

Do you remember the Real Fires advert with the dog kissing the cat and the cat kissing a mouse? My mum brought it up the other day as one of their neighbours has just got a dog that looks identical to the one in the advertisement. Awww!

I couldn't quite remember the song that was the soundtrack so I looked it up later... it's Will You Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles and I brought it up on YouTube to listen to it. It's about a one night stand isn't it? I had no idea until now... there I was thinking it was a lovely warm anthem for chaste kisses between pets!

By the way, not remotely making a judgement about the topic, I've a had a few 'Shirelles' nights of my own in the past... I just never knew what it was about before. Have you had any similar revelations?!

@AsTreesWalkingAhhh I thought it was Knights too. I just googled it to “prove” you were wrong but you wasn’t. I’m shocked.

Golden Brown by the Stranglers. My mum loved that song and I thought it was about tea rather than heroin- although in my defence tea was big part of life in our house growing up whereas class A drugs were, thankfully, not

Eddie Grant's "Electric Avenue" is about the 1981 Brixton riots.

Steely Dan are named after a steam-powered dildo in Burrough's "Naked Lunch"

Thin Lizzy's Dancing in the moonlight is about Phil Lynott's heroin addiction and the Red Hot Chilli Pepper's 'Under the Bridge" is about wasting time doing drugs in LA...

Sting was really nasty to his first wife and is - I think - on record as saying it's about her. A much better stalker song is One Way or Another by Blondie.

We 'Will You Still Love Me' is a Carole King for me, I don't know the other version

Not the same thing, but The Dooby Bros song with the chorus 'If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me.' seemed like the funniest thing I'd ever heard back in the day.

That was one of my favourite 60s records my dad had shotgun wedding.
Roy c.

Not sure if this has been said but drops of Jupiter by Train, I googled one day because I love the song. The singer's late mother came to him in a dream. When you know that the lyrics all make so much more sense.

I was 10 when this song came out and the Canadian radio station that my grandparents listened to played it.

I had no clue.

An aggressively non-curious relative of mine didn't know that Wuthering Heights was about a ghost - had no idea what 'wuthering' meant, and didn't think to look it up.

Oh No. I dont actually know what this one is about?

A few years ago when my daughter was about 13, her and her friends performed Timber (Kesha) at a family party. I'd heard the chorus before but when two of the lovely innocent girls started doing the Pitbull rap, I was mortifield. We have that on video.

Me too as well. Knights in white satin.

I only found out recently that T'Pau's China In Your Hand was about Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein and the fragility of dreams.

No idea what I thought it was about when I was a child. Afternoon tea?

@JudgeJ

A couple of my uni flatmates got a talk from one of the nuns at their school. She told them that if they found any strange tablets in a big sister’s possession, they had to tell their mum or a nun.

Bellamy Brothers, surely?

Some 50s Rockabilly is absolutely wild, chock full of veiled references that would shock even today. Censors were so naive they had no idea.

Necrophilia, oral sex, bestiality, alien abduction, and weird obsessions with chickens. Oh, and serial killing, even though the term didn't exist at the time.

Maybe I'm wrong , Moving too fast by Artful Dodger* *Romina Johnson .sounds like a fun summery party song. But, I think it is about sexual harassment.

Also, bump and grind by R Kelly sounds really dodgy. Especially knowing what we all know now.

The one about Hotel California, I always thought it was about a biker being murdered in a remote hotel and ghosts. 🙈

Someone may have said it already, but Watermelon Sugar High by Harry Styles is about blow jobs...?

Thin Lizzy's Dancing In The Moonlight is not about heroin. He wasn't an addict then (1977) and the lyrics are clearly about young love.
Phil wrote plenty of songs about addiction, but this wasn't one of them.

They were probably thinking about the contraceptive pill, though, not horse tranquilisers.

I used to think A-Ha’s I’ve been Losing You was a regular failing relationship song. A proper listen to the full lyrics revealed it’s actually a pretty dark song about someone who has murdered his partner.

Yes, I remember the advert very well. Didn't take much notice of the song to be honest. I was concentrating on the animals. Bought a ceramic ornament of the scene which I still have. About 35 years ago.

When I was a child and 'Gimme Hope, Joanna' came out, I always assumed it was just a nice love song where Eddy Grant was hoping to woo a woman he fancied - i.e. give me hope by agreeing to go out with me.

Even the lyrics about Joanna being a country just made me think he was probably saying as in she meant the world to him!

I had no idea that it was actually an anti-apartheid song.

Not just a nuclear bomb it’s about the first atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. Enola Gay was the name of the aircraft that carried it and Little Boy is referenced in the song which was the name of the bomb. It’s a really sad song if you listen to the lyrics in that context.

A lot of people don’t seem to know that Hallelujah is pretty much about sex.