Monday, September 19, 2011
WENT DOWN TO SEE MY V.A. MAN, HE SAID "SON, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" Apropos of the curious decision to have The Canadian Tenors sing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as background music for the Emmys Necrology segment, I received several requests last night for an All-Time Misunderstood Songs discussion. I'll be watching you.
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Hallelujah has been obiquitous, but I'm going to have to go with Green Day's "Good Riddance (The Time Of Your Life)". The apogee of it being used horribly was at the otherwise very touching Quaker funeral for Anspaugh's son on ER. (On the other hand, using it for a clip show of Seinfeld was kind of brilliant, considering how awful all four of them were.)
ReplyDeleteBorn in the USA
ReplyDeleteEvery Breath You Take
Third Eye Blind, "Semi-Charmed Life." I may have posted about this before, but the summer it came out, I went to a wedding where the bride and groom had asked the middle-aged band members to learn and play that song during the reception. The sight of a 50-year-old wedding singer trying to croon those rapid-fire lyrics about a crystal-meth addict's pathetic existence, all while the wedding party (grandparents included) bopped around on the dance floor -- well, if that's not massive misunderstanding of a song, I don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteThis thread goes out to the one I love . . .this one goes out to the one I left ' behind.
ReplyDeleteAnd, in the spirit of the new Serge Gainsbourg biopic, "Les Succettes." God damn, you appalling French weirdo genius.
"The One I Love", REM. It's not a love song, people. In the '90s, I attended a few weddings where it (and "Every Breath You Take") were played for the bride and groom.
ReplyDeleteUsing 'Perfect Day' to market the NFL was, well not a misunderstanding of the song's lyrics, but certainly its subtext. (The perfect day in question still didn't include watching a football game.) Also, if you want to use a Lou Reed song to promote football, how about "Coney Island Baby?"
ReplyDeleteAt my brother's first (and ill-advised) wedding, they had recorded music playing before the service as people were being seated. My jaw dropped when I heard Whitney Houston start, "If I should stay..."
ReplyDeletePoint the first, that song is about a break-up.
Point the second, it's primarily referring to the break-up of a creative partnership rather than a romantic relationship.
True fact: My now-ex-sister-in-law filed for divorce at 8:30 a.m. EDT on September 11, 2001.
Sarah McLachlan's Possession. Some of the lyrics come from a letter she received from a stalker.
ReplyDeleteI went to a wedding once where the obviously pregnant bride and her groom had Tracy Chapman's "If Not Now" playing during a pause in the ceremony. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the lyrics, which is entirely possible, but "If not now, then when?" seems a poor way to honor the commitment you're making to each other. To my knowledge, however, they are still together.
Totally agree. I think people gravitate towards it because it has love in the title and it's by REM, so it must be an appropriate indie wedding song, right? Right? Wrong.
ReplyDeleteOne of my pet peeves is Somewhere Over The Rainbow. It is not a happy song, folks! Don't play it at your wedding! And definitely don't play it for your father-daughter dance! This post goes out to the entire population of theknot.com, circa 2005.
ReplyDeleteIt would make a great funeral song, though.
ReplyDelete"Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones
ReplyDeleteI found the father-daughter dance to be a really hard choice. Didn't want anything too saccharine (I got married just before "Butterfly Kisses" was all the rage.) but you obviously don't want anything too romantic. In the end we went with "As Time Goes By" because, even though it's about lovers, it's been neutered by the decades to become just a pleasant, nostalgic song. Also, it's hard to take anything as too sexy when it's sung by Jimmy Durante:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/v/b-GOgLS0DIU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140
You'll also notice that particular version has a playing time of 2:28. That was my biggest requirment for that song and the "first dance" song - brevity.
ReplyDeleteFernando, to wit:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hulu.com/watch/278281/free-agents-pilot?c=1188:1286
"Your wedding dance choices" would be an awesome open thread.
ReplyDelete"More Than Words" by Extreme was the greatest scam ever pulled. If that song had been titled "Shut Up And Do Me," it would have sold less copies, but lots of babies probably happened because people didn't get the irony.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was specifically about blow jobs. Correct?
ReplyDeletethat's me.
ReplyDeleteWow. I never figured that out about that song. I was too young to get it, really, when it first came out, and I've avoided it fastidiously in the years since.
ReplyDeleteSongs like "More Than Words" give one an extra appreciation for more direct songs like "I Wanna F**k You Like an Animal."
ReplyDeleteNot songs, but in the all time misunderstood list:
ReplyDelete*Romeo and Juliet weren't the greatest lovers of all time, just a couple dumb kids.
*Machiavellian isn't a bad thing; The Prince is satire.
*The Road not Taken? Doesn't make a difference.
Those three tend to bug me, especially how ubiquitous they are.
But, but, given how hard it is to understand Michael Stipe, when the most decipherable words are, "This one goes out to the one I love, this one goes out to the one I left behind," that should clue you in. Sheesh.
ReplyDelete"Stand By Your Man" by Tammy Wynette. Ladies, it's not about being a doormat for his indiscretions. Tammy Wynette was married to George Jones at the time and dealing with his well-known problems with alcoholism.
ReplyDeleteMachiavellian isn't a bad thing because it fails at satire --The Prince is dead on. Of course, the Discourses are his way of trying to create a polity where a leader like the Prince wouldn't be necessary or successful, and I admire him all the more for it.
ReplyDeleteLike "Hallelujah?"
ReplyDeleteFrom the country genre -- "Sweet Home Alabama." Loving the governor of the state that includes Birmingham is not intended as a compliment.
ReplyDeleteNot as clear cut as ome of the examples here but I get the sense that Pink Houses is taken as a song that says "America, F*** Yeah!!," when the points it makes are, while maybe not "America sucks," cretainly more subtle.
ReplyDeleteI always thought that way about RHCP's "Under the Bridge"... "She sees my good deeds and
ReplyDeleteShe kisses me windy"... no? Because I used "kiss me windy" as a euphamism for blowjobs during my impressionable teenage years.
Next line:
ReplyDeleteA simple prop, to occupy my time,
This was ambiguous?
Also, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones isn't a great love story. It's about a stalker-y guy who never let go of the woman who broke up with him, despite the fact that she moved on. It's not that he kept a place for her in his heart--that's understandable. It's that he kept her pictures on his wall and reread her love letters over and over again. That isn't healthy.
ReplyDeleteA couple at a wedding I went to danced to "One" by U2, which was nuts. But it did prompt my brother and I to come up with a list of inappropriate songs for his upcoming wedding- at the top was "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"(my sister-in-law didn't go for it, but it would've been awesome).
ReplyDeleteI wanted our first dance to be "She's No Lady (She's My Wife)", but the husband wouldn't go for it.
ReplyDeleteI had a friend whose husband wanted her to walk down the aisle to "Brick House". She paid another friend to make sure it didn't happen.
A former boss was looking for songs to walk back down the aisle to after the ceremony was complete and she wanted to be a smart-ass. I suggested "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
ReplyDeleteIsn't the "she" in "Under the Bridge" heroin?
ReplyDelete@ Lisased - I went to a wedding where they did indeed use that song. The joke was lost of most of the audience, but the couple enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThey've since abandoned the campaign, but the cruise line using iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" always sort of missed the, er, boat.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine came into my office once and started complaining that he was sick of listening to the Rolling Stones. I burst out laughing because the song on the radio, was, of course, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
ReplyDeleteMy husband lobbied very hard for "Holiday in Cambodia." After much negotiation, I ended up getting my sappy love song, but in Portuguese.
ReplyDeleteA friend's mother-son dance was to "Comfortably Numb" with the "Magnum, P.I." theme spliced in the middle. I think that took the cake.
She is, I do believe.
ReplyDeleteI took my dad to his first Lyle Lovett concert this year. When they did, "She's No Lady" he turned to me and said, "I think I just found your mother's and my new song."
ReplyDeleteWhen Melissa Rivers got married, the Gay Men's Chorus sang "Hey Big Spender" when Joan Rivers walked down the aisle. Fantastic!
ReplyDeleteI always hear an anger, a sneer to that song that I think does get missed, like you suggest.
ReplyDeleteI think "she" is LA, which is all he has left because of heroin, but I could be mistaken.
ReplyDeletebecause it was intented to sell Pontiac GTOs?
ReplyDeleteCath, I'm going to beg to differ. There is nothing in the song to suggest that his great and undying love for her was expressed to her in any way that made her uncomfortable or made him stalkery, and, she must have loved him in some way too because she did come to the funeral and all, even if they all wondered if she would. I've always thought that the song was about how sometimes there is only one right somebody for somebody but that sometimes you are not that somebody's somebody too. Sort of like the friends joke when the supermodel explains that the friend is not on her list. So, for the character in the song, it was all he could do, he didn't have it in him to love another or again, and I, just me, think that's OK. I feel sorry for him, but I still feel it is a great love story. One of my favorites. I do hold open the possibility, however, that you are right and I am wrong.
ReplyDeleteHa! My dad would sort of keep a running list of songs he would NOT dance with me to at my wedding. I'm pretty sure we were already down to some sort of fun big band song that lacked all sentimentality by the time he died, and now I am secretly relieved I will never have to struggle to come up with a song that would pass muster. Dad could be one tough customer when it came to music.
ReplyDeleteYes, which I found out later in life. At 12-13 years old, heroin isn't the first thought.
ReplyDeleteMy 9th grade social studies teacher loved JCM/Pink Houses - she made us listen write essays based on his point that the American dream wasn't really attainable anymore...
ReplyDelete"Born to Run"
ReplyDeleteAt least by the New Jersey State Legislature. They've tried to recognize it as the official state song of New Jersey. A song that defines your state as a "death trap". A "suicide rap" and a place to "get out while we're young". That's New Jersey.
I still have the excel spreadsheet (what of it?) I did for our do-not-play list at our wedding, complete with explanations.
ReplyDeleteI have also attended two weddings that played Tainted Love, on purpose.
Tainted Love is just plain fun. For a first dance, no way. For some point during the night when there's dancing? Sure. If all the songs during the dancing point of the evening have avoid negative commentary on relationships, that would really cut the list down.
ReplyDeleteI think the NJ State Legislature is self-aware. NJ is a death trap/suicide rap, but when you get out while you are young, you end up missing it for the rest of your life, trying to find a way to make enough money to move back to Jersey.
ReplyDelete"Born in the USA" is even more poignant today, but lunkheads will still shout out the chorus, as if its an affirmation.
ReplyDeleteBack when I was in high school, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" was a slow dance ballad and probably some couple's "Song" but it is a break up song.
But what do I know, if I had married my high school sweetheart, our song would have been "Love Will Keep Us Together". It didn't.