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?!

Me too. I'm in shock!

Straight from the horse’s mouth, as told by Dave Fenton who wrote and performed it… it’s basically a love song. The guy has been dumped and has only a picture to remind him of better times. He feels like he’s going completely crazy and is turning into someone he doesn’t recognise, as if he’s suddenly part of a culture very different from his own. BUT when the band were being interviewed in the US, where someone had come up with the muckier interpretation and asked about it, they quickly realised that scandal sells so the answer was somewhat non-committal and along the lines of “it can be about whatever you want it to be about”. That’s how the myth started, and it’s continued ever since!

Even worse - I've known (and sung along to) this song ever since it came out and I've never even thought about which night/knight it is!

Well I’m not suggesting it was anything explicit, but along the lines of the euphemisms that are often shown on TV/film for sex, eg the rockets and fireworks taking off. As you say the song came out in 1976 and I was at an age where I was quite aware of sex but in terms of it being something quite shocking or to giggle about, and I would have understood this kind of symbolism in a video. Maybe it’s my mind playing tricks with the lyrics about the ‘sky rocket in flight’, but I’m not the only poster who’s mentioned the video, so 🤷‍♀️

@Bringonthefatfurcat is mistaken about 1976 being before music videos. The famous video for Bohemian Rhapsody was made in 1975. That was probably the first hit for which the video was central to the marketing strategy and many people think that was the first music video, but music videos were around long before then. Top of the Pops frequently screened the video for I Shot the Sheriff in 1973, but even that wasn't the beginning. From the early 1960s, artists were making "filmed inserts" so that they could be screened when the band was not available to appear live.

The original 1976 video for Afternoon Delight can be seen at complete with fireworks.

For absolute filth look no further than Chain Reaction by Diana Ross:

"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"

The Dead South are my favourite band - I was a fan long before they were on Hootenanny

Written by BeeGees...

Turns my stomach

It IS about a large lady that Bon Scott slept with. 🤣

I have not read the full thread but I think the meaning behind songs is personal and for me I won't let that be affected by the so- called 'real' meaning. Art, including music, can be experienced and appreciated in more than one way.

I completely agree. It doesn't even matter what the writer or singer thinks the song is about. People can have their own interpretation of it. The best poetry can have all sorts of layers. Also, it's possible to see sexual connotations in just about anything if you try hard enough e.g. instructions for building flat-pack furniture 'insert flange A into socket B and press into position...'

More to the point, as a kid, my mother had radio 2 on every morning. Mainly so I could roll my eyes and moan about it! I remember an uncensored Walk On The Wild Side regularly being played: “But she never lost her head, even when she was giving head.” I asked my cousin what it meant and she said: “Trannies,” I was none the wiser but I did become a Lou/Velvets fan and bought Transformer from Woolworths with babysitting money! Presumably, no one at BBC knew what it meant either?

I like a song because I like a song, don’t get too deep into the lyrics. Massive Bon Jovi fan (is the name a clue?😂) and had Bed of Roses as our first dance, it’s about him being on tour and sleeping with other women while phoning his wife/ girlfriend back home but it was the slowest song of theirs we could find 🤷‍♀️

Did you get married in 1993? Surely 'Always' - just one year later - would have been much better?!

No, 1997 but don’t actually like Always 🤣

*like

That's a perfectly good reason, then!!

I know my sharona is all kinds of wrong but I bloody love it! (Alexa add to playlist...)

I know my sharona is all kinds of wrong but I bloody love it!

I've heard this song for years and never listened to the lyrics! I never do.

Dodgy as this song's lyrics are, the real Sharona doesn't seem to have been at all scarred by the song or the relationship, in fact she totally owns it - her business website is called mysharona dot com and she refers to the song on her About page.

A fair chunk of the Velvets output was drug related - Heroin, Waiting for the man, White Light/White Heat, etc.

And Little Boy was the name of the bomb! (“Is mama proud of Little Boy today”)

The plane was named after the pilot's mother, I occasionally wonder if she got any agro for her son's job.

WTF….

I’ve never been near drugs in my life. I paid attention during lessons thanks 😂

I never get the drug references in songs either - why would I when I’ve never touched one?