Five Songs That REALLY Aren’t About What People Think They’re About

The startling truth behind the lyrics of some of your favorite ‘80s and ‘90s standards

  

In the 1980s, Judas Priest released a song called “Turbo Lover,” which at the time of its release, sounded like this really awesome, hyper-masculine song about virility (or even possibly sexual assault, which led to plenty of accusations of misogyny as a result).

Of course, the song was actually the single gayest thing that has ever been made by humanity, but hey, it was the eighties, and GAYDAR didn’t become a reliable scientific tool until at least 1993. It’s SOO painfully obvious now (with the now-outed Rob Halford shrieking “You…won’t…see…me COMIN!” like a cast extra out of “Cruising”), but at the time, we were none the wiser. We just kept a singing along, banging our heads, screaming the lyrics as we rolled down the street…absolutely oblivious to the fact that the song was about the precise OPPOSITE of what we all thought it was about.

Yeah, that is a pretty amusing example of hindsight being 40/40, but the reality is, there are still TONS of songs from twenty and thirty years ago that are STILL being misinterpreted by the general public. A lot of times, we get so suckered in by the rhythm of a song (and perhaps even the nominalism of the song’s title, or even the accompanying imagery from the song‘s music video) that we never even bother to examine the lyrics of the songs we all adore. This means we end up thinking songs about unemployment and senseless warfare are odes to Americana, that tunes about mass shooting sprees are about children’s sitcom programs and that fluttery synth-pop ballads are about doomed relationships when the lyrics are actually about two chicks doing it.

In need of some examples and clarification? Well, how about we take a look at five pop-rock standards from the last thirty years, and see what their lyrics and back stories REALLY say about the music that moves us?

“Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen

What Everybody Thinks It’s About: A hyper-patriotic ode to how much ass it kicks to be American.

What It’s ACTUALLY About: A hyper-unpatriotic indictment of how much it sucks to be American.

The Background: “Born in the USA” may very well be the single most misinterpreted song in pop music history. At practically EVERY Fourth of July fun-run or international sporting event, you are bound to hear the song at least once, which has unofficially become a mega-patriotic hymn for the masses, akin to Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud To Be American” or “Real American” (AKA, Hulk freaking Hogan’s theme song) by Rick Derringer.

As it turns out, however, the song is actually about how American has failed its returning Vietnam veterans - you know, because somehow, we’ve been unable to note the song had lyrics for three decades now.

Hell, the very first line in the song, “born down in a dead man’s town,” really ought to be enough to clue you in that, maybe, the song really isn’t about the majesty of amber grain and purple mountains. As the song continues, we learn that the track is really about a kid that gets shipped off to Vietnam - “to go and kill the yellow man,” as the lyrics declare - only to come back home, where he’s unable to find employment. From there, the rest of the song is about the dude getting all psychologically scarred, noting among other things, how he’s being haunted by a Viet Cong soldier he presumably killed in battle. Ultimately, the speaker of the song finds solace in repression, as the narrator clearly indicates with the line “you end up like a dog that’s been beat too much / until you spend half your life just covering it up.”

So the next time you hear this one at a cookout or a fireworks show, you might want to make it a point to explain to the guy next to you that it’s actually a ballad about post-traumatic-stress-disorder and a shitty economy. Especially if he or she looks anything at all like this.

“Hey Sandy” by Polaris

What Everybody Thinks It’s About: A poppy rock tune dedicated to the much-beloved Nickelodeon program “The Adventures of Pete and Pete.” 

What It’s ACTUALLY About: A poppy rock tune dedicated to a kid that decides to shoot up his classmates. 

The Background: If you deserve to live, your probably remember/adore an old Nickelodeon series called “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” a program about the weirdest damn nuclear family in the weirdest damn small American town that has ever existed outside the mind of David Lynch. One of the most memorable things about the show, no doubt, was its extremely catchy theme song, a tune called “Hey Sandy” by Polaris. Seeing as how “Pete and Pete” was such an absurd and whimsical show, the song MUST have been about some equally light and fluffy fare, right?

Well, not so much, as the song was actually written about a school shooting.

The first line of the song, which admittedly, is pretty hard to decipher, tells us pretty much everything we need to know about it’s lyrical content. “He’s smiling strange / you looking happily deranged,” we begin. From there, we hear about his intentions (“could you settle to shoot me / or have you picked your target yet?), his M.O. (“we was only funning / reluctantly, she had it coming”) and even when the shooting spree went down (“four feet away /end of speeches / end of the day.”)

Almost two decades before Foster the People rocked the charts with a pop hit about homicidal youth, the guys behind the “Pete and Pete” theme song had already penned a pre-Columbine, radio-friendly ditty about a mass killing spree…an absolutely stunning revelation that kind of makes you wonder what horrors the lyrics of “CatDog” may presumably entail.

“Closer to the Heart” by Rush

What Everybody Thinks It’s About: A sentimental ballad about love, unity and social brotherhood.

What It’s ACTUALLY About: A sentimental ballad about love, unity and social brotherhood…and also, endorsement of social stratification, and possibly eugenics.

The Background: Rush, the prog-rock Canadian legends, are one of the most beloved acts in rock and roll history, and certainly one of the most technically proficient, as Neil Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifesan are all considered among the greatest drummers, bassists and guitarists, well, ever.

One of the somewhat hidden aspects of Rush’s catalog, however, is that the dudes were basically a heavy metal band as fronted by Ayn Rand. Not only were the dudes some Objectivism-loving rock and rollers offstage, they also managed to sneak a shit load of “The Fountainhead”-esque political claptrap in their lyrics, with “Closer to the Heart” being just one such example from the band’s discography.

It’s a hard sell, at first, I know. I mean, really, how asshole-ish can a song that begins with a xylophone solo actually be, right? As it turns out, quite a great deal, actually, from the very first line of the song - “The men who hold high places, must be the ones who start / to mold a new reality / closer to the heart.” Admittedly, it doesn’t sound too daunting, until you begin to piece together the rest of the song’s lyrics, chiefly “philosophers and plowmen, each must know his part.” The song - which to the layman, might be written off as just another ball-less rock and roll ballad - is actually a song promoting social stratification, with the creation of a “utopian” society as a “greater good” so damned great that it’s worth placing people into permanent ascribed conditions based on socioeconomic worth. In other words? It’s basically “Atlas Shrugged: The Musical” we’re looking at here.

“Voices Carry” by Til Tuesday

What Everybody Thinks It’s About: A lithe, saturnine ballad about a troubled relationship.

What It’s ACTUALLY About: A lithe saturnine ballad about a troubled relationship…between LESBIANS.

The Background: To be fair, “Voices Carry” really, really sounds like your typical, paint-by-numbers, eighties-to-the-core soft rock ballad. You have the sweeping chorus, the synthesizer interludes, and even some mildly creepy ambiance that, aurally, makes the tune seem like a kindred spirit to “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight.”

This is intensified, obviously, because of the music video. At the time, it was actually pretty cutting edge, since it was one of the first videos to interrupt the music with additional (read: that which has nothing to do with the song) dialogue, which led most listeners to assume the song was about a very rough - and perhaps even abusive - relationship between singer Aimee Mann and, uh, whoever she was singing about.

Now, the thing that isn’t common information is that the original version of the song had absolutely zero references to the “he” that is referenced about a million jillion times in the studio version we’re all used to. That’s because, in the original version, the “he” was actually a “she,” meaning that all of that woe and sex-spawned misery Mann was singing about was actually about another chick. With that little nugget of wisdom in mind, the lyrics to the song REALLY start to make a whole lot more sense, especially towards the end, when she starts sing-screaming “Shut up! Shut up!”  because “he” (most likely, her “boyfriend”) might hear all of that sexiness going on next door.

“Maniac” by Michael Sembello

What Everybody Thinks It’s About: A synth-pop rocker inspired by Jennifer Beals getting all wet and splashy in “Flashdance”

What It’s ACTUALLY About: A synth-pop rocker inspired by Joe Spinell getting all psychotic and stabby in “Maniac”

The Background: If you’ve ever seen the movie “Flashdance,” you’ll probably remember the montage sequence in which the song “Maniac” - as performed by one-hit wonder Michael Sembello - was used as the background soundtrack.

Clearly, the lyrics to the song HAVE to be about the movie.  “Just a steel town girl on a Saturday night,” the song begins, which is clearly an allusion to the steel-mill-working lead actress of the film in question.

Indeed, the song was written with the plotline of the film in mind. The thing is, the song was actually a rewrite of an EARLIER song, which was inspired by an altogether different film - this one being the 1980 William Lustig slasher classic, “Maniac.”

Reportedly, Sembello was inspired to pen the song after seeing Joe Spinell kick all kinds of ass as the traumatized, scalp-collecting mass murderer in the earlier film, although he ended up retooling it just a smidge so that it could be included on the soundtrack for the decisively less violent “Flashdance” (with reconfigured lyrics, of course.)

Per Sembello, the lyrics were actually WAY different than what eventually came to be. Although the lyrics we all heard we’re “She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor / and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before,” the song’s intended chorus was supposed to be “He’s a maniac, maniac for sure / he will kill your cat and nail him to the door.” And to authenticate the song’s original formatting, the Academy ended up disqualifying the tune from “Best Song” consideration, on the grounds that the song wasn’t expressly written for the film it appeared in…which means, yes, we very well could have lived in a world in which the phrase “Academy Award Winner ‘Maniac’” was indeed a reality, gosh-darn it.

In the mood for more musical mayhem?

Check out my countdown of the five worst alternative rock music lyrics of the 1990s RIGHT HERE!

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You Know Who Was Kind of a Jerk? GANDHI.

Why the Great Humanitarian was Actually a Horrible Human Being

When I say the name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a couple of things probably come to mind. Peace, nonviolence, passive resistance, an Academy Award winning motion picture ironically starring a British guy as a Hindu . .you know, all of the basic stuff, really.

Although Gandhi is unquestionably one of the most important philosophical and social figures of the 20^th century, he’s also a guy that gets a LOT of beneficial leeway when it comes to what he’s remembered for. Sure, sure, Gandhi was responsible for the Salt March and played a prominent role in getting the English to relinquish control of the Indian subcontinent, but at the same time...the guy had some, ahem, questionable marks on his record, too.

Satyagraha, swadeshi, swaraj...yeah, yeah, we’ve heard about that stuff a million times by now. What isn’t common knowledge, however, is that the “Great Soul” had a penchant for some downright bizarre behaviors, and for a guy that’s supposedly the century’s greatest advocate for love and understanding, he’s dropped more than a few quotes and quips that seem to argue to the contrary.

So, just how many strikes against Gandhi are out there? Well, I’ve stumbled across five that you probably won’t encounter in any peace studies course, these somehow forgotten nuggets of knowledge that, for some reason or another, seem to have been swept under the hand-woven rug of history.

Time to meet the other side of the Mahatma, don’t you think?

THE TOP FIVE REASONS GANDHI WAS ACTUALLY A JERK 

REASON NUMBER FIVE:

He was a horrible father and spouse abuser

By his own admission, Gandhi said that he was a pretty horrendous dad and hubby. He wasn’t exactly fond of his wife and his crusade for global peace doubled as a really, really convenient excuse to circumvent child support payments. If you’re one of those people that like to gauge the measure of a man by how he raises his children, I think you’d have to give Gandhi a solid “F” for effort - ESPECIALLY judging by the way his eldest son turned out.

Gandhi was never all that supportive of his first son, Harilal, whom he often called a "mistake." Hell, he disliked his first born so much that he even refused to talk to his second son just because he lent money to him. Furthermore, he was damn, damn, damn opposed to letting him attend law school, even though Gandhi himself, you know, kind of went to law school. After being publicly disowned by his father, Harilal ended up a penniless drunk, resorting to male prostitution to support himself on the streets of Bombay until he died of a pickled liver in 1948.

Gandhi also treated his wife, Kastubra, with the kind of iron-fist resolve usually reserved for Lifetime made-for-cable movies. Not only did he admit to routinely beating the crap out of her and committing random acts of adultery in his youth, his actions resulted in her expedited death, as he REFUSED to allow her penicillin while she was suffering from a severe bout of pneumonia.

But on the positive side of things, at least he wrote a lot of flowery prose about her while she was alive...mostly, in journal entries in which he compared her to a cow:

“I simply cannot bear to look at Ba's face. The expression is often like that on the face of a meek cow and gives one the feeling, as a cow occasionally does, that in her own dumb manner she is saying something.”

Well, if nothing else, at least we can take solace in knowing that Gandhi was more of an Al Bundy than a Ward Cleaver.

REASON NUMBER FOUR:

He was pen pals with Hitler

Today, if someone said “you know, that Hitler fellow wasn’t as bad as most people make him out to be,” they would probably get fired, expelled, excommunicated, sued, divorced or, if you’re in Canada, possibly arrested. Although we have the gift of hindsight, it still seems pretty stupid for anyone to make amends for Der Fuhrer, even before all of that stuff about the Holocaust became rudimentary information around the globe. 

In his lifetime, Gandhi sent two letters to Adolf Hitler; one in 1939, and the other in 1940. Both letters were pleas from Gandhi to stop killing the shit out of Western Europeans, and in both instances, he referred to Hitler as "my friend." But in Gandhi's defense, he really didn't know who he was when he got a request on Facebook, so we can't blame the guy too much here.

While the first letter was a pretty humdrum attempt to get Hitler to change his mind about steamrolling Czechoslovakia (SPOILER: it didn't work), his second letter to the Nazi leader was far more interesting, containing the following quote:

"We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents."

Now, we all make some judgment calls that, in hindsight, seem really, really bad. Then again, most of our errors are more along the lines of picking the Buffalo Bills to win the Super Bowl, and not stating that a pissed off Austrian that killed 20 million plus people got an unfair shake by the general public. In Gandhi's (admittedly, quite weak defense) this was before all that info about the extermination camps was common knowledge, so even with all of this unpleasantness, we really cannot say that Gandhi was a proponent of Jewish suffering during World War II. I mean, it's not like he encouraged the Jews to just die in the face of Nazism or anything...

"If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy [...] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror. "

...well, never mind, then. 

 

REASON NUMBER THREE:

He sort of had a thing for his underage relatives. . .

Gandhi was a big proponent of this thing called brahmacharya, which was basically practicing self-control when faced with physical temptation, like lust or hunger. According to Gandhi’s philosophy, one could only obtain truth by controlling one’s senses, which is the sort of asceticism that comes attached to just about every quasi-spiritual movement. The thing is, Gandhi took the idea about twenty steps further, believing that he had to periodically test himself to see just how much restrain he could muster. The results, if applied today, would probably lead you not to enlightenment, but a guest appearance on the next installment of To Catch A Predator.

One of Gandhi’s favorite “tests of restraint” involved sleeping in the same bed with young women. As in, middle school aged, and to make things a new shade of creepy, he made them get totally nude beforehand. And as Gandhi’s journals have exposed, he definitely had a difficult time keeping those lowly desires at a minimum.

And as if the idea of an old dude laying around bare assed nekkid with jail bait wasn’t “eww!”-inducing enough, Gandhi’s favorite test subject just so happened to be his own grand-niece. Oh, and apparently, he sort of had this thing for enemas. . .but yeah, nobody wants to know the gory details about that little hobby.

Of course, this didn’t make Gandhi unfaithful to his wife, per himself. In fact, Gandhi often boasted that not once did he engage in sexual activity with anyone (including his own wife), despite routinely using junior high school students as meat blankets. If we’re trying to find a silver lining here, I suppose we can find succor that, as far as written documentation goes, Gandhi never gave into his carnal desires when surrounded by his underage relatives. Now, when surrounded by Hebrew strongmen, on the other hand…

REASON NUMBER TWO:

…and oh yeah, possibly German-Jewish bodybuilders, too

Earlier this year, a new book was released that accused Gandhi of having a three decade plus affair with Hermann Kallenbach, an impossible mishmash of a human being that somehow managed to be German, Jewish, an architect and a bodybuilder simultaneously.   

Now, semi-biographical hatchet jobs are really nothing new in the publishing world, but did I tell you that the book was also written by a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former executive editor for The New York Times? 

According to the book "Great Soul" by Joseph Lelyveld,  Gandhi met Kallenbach in 1908 and spent two years as his live-in boyfriend. Up until 1933, Gandhi supposedly had regular correspondence with his (alleged) ex-lover, sending messages that compared their time apart as "slavery with a vengeance" and - of course - how much he despised his wife. 

In fact, the book alleges that Gandhi and Kallenbach even formulate pet names for one another, the not at all suggestive monikers of "upper house" and "lower house" - and in case you were wondering, the book surmises that Gandhi was indeed "the upper house" in the relationship, if you catch my drift. 

  

Knowing what we know about the guy now, I suppose we can at least take some solace in knowing that he probably didn’t tell his buddy Hitler about this one.

REASON NUMBER ONE:

He kind of didn’t like black people.

We’ve all heard the story about a billion times: Gandhi’s kicking back, riding in a train in South Africa, and then he gets booted off because he looks “too black” for the management’s liking. Gandhi, never the sort to take injustice lying down, starts ruminating over the issue of prejudice and inequality, and voila! Instant revolution.

Although the history books may tell us that Gandhi witnessing the persecution of black Africans was what initially got the ball rolling for his nonviolent movement in India, the reality is, Gandhi was never really that defensive of the black Africans’ rights, before, after, or even DURING his stay in South Africa.

In fact, according to some accounts, Gandhi was sort of. . .well, racist against the black folks.

To get the big ball of hate rolling, in an 1896 meeting in Bombay, Gandhi allegedly said that:

"Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness. "

Odds are, if you aren't sort of shocked by that passage, you're probably an American, since that's really the only country in the world where "kaffir" isn't routinely used as a racial slur for black people. So, in effect, what we have here is a Gandhi that sounds more like a David Duke than an MLK. And rest assured: there are plenty more suspect quotes on file for "The Great Soul."

Here's another choice cut, this time from a 1905 editorial in The Indian Opinion. 

"Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races, resident and employed within the Borough. One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians who have become free, and for their descendants about whom the general complaint is that they work too much?"

And to outdo that one, in an op-ed for the same newspaper a year later, he actually penned an essay CONDONING racial segregation: 

"It seems that the petition is being widely circulated, and signatures are being taken of all coloured people in the three colonies named. The petition is non-Indian in character, although British Indians, being coloured people, are very largely affected by it. We consider that it was a wise policy on the part of the British Indians throughout South Africa, to have kept themselves apart and distinct from the other coloured communities in this country." 

...and just a few months later, Gandhi wrote another op-ed, this time in support of apartheid (and with a few cracks about black people being drunks and smelly, too boot:)

"You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams."

Hell, Gandhi even felt the need to send letters to the Johannesburg Office of Health about the "Kaffir Problem," as this 1905 letter demonstrates:

"Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension.Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen"

And just for good measure, Mr. "Nonviolence" Himself issued this statement in 1906, in which he says the murder of black Africans during the Zulu War didn't really count: 

"A controversy is going on in England about what the Natal Army did during the Kaffir rebellion. The people here believe that the whites of Natal perpetrated great atrocities on the Kaffirs. In reply to such critics, the Star has pointed to the doings of the Imperial Army in Egypt. Those among the Egyptian rebels who had been captured were ordered to be flogged. The flogging was continued to the limits of the victim's endurance; it took place in public and was watched by thousands of people. Those sentenced to death were also hanged at the same time. While those sentenced to death were hanging, the flogging of others was taken up. While the sentences were being executed, the relatives of the victims cried and wept until many of them swooned. If this is true, there is no reason why there should be such an outcry in England against Natal outrages."

And then, there was Gandhi's feelings about blacks within his own native country. I think I'll let you study that one on your own time. 

So what, if anything, have we learned here today? Well, pretty much what we already know...that most "Great" human beings really aren't that great, and no matter how vaunted and celebrated a figure may be, there's a pretty good chance that he or she has more than a few skeletons in his or her respective closet.

Should all of this information change your opinion about Gandhi? Eh, maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't - the important thing you realize here is that there's way more history out there than what's generally circulated amongst the public pool of knowledge - meaning that there's a high likelihood that everything you think you know isn't neccesarily the "real " reality at hand.

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