Hello one and all!
A little while ago I did a post about the real meanings behind hit songs, and I really enjoyed the research and the writing of it. As a result, I thought that I'd focus on a couple of more songs with surprising messages. Hope you enjoy!
A Day in the Life
What people thought it was about: People talking drugs
The BBC banned the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” because they thought the line “I’d love to turn you on” was a reference to drug use. It had a deeper meaning than that though, as Paul McCartney remembered it
“This was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation to people. But what we really wanted was to turn you on to the truth rather than just bloody pot”
That isn’t how the BBC saw it though. What is regarded as one of the Beatles' greatest songs actually came from melding two songs together that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had written separately. John Lennon had read the Daily Mail newspaper and noticed that the Guiness heir had died in a car crash, and reading on he also spotted a story about four thousand potholes on the roads of Lancashire. In short, “A Day in the Life” is about how the unfolding of worldly events touches fragile human lives.
Love Song
What people thought it was about: Sara Bareilles telling her record label where to stick it after her label asked her to write a love song
The song that was in that Rhapsody commercial and then on everyone’s iPod in 2007 was really difficult to pin down. Why didn’t she want to write a love song? Bareilles stated in interviews that she wrote it in protest to her record label, who were asking for a love song. It was the perfect one-liner to accompany the song.
It wasn’t totally true though. Sara Bareilles set the record straight eight years later in her autobiography “Sounds Like Me”:
“Let’s just call him Dick Douche. He sauntered into the room and indulged me with about six minutes of vapid chitchat and feigned interest in my life, then slid a typed-up list of song titles that I could choose from over to me on the coffee table. It was full of names like 2 Good 4 U and Better 2 B Without U, and no, he wasn’t Prince. I was panicked at the idea of getting through a session that had started this badly, but before I had even read to the bottom of the list, he had decided that since I was young I should write something about “fun,” so he excitedly suggested Just Have Fun! and before I knew it, he had delighted himself and skipped out of the room to go record his idea.
It didn’t even matter that I was in the room.”
“Mr Douche” and the way he treated Bareilles in a song writing session was the catalyst for Love Song. She didn’t share it because it was too long and too personal to divulge every time she had an interview.
I Don’t Like Mondays
What most people think it’s about: Going to work on Monday with a hangover
The hit by the Boomtown Rats (was #1 hit in 32 different countries) was actually about the teenage school shooter Brenda Spencer, who went on a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary in 1979. In a phone conversation with the San Diego Tribune during the stand-off she was reported to have said
“I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
The Boomtown Rats decided to set the music video in a school with school children, but few people actually caught on to the real meaning of the song.. Brenda Spencer's parents tried to get the song banned in the USA but without much success. According to Bob Geldof, of the Boomtown Rats, Brenda actually wrote to him from prison, thanking him for making her famous.
Thank you for reading!
Sources:
A little while ago I did a post about the real meanings behind hit songs, and I really enjoyed the research and the writing of it. As a result, I thought that I'd focus on a couple of more songs with surprising messages. Hope you enjoy!
A Day in the Life
What people thought it was about: People talking drugs
The BBC banned the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” because they thought the line “I’d love to turn you on” was a reference to drug use. It had a deeper meaning than that though, as Paul McCartney remembered it
“This was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation to people. But what we really wanted was to turn you on to the truth rather than just bloody pot”
That isn’t how the BBC saw it though. What is regarded as one of the Beatles' greatest songs actually came from melding two songs together that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had written separately. John Lennon had read the Daily Mail newspaper and noticed that the Guiness heir had died in a car crash, and reading on he also spotted a story about four thousand potholes on the roads of Lancashire. In short, “A Day in the Life” is about how the unfolding of worldly events touches fragile human lives.
Love Song
What people thought it was about: Sara Bareilles telling her record label where to stick it after her label asked her to write a love song
The song that was in that Rhapsody commercial and then on everyone’s iPod in 2007 was really difficult to pin down. Why didn’t she want to write a love song? Bareilles stated in interviews that she wrote it in protest to her record label, who were asking for a love song. It was the perfect one-liner to accompany the song.
It wasn’t totally true though. Sara Bareilles set the record straight eight years later in her autobiography “Sounds Like Me”:
“Let’s just call him Dick Douche. He sauntered into the room and indulged me with about six minutes of vapid chitchat and feigned interest in my life, then slid a typed-up list of song titles that I could choose from over to me on the coffee table. It was full of names like 2 Good 4 U and Better 2 B Without U, and no, he wasn’t Prince. I was panicked at the idea of getting through a session that had started this badly, but before I had even read to the bottom of the list, he had decided that since I was young I should write something about “fun,” so he excitedly suggested Just Have Fun! and before I knew it, he had delighted himself and skipped out of the room to go record his idea.
It didn’t even matter that I was in the room.”
“Mr Douche” and the way he treated Bareilles in a song writing session was the catalyst for Love Song. She didn’t share it because it was too long and too personal to divulge every time she had an interview.
I Don’t Like Mondays
What most people think it’s about: Going to work on Monday with a hangover
The hit by the Boomtown Rats (was #1 hit in 32 different countries) was actually about the teenage school shooter Brenda Spencer, who went on a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary in 1979. In a phone conversation with the San Diego Tribune during the stand-off she was reported to have said
“I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
The Boomtown Rats decided to set the music video in a school with school children, but few people actually caught on to the real meaning of the song.. Brenda Spencer's parents tried to get the song banned in the USA but without much success. According to Bob Geldof, of the Boomtown Rats, Brenda actually wrote to him from prison, thanking him for making her famous.
Thank you for reading!
Sources:
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