Random Songs That Don't Mean What You Think They Do (16 items)

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  (#1) Electric Slide - Marcia Griffiths

  "Electric Slide" has always been a multi-generational crowd-pleaser. Whether you're at a wedding or a bat mitzvah, chances are the song will be played and everyone will get up to do the line dance. Get ready to never want to dance next to your grandma to this song again, because the tune is about a vibrator.

  The song's original writer, Neville Livingston, allegedly confirmed the rumor, according to an unnamed source. 

  "I'm surprised it took people this long to figure out," Aazios's source alleges Livingston said. According to this close friend, Livingston wrote the song after a woman told him she didn't need him, since she had a sex toy she called the "electric slide."
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  (#2) Brown Sugar

  • The Rolling Stones

  Many an unsuspecting singer chooses "Brown Sugar" for karaoke and balks at the lyrics as they appear on the screen. Somehow (we don't know how) they typically understand what this song is about, even though the story is right in the lyrics. It's used in some daytime TV commercials and places all around in this fun, light-hearted manner when it is quite literally a song about slave rape.

  This song isn't a love tribute to a beloved African American woman and it is most definitely not something about the sweetener that brings us all chocolate chip cookies. This song is about white plantation owners raping their African slaves.

  Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
  Sold in a market down in New Orleans
  Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
  Hear him with the women just around midnight.
  Ah, brown sugar how come you taste so good?
  Brown sugar, just like a young girl should

  Yikes.
  
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  (#3) Tutti Frutti

  • Little Richard

  You probably heard this song a lot as a kid and didn't think much of it. Well, give this record a spin and really listen to the lyrics - you'll realize that the song is all kinds of rough. Not only is it about some guy getting it on with multiple girls - Sue and Daisy - they both "know what to do" (so they're very experienced), and they all drive him crazy.

  Also, the repeated hook of "Tutti frutti, aw rooty" was not the original lyrics of the song, before it got picked up to be recorded. When performing live, Little Richard sang the following:

  Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy.

  The lyrics were then changed in studio to "Tutti Frutti, all rooty" (all rooty was slang at the time for "alright") so that the rest of the song didn't make sense, making it more marketable. Yes, that's right. The song you most likely danced to like an idiot when you were three and didn't know better was really... much more adult.
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  (#4) Closing Time

  • Semisonic

  This memorable '90s track is about a bar at closing time, right? RIGHT? No. No, it's about something else entirely.

  According to Dan Wilson, Semisonic lead singer, it's about being "bounced from the womb." As in, your mama's belly. In the above video he points out a lot of lyrics that make you go, "oh, yeah, I guess it is about the birth of a baby." For instance: "This room won't be open till your brothers and your sisters come."
  
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  (#5) Like a Virgin

  • Madonna

  "Like a Virgin" isn't about a sensitive girl, and is, in fact, not about a girl at all. Lyricist Billy Steinberg explained in an interview with the LA Times that he did not intend for a woman to sing the song, and that the song was about his personal experiences of going through the emotional ringer in the past, and how he felt new and unhurt the next time he fell in love, as if he had never been hurt before. Like a virgin.

  I was beat, incomplete
  I'd been had, I was sad and blue
  But you made me feel
  Yeah, you made me feel
  Shiny and new

  Says Steinberg, "I was saying ... that I may not really be a virgin – I've been battered romantically and emotionally like many people – but I'm starting a new relationship and it just feels so good, it's healing all the wounds and making me feel like I've never done this before, because it's so much deeper and more profound than anything I've ever felt."
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  (#6) There She Goes

  • Sixpence None the Richer

  This is actually a cover of a song by British rock band The La's from their eponymous album. Although the song initially seems to be about a woman, if you look closely at the lyrics, the "she" in question is actually heroin and the song tells of the rush of using the drug and how fleeting the high is.

  There she goes again
  Racing through' my brain
  And I just can't contain
  This feelin' that remains

  There she blows
  There she blows again
  Pulsing through' my vein
  And I just can't contain
  This feelin' that remains

  Additionally, the song has stylistic similarities to The Velvet Underground's "There She Goes Again," a song with overt references to prostitution and potentially references to drug abuse, as well.
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  (#7) My Sharona

  • The Knack

  We all probably know that "My Sharona" is about sex or trying to get laid, but how about sex with underaged girl? Maybe not. In the tradition of "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, the song is about a man's serial lust for a girls several years his junior.

  In this case, the song is inspired by Doug Fieger, the band's lead singer, and his relationship with Sharona Alperin, who he met when he was 25 and she was 16. They dated for four years and she appears on the single's cover. While Fieger says he wrote the song from the perspective of a teenage boy, the lyrics are quite raunchy and rather uncouth in kinder circles:

  Such a dirty mind, always get it up
  For the touch of the younger kind...

  When you gonna give it to me
  Give it to me
  It's just a matter of time Sharona
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  (#8) Born in the U.S.A.

  • Bruce Springsteen, E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

  Only The Boss could make an anti-war song sound like a jingoistic rock anthem that most people use as a pro-America anthem. The song narrative follows a working class American who gets into some trouble at home, so he goes to Vietnam to fight in the war. When he returns, he is unable to find work and is shunned by the community at large, kind of like in real life.

  Springsteen's lyrics and message were so cleverly masked, that Ronald Reagan's staff tried to get the song to be the official song for his re-election campaign (which is exactly how well they did their research), but The Boss politely declined, as he did not support Ronald Reagan at all.
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  (#9) Money For Nothing (Full Length Version)

  • Dire Straits

  Probably best known for the repetitive chanting of "I want my MTV" by Sting, the song is often believed to be an anthem for the MTV generation. "I want my MTV" even became a tagline, and slogan for the generation of people who grew up believing in music videos and the MTV phenomenon.

  But the four and half minute song is, in fact, a criticism of the music scene of the 80s - especially glam metal which was in its hey-day. In fact, bassist Nikki Sixx claims the song is specifically about his band, Motley Crue.

  Told from the perspective of a blue collar worker, the song contains lyrics that discredit and dismiss the musicians and their ability such as "See the little f*ggot [a word which is used liberally and with absolutely no hesitation throughout the song, and, according to the songwriter is actually part of the 'point' of the character who sings the song] with the earring and the make-up" and comments on how their music "ain't working." Still, he laments their ability to get "money for nothing, and their chicks for free."

  In the end, he decides that maybe he should learn how to play guitar.
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  (#10) Semi-Charmed Life

  • Third Eye Blind

  Misconstrued by eBay and many others as an anthem for consumerism (thanks no doubt in part to the music video), "Semi-Charmed Life" is actually about a drug users dark descent into crystal meth use and the sexual acts he performs while trying to find that "something else."

  I was taking sips of it through my nose [...]
  Doing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break

  You're the priestess, I must confess
  Those little red panties they pass the test
  Slide up around the belly, face down on the mattress

  Of course, it's no wonder that many of us either don't know or don't catch the song's lyrical content. In addition to the upbeat sound and the references of lewd activities coming at you a mile a minute, the song was also drastically edited to be a playable single for TV and the radio.

  The original song is 3:07 minutes long, but when edited for the radio, nearly a whole minute was taken out to make it playable, and the words "crystal meth" are often covered up by use of backmasking (you know, just like all the references to Satan in Led Zepplin songs supposedly are).
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  (#11) Ben

  • Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5

  This song is particularly interesting because it was not originally intended to be performed by Michael Jackson, but by Donny Osmond. Osmond, however, was on tour so 14-year-old Jackson received the honor and his first number one as a solo artist. Which is pretty cool, but kind of crazy when you learn what the song is really about.

  Ben the two of us need look no more
  We both found what we were looking for
  With a friend to call my own I'll never be alone
  And you my friend will see you've got a friend in me
  (you've got a friend in me)

  Ben you're always running here and there
  (here and there)
  You feel you're not wanted anywhere
  (anywhere)
  If you ever look behind and don't like what you find
  There's something you should know you've got a place to go
  (you've got a place to go)

  Although it is a song about unconditional love and friendship, as can be expected with lyrics like "You've got a friend in me" and "I used to say 'I' and 'me'/Now it's 'us' now it's 'we'." But what you may not know is that the friendship in question is between a boy and (wait for it) a rat named Ben. And not just any rat, but the gang leader of a group of killer rats. That's right, this sweet and tender ballad is the theme to a film about killer rats.

  Coming from the film of the same name, Ben is the sequel to the film Willard (based on Stephen Gilbert's Ratman's Notebook), which also starred Ben and his band of murderous rodents. Although the sequel tries to present Ben ahd his band as protectors of the lonely boy Danny, they still manage to cause several deaths.

  Imagine it to be Let Me In, but with rats rather than vampires and less sex (thank goodness).
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  (#12) Material Girl

  • Madonna

  So you think "Material Girl" is about a gold digging wh*re? Well, that's not exactly correct. Although the video directly alludes to Marilyn Monroe's gold digging anthem, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend," the song is actually about a working girl who is looking to get into a relationship with a guy who is also successful... and working.

  She doesn't want someone who doesn't have enough on his plate and is so wholly devoted to her because she can't be devoted to him in kind. One of those "unevenly yoked" kind of deals. Basically, she wants to date a man she doesn't need to give constant attention to.

  In a 2009 Rolling Stone interview, Madonna said this about "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl": "I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me. I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn't a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be like a virgin? I liked the play on words, I thought they were clever. They're so geeky, they're cool."
  
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  (#13) (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right

  • Beastie Boys

  Without question "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party)" is one of the greatest party anthems of all time. Everyone gets pumped by mumbling their way through the verses, before shouting the refrain with such ferocity. After all, what is more important than one's ability to have a good time?

  Regrettably, that was never what it was intended to be. In fact, it was written as a parody to mock all the play hard party songs that inundated the 80s, such as Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" and Motley Crue's "Smoking In The Boy's Room." After all, it's about high school kid, and no matter what Hollywood may tell you: 15 year olds are rarely - if ever - that hardcore.

  So, despite the fact that it is without a doubt the band's most well known song, the mass majority's inability to get the joke has been a cause of distress for the band, leading them to scarcely play it live and although it appears in their greatest hits - Sounds of Science -  Beastie Boys member, MCA, says little about the song other than "it sucks" in the liner notes.
  
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  (#14) Every Breath You Take

  • The Police

  The sweet tenderness of this tune makes the song seem like it's just another love song we can all snuggle up and croon to. However, if you look at the lyrics for even a moment you'll realize there is something far more sinister afoot here than your typical romance.

  Every breath you take
  Every move you make
  Every bond you break
  Every step you take
  I'll be watching you
  [...]
  Oh can't you see
  You belong to me
  How my poor heart aches
  With every step you take

  As you can see from the above lyrics, this song is not about the simple joys of love but rather from the perspective of a possessive lover who must be vigilant, if not in control, of his (or her) lover's actions. Down to the air they breathe. Talk about overbearing. Even the songwriter, Sting, agrees, "I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle, little love song."
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  (#15) White Wedding

  • Billy Idol

  Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli played this song at their wedding, and since that has been documented as the world's perfect love match, we can imagine that even great guitarists fail to listen to the lyrics. If he had, it'd be pretty obvious to him how inappropriate that song was for such an occasion. But hey, it's an awesome song, and their marriage is over now anyway.

  Hey little sister what have you done?
  Hey little sister who's the only one?
  Hey little sister who's your superman?
  Hey little sister who's the one you want?
  Hey little sister shot gun!

  From the lyrics and video, we get the notion that the speaker in the song, is watching someone he cares about being forced into marriage after he's been gone away. "Shotgun!" is cried three times in the song, leading to the possibility that it's a shotgun wedding - quite the opposite of a white wedding - and there are additional dark lyrics that make the song not exactly appropriate for weddings or similar affairs of the heart.
  
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  (#16) The Ice Cream Truck Song

  That utterly American ice cream truck song you thought meant "hey kids, come enjoy a cold treat on this fine sunny day!" actually has some of the most racist lyrics in the history of music. Recorded for Columbia records 1916, the melody is from a song called "N**** Loves a Watermelon Ha Ha Ha" by a terrible man named Harry C Brown. Here's a sampling of the lyrics:

  You N***** quit throwing them bones and come down and get your ice cream
  Ice cream?
  Yes, colored man's ice cream: watermelon!
  N***** loves a watermelon ha ha ha
  N***** loves a watermelon ha ha ha
  For here they're made with a half a pound of cool
  there's nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon.

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