The "strange facts" you know about songs thread.

[chell]

Very interesting thread. Thanks! I'm too tired and it's too late for me to think of anything to add.

 

[Macca1111]

there were rumors that Heart's lyrics to "Magic Man" were about a run in they had with Manson, but I have no idea if there is truth to that!

I heard Ann? on the radio this summer saying that it was really an older man she fell in love with and left home for...but I believe he was eventually their manager or producer or something. They ran away to Canada so he could avoid the draft, and mama really did call and beg her to come home. Sorry I'm sketchy on details, it was a few months ago and I was on the way to the airport and WDW, so I wasn't paying much attention.

 

[denisem]

John Wayne Bobbitt's favorite song was Hall & Oates' cover of "Everytime You Go Away (You Take a Piece of Me With You).

 

[moon]

It was written about his pet rat. He had a "pet" rat when he was a kid, and his Dad killed it, so he dedicated the song to the rat. It was also used in the movie too, like you said!

Actually, the song wasn't even written by MJ. It was written to be the theme for the movie "Ben". I even read that it was first offered to Donny Osmond, since the song had to be sung by a kid (the movie is about a boy and his pet rat)

Perhaps MJ later had a rat that was named afer the song. But the song was written by Don Black and Walter Scharf, and originally it was about the rat in the movie.

 

[The Orchid]

Cyndi Lauper's song "She Bop" has two meanings. Kids were meant to understand the song to be about dancing. Adults were meant to get the real adult meaning. It worked. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, I had NO idea what it was really about. I used to go around singing that all the time. Who knew that sweet little Cyndi Lauper was such a perv!

 

[lemondog]

John Wayne Bobbitt's favorite song was Hall & Oates' cover of "Everytime You Go Away (You Take a Piece of Me With You).

 

[pansmermaidzlagoon]

I heard Ann? on the radio this summer saying that it was really an older man she fell in love with and left home for...but I believe he was eventually their manager or producer or something. They ran away to Canada so he could avoid the draft, and mama really did call and beg her to come home. Sorry I'm sketchy on details, it was a few months ago and I was on the way to the airport and WDW, so I wasn't paying much attention.

thank you! much nicer than the original rumor!!

 

[jenlynn0808]

Cyndi Lauper's song "She Bop" has two meanings. Kids were meant to understand the song to be about dancing. Adults were meant to get the real adult meaning. It worked. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, I had NO idea what it was really about. I used to go around singing that all the time. Who knew that sweet little Cyndi Lauper was such a perv!

Hey Mickey by Toni Basil also has an adult meaning..."she'll take it like a man". In the 80s I had no idea, loved that song and sang it too, as an adult , I can only image what my parents thought...

 

[Liberty Belle]

I once heard on the radio that the U2 song, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, was about a set of lost keys. Of course, I can't verify that, and it was probably just a DJ spouting off stuff. Still, it would be funny if it were true.

When my friends and I were in college we used to give nicknames to people we'd see a lot around campus. There was "Danny Devito," "Fake Bryan," "Fish," "Umbrella Man, (and if anyone reading this lives in Lexington, you probably know who I'm talking about)" etc. One guy we called "The Guy Who Still Hasn't Found What He's Looking For" because he'd eat in the cafeteria around the same time, usually, that we would and he'd always stand in the front and look around for about three or four minutes before sitting down.

Anyway, one day he came in and was wearing glasses. It cracked us up.

 

[TheBigBadWolf]

Eric Clapton wrote the hit song, "Layla", about his future wife, Pattie Harrison, who was still married to George Harrison at the time. Many of Clapton's songs were written about Pattie, including "Wonderful Tonight" and "Forever Man" among others.

 

[TDC Nala]

There were a lot of Beatles stories.

A chorus of the song Ob La Di, Ob La Da was written as:

Happy ever after in the market place...
Desmond lets the children lend a hand...
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face...
And in the evening she's a singer with the band...

When recording the last chorus, Paul McCartney sang these lyrics as:

Happy ever after in the market place...
Molly lets the children lend a hand...
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face...
And in the evening she's a singer with the band...

When the mistake was brought to his attention, Paul said something like "Let's leave it. People will be guessing whether Desmond is a female impersonator, or what."

So they left it, and it lives this way.

 

[browneyes106]

Alanis Morisette's song You Oughta Know was supposedly written about Dave Coulier.
The Way by Fastball was inspired by the story of an elderly couple who were found dead at the bottom of a ravine after they didn't show up to an event.

 

[MinnieMe87]

Actually, the song wasn't even written by MJ. It was written to be the theme for the movie "Ben". I even read that it was first offered to Donny Osmond, since the song had to be sung by a kid (the movie is about a boy and his pet rat)

Perhaps MJ later had a rat that was named afer the song. But the song was written by Don Black and Walter Scharf, and originally it was about the rat in the movie.

Thanks for the clearing up!!!

 

[chell]

This one isn't strange but Rob Thomas wrote "Her Diamonds" about his wife's struggle with an auto-immune disease.

I know there are some others that I know but just aren't coming to mind right now. That is frustrating!

 

[wdw4us2]

The Beatles "Hey Jude" started out being called "Hey Jules" when Paul McCartney wrote it.

He wrote it to make John Lennon's son, Julian, feel better about his parents splitting up because John was involved with Yoko Ono.

The working title for "Yesterday" was Scrambled Eggs when Paul McCartney just had the melody and no words for the song.

 

[nerdylightbulb]

The song "Hey There, Delilah" by The Plain T's was written after the lead singer met a girl named Delilah once.

The song "Worker Bees" by Billy Talent isn't really about bees. It's about the war in Iraq. "A pollination coming from the west" is about the western countries invading Iraq. "Supply of honey flowing bottomless" is about the oil. "And we'll march along, with our blindfolds on and we'll ride the rails, with our pistols drawn" is about how many people blindly followed Bush's orders and went into Iraq. "Can the Lord above, forgive what we've done? Can we fight to save our souls?" is about how unethical the band thinks the war is. And "Will we die to save our home?" is talking about all of the casualties from the war.

 

[BalooTheBear]

Naa Naa Naaa Naaa Hey Hey Goodbye.... - By Steam

It was just a bunch of studio musician who were working on a set recording other material for other artists - they just started playing and singing the lyrics as a goof. The engineers recorded it and - another one hit wonder by a band that then called themselves STEAM....

 

[Costumesaremylife]

Killing Me Softly, sung by Roberta Flack and later the Fugees, was written by a songwriter after seeing Don McClean (Of American Pie fame.)

 

[cjb1879]

I've got one about Creedence Clearwater's "Fortunate Son"- it was written about David Eisenhower who was perceived as having escaped the draft for the Vietnam War because of his links to two former presidents- his grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower and his father-in-law, Richard Nixon.

This musical fact has always stuck with me because he was one of the professors at my university. As a student, I also worked in his department's office (my work-study job) and often spoke to him as he went in or out of the building, but thought his last name was just coincidence. I happened to be reading Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True" that semester in which he describes a scene where his main character (as a 5 or 6 year old boy) gets an opportunity to meet President Eisenhower during a parade. The main character recalls the President saying he had a grandson just his age named David. It took me a minute to recall that I knew a David Eisenhower and I came into work the next day and asked the receptionist. She laughed and told me I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box

I always thought it was a shame that this song was all that many people would remember about him- he is actually a really nice, unassuming guy. A few years later, I even ran into him again with his wife at the airport and they both went out of their way to find out what I'd been doing since I'd left Penn. Really friendly people.

One last fact- Camp David was also named after him.

 

[BunsenH]

Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Shynyrd) - A response to the unflattering description of the South in Neil Young's "Southern Man".

Keith Don't Go (Nils Lofgren - E Street Band) - Suggested that Keith Richards not return to Toronto and face drug charges.

Turning Japanese (The Vapors) - "Self pleasure" (Don't know if real term is DIS friendly)