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Song Meanings - Whose interpretation is more important?

Kr8zy

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One of the frustrating things I have about music is that so many musicians are never clear about the meaning of their songs. I am very bad at figuring out the true meanings of songs. I am very good at coming up with what they mean to me, but then i hear what the artist thinks and they are way off.Sometimes this ruins the song for me, sometimes I can just ignore what they say and think of it like I do.

Two examples - Hoziers Take Me To Church and Procul Harem's Whiter Shade of Pale.

Once I learned the lyrics to take me to church, I always thought it was about a guy proposing to his girlfriend pretending it was about being a good religious guy but really because he found the sex hot. But i guess it is just about sex vs the church.

Likewise Whiter Shade of Pale. I thought (this may have come from something I was told when I was young) that it was about a theater closing to become part of a movie theater chain.

So, when you learn a song is about something different than what you thought it was, does that change how you enjoy it?
 

topdog

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....Sometimes this ruins the song for me, sometimes I can just ignore what they say and think of it like I do.

I think that's a fine plan. Sometimes when the writer explains a song it might make it even more meaningful. If so - go with that. If not, what it means to you is fine.

As a matter of fact the way art reaches in and connects to something inside us is something of a miracle. That's actually the most important part.

Then there are writers that put it all out there and dare you to make sense of it. Like, for example...


What does that song say to you? (Other than get up and dance!)
 

jeansGuyOZ

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Since the OP specifically mentioned A Whiter Shade of Pale, the story going around at the time was that the lyrics were derived from parts of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. I've also seen it claimed that this was a fiction, that they were largely nonsense lyrics written in such a way as to sound mediaeval. Who knows?

Paul Simon's Graceland album threw people a little, because although the music borrows heavily from South African "gumboots" music, most of the song lyrics actually have nothing to do with Africa. That particular song got its title from the fact that someone kept incorrectly referring to Paul Simon as "Al"; however apart from that the best theory I have been able to come up with is that it's about a man - perhaps a friend of Simon, perhaps a generic reference to no one in particular - who is a bit lonely and discontented and looking for a friend.

Addressing the general question of song meanings, it usually doesn't bother me much if I find I have misunderstood the song, as I am more a melody person than a lyrics person. Some songwriters get annoyed at their songs being misinterpreted - fair enough if they are unambiguous, but if they are somewhat cryptic in the first place then the writer can't really complain if the listener didn't get the correct meaning. John Lennon famously denied that "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" had anything to do with LSD, but you can hardly blame people for that interpretation, given that the Beatles were heavily into certain drugs at the time. Others intentionally give their lyrics double meanings, so they can sidestep accusations of lewdness, political incorrectness etc., eg "Squeezebox" by the Who. Then you get other songwriters who are quite happy for the listener to take away their own interpretation of the song.

I was recently reading about Neil Diamond, who has just announced he is retiring from performing due to Parkinson's Disease. One of his first songs was "Solitary Man", penned some time before he achieved any commercial success with his songs. At the time, he says, it was intended to refer to no one in particular, and it was only several years later that he realised that he had written it about himself.
 
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