Or maybe you still love it, but now you have a different perspective.

  • takeheart@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    “Vamos a playa” by Righeira carries a lightweight, upbeat tune that vacationers might hum on the way to the beach. But the Spanish lyrics reveal that it’s about the devastation left behind by nuclear armaments. And the schism between trying to live an ordinary life whilst having a nuclear Damocles sword waver over your head. That it became such a world wide hit makes it all the more ironic. I love it all the more for it.

  • omxxi@feddit.org
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    4 hours ago

    Tears in heaven from Eric Clapton. I always liked this song, and didn’t have a special connotation. But after learning its backstory, now I just feel sadness when I hear it. :-(

    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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      2 hours ago

      Such an upbeat 90s pop song with lyrics like “doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break.”

  • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    In the other direction from most of them here, “Losing my Religion” hit a lot harder before I realized it was just about anger.

  • son_named_bort@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones. It’s a song about banging a slave, but I didn’t know that as a kid.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    Not sure, if I stopped listening to mainstream music around that time, but uh, both of my examples are from 2011, apparently:

    • Kind of a classic response to this question, is “Pumped Up Kicks” from Foster The People. It’s got that upbeat melody, and the lyrics are this:

    All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
    You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun
    All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
    You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet.

    • And my other example is “The A Team”, apparently originally from Ed Sheeran, and apparently also with an upbeat melody. I think, I only ever listened to a cover version. But yeah, it’s about drug use and sex work, and how those kind of necessitate each other…
  • mx_smith@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Closing time by Semisonic I thought it was about going home with someone after a night out at the bar. It’s about the lead singers child being born.

    • chetradley@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Sort of, Dan Wilson said he had the idea while writing the song because his wife was pregnant so he slipped it in as a double entendre. It’s like 90% bar closing with a couple lines alluding to being born: “Closing time, this room won’t be open till your brothers or your sisters come”.

  • Schal330@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Mr Brightside by the Killers. The tune was good and felt energetic when it came about, but it’s about a guy being cheated on. Having had someone cheat on me around the time it came out it hit really close to home and I just don’t enjoy listening to the song.

    The problem with being in the UK is that it’s so overplayed and I just have to tune it out.

    • zaph@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      It’s not. It’s about a guy who can’t beat jealousy and believes he’s being cheated on “except it’s all in [his] head”

        • zaph@sh.itjust.works
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          24 hours ago

          From the article “The lyric is about a man who is obsessed with a girl that is seeing another man… and the thoughts that go through his head, imagining what they’re doing behind closed doors…” I guess I was wrong, it’s envy not jealousy.

    • Classy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I second one of the other commenters who says that the song is about the perception of being cheated on. It’s funny, after the first day I ever went on with my partner that song played and for a little while we considered it our song, then eventually kind of faded as they both realized the song didn’t relate to us very well. Now I can look back years later, after going through a lot of therapy and self enrichment and I can realize that those kind of paranoia really did plague our early relationship. I’m glad that we were able to move on from it

  • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Pretty much all Linkin Park songs.

    Listened to it since elementary.

    Around high school, I figured the lyrics were kinda dark.

    Then the vocalist hung himself.

    • nafzib@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Sadly, Chester grew up being horribly abused and then using a lot of drugs. He was super close with Chris Cornell, who had also killed himself some months prior to Chester. Chester had been sober for a time but ended up staying the night alone after traveling and drank a little and hung himself on Chris’s birthday.

      Mike Shinoda has stated in interviews that when he and Chester would write lyrics, they would focus on the emotion and not necessarily just the exact experience. So the lyrics would slowly evolve until they both could sing them truthfully while relating them to their own separate lived experiences, which is part of why they can be so universally related to - because none of their songs are truly only about one specific thing, but rather about the feelings people experience.

  • nowherelord@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Semi-Charmed Life, by Third Eye Blind. Basically, it’s a song about doing meth… Spent almost twenty years just singing the chorus with absolutely no idea what the rest of the lyrics were. Now, it kinda feels weird, ngl.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Fun fact: Semi Charmed Kinda Life made it into a late '90s Disney film about surfers. They didn’t even bleep anything because, I assume, they couldn’t understand what he was singing.

    • Sporkbomber@lemm.ee
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      9 hours ago

      I love people being surprised by this song when a verse literally says ‘doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break’.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        "It won’t stop, I won’t come down

        I keep stock with the tick-tock rhythm

        I bump for the drop, and then I bumped up

        I took the hit that I was given, then I bumped again

        Then I bumped again"

        That entire verse, but honestly rereading the lyrics, I’m amazed that got radio play in the Bible belt. I know it did, because I heard it uncensored in southeastern Indiana.

    • nafzib@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I didn’t know it was about Crystal meth for a really long time because I only heard it on the radio for many many years and they only played a clean version where the phrase “Crystal Meth” is cut out in a way that’s not really obvious it was edited so I just never understood the lyrics.

    • undercrust@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      I, as a child, did a music class presentation on “my favourite song of the year” on this little ditty.

      Whoops!

      Edit: To clarify, then, much like now, I listened to the music and not the lyrics. I don’t know if that’s common at all, but the singing is basically another instrument to me, and I hardly ever pay attention to the actual words.

      • Lookorex@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Much of the time I can’t even make out the lyrics, so I listen to music the same way

      • nowherelord@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I think it’s fairly common to not always pay close attention to the lyrics. Most of the time, you hear a song on the radio, and you can’t always make out what it’s saying, but you’re still able to enjoy the music and the singing melody. Until you pay more attention or you seek out the lyrics, then you’re often surprised about what it’s saying, cause the lyrics weren’t the point when you used to listen to the song. It doesn’t mean that it’s world-changing or anything, but it just takes you by surprise.

      • Subtracty@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I listen to music the exact same way. I will maybe pay attention to the chorus or catchy line, but a lot of lyrics are lost on me.

    • zaph@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Not so much a song about doing meth as it’s a song about the ramifications of doing meth. “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” it mentions lockjaw at the end and even talks about watching the love of his life die to an od.

    • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      But it’s about how the excitement of meth, like that of a new relationship, fades and leaves the speaker wanting something more substantial while still fondly reminiscing about the good times.

      The speaker thinks of the girl as a “sunburn” he “would like to save.” He describes meth as something that “will lift you up until you break.” I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use. So no reason to feel weird I think.

      • everett@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        I think these characterizations point very strongly toward nostalgic longing and away from the glorification of addiction or even that of drug use.

        There’s also an extra verse, which wasn’t in the radio edit, that I think further supports what you’re saying.

      • nowherelord@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I guess you’re right, I just never gave the song much thought. It’s just that it kinda felt like some happy song and I never paid attention to what it was saying, then I looked them up one day, out of curiosity, and I guess it juat felt unexpected to me, and that’s why it felt weird. Thinking about what you said makes me want to give the song another listen with an open mind, I guess.

  • Hard Habit To Break by Chicago is pretty straightforward, but I liked it on the radio as a kid because it’s peppy and has an orchestra.

    Decades later I get access to music service libraries and give it a listen.

    I was a jerk and you left me, and now you’re with another guy. I’m not sorry. I’m not going to do better. But I have an orchestra!

    I still like it, but have perspective now.

  • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Richmen North of Richmond.

    I love the sound, and at first it sounds like a pro worker union song (and it kinda is).

    But there’s way too much dog whistle… An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry

    And then he slips in some super disappointing language about fat people on welfare.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry

      WTF? Don’t be sorry about that!

      I know it’s just sort of a reflexive idiomatic politeness, but still, it is really important to make it absolutely crystal clear how irredeemably contemptible the “lost cause” shit take is, at every opportunity. Never, ever be polite about it!