Most of us have had the experience of nodding along to a song and mouthing the words (or some semblance of them) without actually listening to what we’re saying. Often the tracks with the most upbeat, feel-good sound mask a deeper, darker, deeper meaning. Whether it’s illicit substances, bitter breakups, or straight-up homicide, the meanings and lyrics of these songs give off vibes very different from the music.
While some of these tunes struck a bigger chord than others, they definitely went over our heads the first time (or first hundred times) we heard them.
1. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ Is Literally About The Desperation To Survive
Band member Robin Gibb explained, “The subject matter of ‘Stayin’ Alive’ is actually quite a serious one; it’s about survival in the streets of New York.”
Barry Gibb elaborated on the idea:
People crying out for help. Desperate songs. Those are the ones that become giants. The minute you capture that on record, it’s gold. “Stayin’ Alive” is the epitome of that.
Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullsh*t and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive.
This everyday despair is perhaps captured best in the lyrics of the bridge:
Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me
Somebody help me, yeah
Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me, yeah
I’m stayin’ alive
2. ‘Hey Ya!’ Questions Staying In A Loveless Relationship
Despite decades of dance floors being torn up when Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” comes on, the lyrics paint a much less happy picture. Once fans stopped shaking like a Polaroid picture, they heard what sounded like an exploration into a loveless, unhappy relationship.
While the start of the song says:
Thank God for Mom and Dad
For sticking two together
Like we don’t know how
The second verse continues:
Nothing that lasts forever
Then what makes love the exceptionSo why, oh why, oh…
Are we still in denial when we know we’re not happy here
The song seems to reference the ignored deeper meaning, as Andre 3000 says in the bridge, “Ya’ll don’t want to hear me; you just want to dance.”
Outkast also addressed the song’s hidden melancholy in a meme on Twitter that classified the song as one small fraction “a bop” but mostly “the saddest song ever written.”
3. ‘Go Your Own Way’ Is A Bitter Breakup Song Written By One Bandmate About Another
The simple and catchy lyrics of “Go Your Own Way” make it easy to sing along to without giving it much thought. But, like many of the songs on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, it’s actually about a bitter and ugly breakup.
Lindsey Buckingham, who wrote the song, used it to express his sentiments toward his bandmate and longtime romantic partner Stevie Nicks, after things ended between them in 1976. However, the two still had to continue working together. Buckingham recalled, “I was completely devastated when she took off… And yet I had to make hits for her. I had to do a lot of things for her that I really didn’t want to do.”
Nicks took offense to the song, explaining, “It was certainly a message within a song. And not a very nice one at that.” She particularly disliked the following lyrics:
Packing up
Shacking up
Is all you want to do
Nicks thought the line insinuated she’d “shacked up” with other people during the relationship, which she denied. She tried to get Buckingham to remove the line, but to no avail. Still, Nicks got to tell her side of the story on the same album with the song “Dreams,” with the famously quoted lyric: “Players only love you when they’re playing.”
4. ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ Is About The Misery Of War
Like many 1980s songs, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” tends to get stuck in your head and stay there. But you might not realize when you’re singing it for days on end that the lyrics aren’t as lighthearted as they seem.
As Tears for Fears band member Curt Smith put it, “The concept is quite serious – it’s about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes.” Written in 1985, the song encapsulates Cold War anxieties and seems to speak not only of ongoing power struggles but of a 1984-esque world of oppression:
Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the world…Help me make the
Most of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever…
It’s no wonder the song has been used as a soundtrack for fictional dystopias such as The Hunger Games and Mr. Robot. An early version actually ended the chorus with “Everybody wants to go to war” but the band decided against it.
5. ‘Mr. Brightside’ Was Inspired By A Cheating Girlfriend
Play “Mr. Brightside” to a group of a certain generation, and you’ll get every memorized lyric shouted back in your face. It’s no secret that the song deals with infidelity, and “jealousy” is one of the few words in the chorus that’s easy to make out. But the song, which was actually the band’s first, was inspired by the real life of lead singer and keyboardist Brandon Flowers.
Flowers told Q Magazine that he learned his girlfriend was cheating on him after running into her at a bar in Las Vegas. “I was asleep and I knew something was wrong… I have these instincts. I went to the Crown and Anchor and my girlfriend was there with another guy.”
Around the same time, in 2001, Flowers met guitarist Dave Keuning and they formed The Killers. Keuning had written some of the track already, and Flowers added in the lyrics, which, despite their place in the cultural zeitgeist, cut pretty deep:
Now they’re going to bed, and my stomach is sick
And it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his ____Chest now, he takes off her
Dress now, let me go
‘Cause I just can’t look, it’s killing me…Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis
As Flowers joked to Rolling Stone: “Who would have thought betrayal would sound so good?”
6. ‘Electric Avenue’ Was Inspired By ‘Bloody Saturday’
You can’t help but move your head (or at least tap your foot) to the beat of Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue.” But the song was meant to move people in a different way; it was intended as a wake-up call.
While living in England in 1981, Grant saw the Brixton riots (also known as “Bloody Saturday”) on TV. This inspired Grant to write the song, as he told The Guardian:
I had been talking to politicians and people at a high level about the lack of opportunity for Black people, and I knew what was brewing… I knew that when people felt they were being left behind, there was potential for violence.
The song’s music video was filmed in Barbados, although it was made to look like a street in Brixton. The verses also hint at its more serious subject matter:
Now in the street there is violence
And and a lots of work to be done…Who is to blame in one country
Never can get to the one
Dealin’ in multiplication
And they still can’t feed everyone
7. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ Takes A Hostile Turn
First popularized (and copyrighted) in 1940, the origins of “You Are My Sunshine” are somewhat of a mystery. The Rice Brothers Gang recorded the song in 1939; a popular narrative goes that it was written by Paul Rice, who sold the rights to Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell. Others say country musician Oliver Hood wrote the song and performed it in 1933. His family claims to have a brown paper bag with the original lyrics written on the back.
Whoever wrote it – the song has been covered by music legends such as Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Nat King Cole, and Ray Charles, and moved from a country tune to a ubiquitous children’s lullaby.
The simple chorus has a nice enough sentiment that can apply to all kinds of loving relationships, which is perhaps why it became such a universal phenomenon:
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away
But throughout the song, there’s the repeated (and somewhat ominous) notion that the “sunshine” will be taken away. Things really heat up in later verses, when the song takes on a threatening tone:
I’ll always love you and make you happy
If you will only say the same
But if you leave me to love another
You’ll regret it all some day…You told me once dear, you really loved me
That no one else could come between
But now you’ve left me and love another
You have shattered all my dreams
These darker moments of the song, which are deleted from some renditions, suggest a relationship of distrust and jealousy rather than the affectionate love of a parent for a child.
8. ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ Is Meant To Capture The Feeling Of Being High On Speed
It’s easy to hear the “doo doo doos” of “Semi-Charmed Life” and assume it’s a happy-go-lucky tune for skipping down the streets. And while many listeners completely missed the song’s true meaning, the infectious beat was a purposeful choice. Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins explained that it’s meant to mimic “the bright, shiny feeling you get on speed.”
Many of the lyrics are, in fact, speedy. So speedy, it’s easy to miss the actual words:
The sky was gold, it was rose
I was taking sips of it to my nose
And I wish I could get back there, someplace back there
Smiling in the pictures you would take
Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you breakIt won’t stop, I won’t come down
I keep stock with a tick-tock rhythm, a 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
The band never tried to conceal the song’s true meaning, and found it amusing the tune became a popular summertime jam on the radio. As Jenkins put it bluntly in 1997, “It’s a dirty, filthy song about snorting speed and getting blow jobs.”
9. ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ Gets Inside The Mind Of A Teenage Killer
It took a while for many listeners (and radio stations) to fully grasp that Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” was not actually a bop about having the flyest sneakers, but was instead a disturbing look into the mind of a young killer.
Speaking with Spinner UK, Ben Foster gave insight into the song’s true meaning:
“Pumped Up Kicks” is about a kid that basically is losing his mind and is plotting revenge. He’s an outcast. I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It’s kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer’s mind, like Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood.
While the song became controversial and was pulled from some radio stations, its meaning wasn’t exactly hidden deep within the lyrics. The chorus goes:
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet