I’m not one who can parse let alone remember all the lyrics to my favorite songs. Judging by my many experiences at Karaoke bars, I’m on par with the average person (yes that’s how my scientific data was collected). I wonder if that is why so many songs with creepy ass lyrics but a catchy hook become hits without much push-back.
The song whose lyrics’ meaning eluded me for decades was Every Breath You Take by The Police. I grew up singing this song and feeling all the romantic feels of his earnest yearning. Now I’m like “Call the police with a lowercase P!” (…except don’t because they are fucking scary too)
On a road trip down the coast of California, we were listening to the radio and this gem came on. Young Girl by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. It was background noise until one of us clued into the lyrics and couldn’t believe that A. The song was ever made, B. That it was still being played on the radio in 2013 and C. It was a number 1 single in the UK in its time.
What song have you found yourself singing along to only to realize that it’s really fucking creepy?
As always, thank you for coming around in support of DeadSplinter and DUAN!
So my wife is a huge fan of ’60s music, and while I knew the big touchstones through my boomer parents (Beatles, Stones, Doors, some Monkees mostly) I wasn’t that well-versed in the decade’s pop music. She has since re-educated me, and I have come to enjoy much of it. Now, Gary Puckett is one of her favorites but I simply cannot get past “Young Girl” because the first time I heard it I was like “Whoa … WHOA …. WHHHHOOOOAAHHHH.” If I’d heard it when I was younger first, maybe I could ignore it — I definitely ignore other creepy stuff that I loved long before I grasped that it was creepy — but that song … WOOF.
Anyway, I did NOT realize what this song was about the first time I heard it …
Holy fuck. I listen to this song all the time and never heard the lyrics!
I remember when Every Breath You Take first came out, and the DJ on the local rock station referenced an interview with Sting where he corrected a bunch of journalists and told them that this was NOT a love song.
I remember when I first realized that Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was a cheery little ditty about a serial killer.
And Maxwell’s Silver Hammer & Rocky Raccoon were songs we sang in music class from kindergarten on…
Took a loooooong time before I understood what they were *actually* about…
😆😂🤣
I had no idea what the back story was to this for quite some time. Today, it’s apparently about the beat dropping a few minutes into the track.
Phil Collins, “In The Air Tonight”
Nine Inch Nails, Closer. Or an ode to Luigi’s sheep?
I thought Ellie was making a crack about Luigi having sex with his sheep. She informed me that it was just sheep are animals and have sex. I hope this doesn’t reflect poorly on me that my first thought was Luigi having sex with his animals. Whoops.
Look man, the heart wants what the heart wants.
Y’all know I love John Prine. And I used to like this song, I thought it was about moving on after a break up. And maybe that’s what he meant, but now it just sounds emotionally manipulative, and coercive.
Emotionally manipulative but beautifully written and wryly self-accusatory.
This is a tough topic. I almost stayed out of this one entirely. On one hand, these songs are really creepy. On the other hand, they’re bangers that are fun to sing.
Such a catchy tune
Hum…I think I give up on links from my phone now… Cannot figure out why they only sometimes turn up in video form
fixed
thank you 🙂
This was my first thought.
Then I realized in some parts of the country 17 is not considered creepy. I searched age of consent out of curiosity. Big mistake. In the search it also showed results for other countries. Bigger mistake. This DUAN has made me feel dirty and now I need to take a shower.
Now something to help wash it off.
If there is a deep dark meaning to this song please don’t tell me.
What if the person being urged to take the last train to Clarksville, don’t be slow, we’ll have one more night together, is being lured to their death?
@Cousin Matthew’s Tingling Leg
An ode to the Australian cult The Family?
There’s something deeply disturbing about this song. I might have read too many Grimms Fairy Tales growing up.
Nooo! – It’s about sunshine and rainbows and delicious candy.
And when you remember it’s from Willie Wonka it makes sense.
Cousin Matthew, juuuuuust because the witch lived in a house built out of gingerbread & gumdrops, AND there’s a Candyman horror-flick doesn’t mean one can blaspheme Sammy Davis Jr. this way!
This is NOT *that* Candy Man!
😉💖🤣
I’m reminded how poor little France Gall didn’t realise that Serge Gainsbourg, lord of the double entendre, had something less innocent than candy in mind when he wrote this song for her.
France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg, “Les Sucettes”
…I’m pretty sure I could think of some others if I took a bit more time…there’s definitely been a tune or two I’ve been sort of amazed to hear crop up as a supposedly romantic option at a wedding or two, for a start…but for some reason the first thing that sprang to mind was remembering a certain sort of people who loved to dance to this tune but only seemed to know about three lines of the lyrics & never seemed to see the irony?
I never paid attention to the words of this gem by the Stones. It’s pretty awful.
Pumped Up Kicks is ALWAYS the one of these that first springs to mind for me….
Closer, *not* so much, because for literally years, i thought the title was the chorus😆😂🤣
Although, it IS pretty messed up, that we danced to that song at all the spring dances of my senior year, and at homecoming, the following year 😆😂🤣🤣🤣(the previous year’s seniors often went to the homecoming foitball game & dance afterward the year after they graduated)… somehow, the lyrics got past all the grownups🤣🤣🤣
In addition to the ones mentioned above (and so many other yikes-inducing hairball songs from the 80’s & 90’s!), these from the Country scene were big surprises “back in the day”;
I’ll never forget a co-worker getting ALL bent out of shape, at Goodbye Earl. She thought it was a terrible song, that glorified violence, and was of the opinion that the song was terrible, and should be pulled from the air, “Because you should ALWAYS let the police handle things like domestic violence!” Another couple co-workers and i had to explain to her, that we’d ALL known men like Earl in the song, who wouldn’t ever be stopped by cops or restraining orders/orders of protection, until he was dead…. she was SHOCKED that we felt the way we did, but I think, was even MORE shocked, by the fact that we’d all known men who’d beaten or even killed their partner. After that conversation, she still didn’t like the song, but she was able to understand why it rung such a strong note for so many of us.
*hairBAND* songs, not hairball!🤣
Same thing?
Ringo didn’t write this (other grown men who were OK with lusting after a 16-year-old did), but he sang it.
Here’s another one, but somehow, this song ends up making Muddy the sympathetic one. Plus, even if it is a little pervy, it’s got George “Harmonica” Smith AND Pinetop Perkins, which makes everything more OK.
I can’t believe you guys got this far with no mention of this one:
Sick drums, creepy lyrics!
I thought for the longest time I Confess was just a standard breakup I fell for someone else song. It turns out it was based on the story of a guy who slept with his bride’s sister on their wedding day. Yeesh.
I always knew this story was disturbing but love this song…
J. Geils Band – “Centerfold”
I was about 4 or 5 when this song was all over the radio, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. . . .
Your Gary Puckett song reminded me of this story (apologies for the massive downers ahead, and TW’s for adults preying on teens):
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/07/27/891422484/girls-has-the-pandemic-made-you-think-of-quitting-school-call-your-mentor
The reason it popped into my head, is that ☝that sort of story–where it happens in countries in Africa, or Asia, seems to be the narrative too many folks here in the US seem to believe are the *only* places adult men prey on teen girls.
But this story from a few years back, right here in Minnesota, prove that it’s NOT just happening to girls in other places. It happens in our own back yards;
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/02/27/grand-marais-older-men-pursuing-teen-girls
And sadly, as in that story, some of the folks write it off as “just what happens!🙈🙉🙊” or “those girls were pursuing those men!”
It’s too damn rarely seen as the predation it is… and I KNOW that there is a narrative of “she pursued him!!!” and that, YEAH, significant age-gaps were fairly common in previous generations…
Heck, my own Grandmother talked about how she pursued Grandpa, and then when he didn’t propose when she wanted him to (she was somewhere around 17 at the time, 16 when they started dating, back in the late 1930’s/early 40’s😬🙃), she’d go out with other boys closer to her age, to make him jealous (grandpa was 6 years older)… iirc, they married shortly after her graduation–like that next month…. some of my aunties married my uncles when they were 18 & 19, too…
Things were VERY different, in rural places, in the 1970’s and before…
But SINCE the 70’s? It’s *not* that common back home, for couples who have 5-6 year age gaps to marry shortly after the girl graduates. Most often, since then, they “date” for a while–until she turns 19-21, and then they break up… often, like McConaughey creepo character in Dazed and Confused, the douchebros keep going for high school girls, while the young women move on–sometimes to better dudes, sometimes settling into patterns which are really tough to break.
Many of us laughed, even as we were grossed out by his character, and *that* line in particular…
but I know *I* knew a few dudes like that back in high school, who were always trying to date friends or acquaintances of mine.
We saw through them, and knew they were creepers who were only into dating younger women (girls), because no woman their age would give them the time of day…. but it DEFINITELY happened up there, in that part of rural MN–hours away from Grand Marais, in the 80’s, 90’s, & 00’s