Songs you love, but don't understand what the hell they're about.

Edge Of Seventeen

Technically, R1, nobody understands any Stevie Nicks song.

I understand OP's confusion because the song is supposed to be abstract and was originally recorded with largely improvised lyrics, to denote the state of joy and absolute freedom.

r1's comment intrigued me as it's always seemed like one of her most straightforward songs, i.e. about a young girl who falls in love. But I just looked it up and apparently it's about grief and loss? What nonsense. Lyrics are gorgeous, but that coke did mama no good when it comes to meaning.

R3 I picked up on the song’s confused/conflicting vibes back in ‘81. There’s something about a passionate and ill-fated affair between a grown woman (the narrator) and an underaged teenage boy. Or is it all just her desire for such an affair? Yet there’s also a death motif here and there especially with that Poe-esque nightbird mentioned at the end. And woozy metaphors about the clouds and the rain and the sea, in between.

In Barbra's memoir, she said she has no idea what "A Woman in Love" is trying to say or something to that effect.

Alas, r2, that doesn’t ring true for me.

Mylène Farmer - Optimistique-moi

I've read the lyrics in translation, and I'm still baffled. Great video, though. Most of Mylène's songs are full of puns and double meanings.

Apparently the Edge of Seventeen lyrics were ripped off from a restaurant menu

OP,

True story. I was backstage at a meet and greet with Donna in the early 90s.

Two nerdy gays were grilling her about the lyrics of the song and what it meant, specifically what was the "The flame of Oroladian".

She said she didn't know, as she didn't write the song. They kept asking well, what about this part, etc. Finally, a few of us jumped in to rescue her from them - she was very grateful...

My favorite Stevie Nicks song.

"I left my baby out in the sun, and now his head looks like a sweet potato..."

[quote]Apparently the Edge of Seventeen lyrics were ripped off from a restaurant menu

I heard a different story. I heard that Stevie asked Tom Petty's wife when they met. She said to Nicks "we met at the age of seventeen". Nicks misheard her as saying "we met at the edge of seventeen". Hence, the lyrics and song title.

R8 / R11 - Also from Wiki: Although Nicks had originally planned to use the title for a song about Tom and Jane Petty, the death of her uncle Jonathan and the murder of John Lennon during the same week of December 1980 inspired a new song for which Nicks used the title. Nicks' producer and lover Jimmy Iovine was a close friend of Lennon, and Nicks felt helpless to comfort him. Soon after, Nicks flew home to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with her uncle Jonathan, who was dying of cancer. She remained with her uncle and his family until his death.

Both things are true.

Also, this tracks for the lyric, "I'm a few years older than you, my love," as Stevie was five years older than Jimmy Iovine.

Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

I must say, in general, I prefer not to know what songs are really about.

Sometimes when you find out what the real lyrics are it's a disappointment because you've already built a story in your head about what the song means.

I'm kinda having that right now with "Edge of Seventeen"! 🥲

Possum Kingdom. Serial killer? Vampire? Lone nut obsessed by a girl?

I always wondered what the lyrics to Moonlight Shadow meant? --- Far away on the other side

Caught in the middle of a hundred and five

The night was heavy and the air was alive

But she couldn't find how to push through

Semisonic’s Closing Time always seemed like a straightforward song about being drunk and unsuccessfully wanting to get laid as the bar closes for the night. But per the songwriter it’s about unborn babies and parenthood. Huh?

Oh wow, someone knows Moonlight Shadow. I swear that song got in my head just yesterday. Never really thought about the lyrics but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it.

Pretty much all of Laura Nyro’s New York Tenderberry.

Stairway to Heaven

R17 - Oh nice try, Semisonic. C'mon now.

The alleged depth to their lyrics was certainly not a part of the song's popularity.

Duran Duran

Union of the Snake

Incomprehensible. Here’s the lyric video. Maybe you can make sense of it.

R22 - I've come to believe that the majority of Duran Duran's songs are filled with "nonsense lyrics" that just vaguely attach to an overall theme/vibe.

*

Can you surry, r19...can you picnic?

[quote]Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

Fuck right off, r13

Loved this one for 40 years but have no idea what it's supposed to be about. I'm guessing that real love is difficult and not like the perfect version you see on TV? Something got lost in translation from Norwegian to English

I don’t love the song Rocket Man, but Elton John has admitted he has no idea what it is about.

Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House -- love it but no idea what it's about.

I Am the Walrus but I never tire of hearing it.

Anything by the Cocteau Twins and most early REM songs.

r15, LOVE that song. It's about whether a cult member will self immoliate (sp?).

Loved REM for a long time but when you sit down and actually read the lyrics to most of their songs they are terrible.

Bowie had his "cut up" process that often worked but sometimes had me scratching my head.

[quote] I've come to believe that the majority of Duran Duran's songs are filled with "nonsense lyrics" that just vaguely attach to an overall theme/vibe.

I thought Simon LeBon admitted as much saying they only bothered with lyrics so you’d have something to sing along to

I've been waiting over 55 years, and I still don't know why someone left a cake out in the rain.

I don't know either, r36.

🎵 The way you’re fucking me makes me bilingual 🎵

Muskrat Love. So enigmatic.

R39 They do the jitterbug. They shimmy. They whirl. They twirl. They tango.

“Come Together” - The Beatles

R38 - That song seems like a legit parody of Justify My Love. Like, if SNL could be R-rated or even X-rated, that's how they'd do it.

A Whiter Shade of Pale could be about anything.

Moonlight Shadow is meant to be about the murder of John Lennon, but I think that was just the starting point. not much of it lines up with the facts around his death.

From the same school of lyrics as Duran Duran

The Sound Of The Crowd by The Human League

Put your hand in a parting wave

Pass around

Make a shroud pulling combs through a backwash frame

Find the copies in a carbon mound

Pass around

Stroke a pocket with a print of a laughing sound

Most of Beck's songs in the 90s into the 2000s were like this. Catchy, and the lyrics kind of landed alright phonetically but WTF is actually going on?

MacArthur Park

Maybe Richard Thompson didn't want to release this as an instrumental, so he added some words:

I was under the Calvary Cross The pale-faced lady she said to me I've watched you with my one green eye And I'll hurt you 'till you need me You scuff your heels and you Spit on your shoes You do nothing with reason One day you catch a train Never leaves the station Everything you do everything you do You do for me Now you can make believe on your tin whistle And you can be my broom-boy Scrub me 'till I shine in the dark I'll be your light 'till doomsday Oh it's a black cat cross your path And why don't you follow My claw's in you and my lights in you This is your first day of sorrow Everything you do everything you do You do for me

[quote]Can you surry, ...can you picnic?

Only with a fringe on top.

Just about anything by Robbie Robertson. I love The Band but I swear he just put words together that rhymed and made no sense.

R2 Stevie has a different answer every time someone asks her what a song is about.

Mrs. Robinson Simon & Garfunkel. Never could understand what they were talking about.

Max Don’t Have Sex With Your Ex

"Give Me Some Slack" by The Cars.

For starters:

"I wanna shake like La Guardia / Magic mouth in the sun / Train ride to the courtyard / Before you can run / Down at the end of Lonely Street / Where no one takes a walk / Someone lyin' at your feet / And someone's gettin' off"

Some more:

"I wanna float like Euripides / All visions intact / I'm alright with Fellini fiends / A trippin' over the track"

MacArthur Park.... what the hell was "the cake out in the rain" all about??

R52 it's really about Eleanor Roosevelt. Makes more sense that way too.