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

  • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 hours ago

    A cute girl I knew a few years ago got the Orion Experience (group) on my radar and I learned recently that while yes the songs are clearly about a sexual deviant (which is what made them cool bruh), it’s about that kind of sexual deviant, because Orion very much likes kids apparently

    That fucking ruins everything and they’re bops that I can’t get out of my head sometimes, so that’s nice

  • takeheart@lemmy.world
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    10 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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    8 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. :-(

  • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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    18 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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    23 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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    1 day 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…
  • 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.

  • mx_smith@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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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      5 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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          1 day 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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      24 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.