It's about that?

Music has always been a visceral experience for me. If reincarnation were real, somewhere in my atman past I'd have been one of those rats that followed the Pied Piper to a mysterious death. I think I even have a touch of synesthesia because some songs can evoke strong smells, intense memories, and sometimes even visual artifacts. Who needs drugs when you have natural trails, eh?

Music sometimes overwhelms me such that I don't notice all the elements of a particular song until maybe the 100th time through - sometimes even years later. Here are some songs that I was shocked, SHOCKED to discover what they were about many listenings later.

Semi-charmed Life by Third Eye Blind
A guy gets whacked on meth, does a booty call, falls asleep on top (and inside) of her after he pops, and then laments the fact that she drops him like a hot rock. The first few times I heard it, whilst grooving on the tune and not paying close attention to the words, I thought it was about a guy wanting something better for his life. I didn't really listen to the lyrics until the radio started playing the censored version, where they bleep out "crystal meth," making me wonder what they had to bleep.

Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
A song about fucking. The video threw me off on this one. It dawned on me later when a bunch of us were hanging out at the drive-in waiting for the show to start, and I heard the lyrics whilst a little drunk and the haze of booze cleared it up for me. I blurted out, "This is about screwing!" and one of the girls, after a pause, said, "Well, duh." Yes. Duh, indeed.

Second Hand News by Fleetwood Mac
From the monster bitter-divorce-and-breakup-album everyone in the English-speaking world has heard at least a few times. To this day, it's one of the first albums most people above a certain age buy when they upgrade their player; it was just released in a cool surround version for DVD players. The song is about what it appears to be, a vicious breakup. But it has a nasty twist - it's also about masturbation - kind of a spin on "go fuck yourself" - i.e. - "go fuck yourself by yourself." Near the end, there's even an orgasmic three symbol shot to drive the point home. "Let me lay down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff."

Elevation by U2
The best band in the world, and a Christian band at that, finally writes a really sexual song. Wow. The concept so boggled me that I thought this was a spiritual song for a while. It can still double as one, but I really think it's all about the horizontal bop, the beast with two backs, wink wink nudge nudge:

I need you to elevate me here,
At the corner of your lips
As the orbit of your hips
Eclipse, you elevate my ... SOUL!
I've got no self-control
Been living like a mole
Now going down, excavation

And what guy hasn't felt like this at some point: "Maybe you could educate my mind ... Explain all these controls." The submarine sounds (a phallus gliding through the water) throughout are a cute touch.

Lovable by Elvis Costello
He's calling her a slut! I almost put this on a mix tape for a girlfriend! (All guys are Rob Gordon (John Cusack) in High Fidelity to some extent.) "It's going around town, you're so lovable... The toast of the town and the talk of the bedroom." And the line "As you lie there so lifelike below me," well...words fail.

More than Words by Extreme and
End of the Innocence by Don Henley
Both very sweet-sounding songs, but the guys are just making sneaky, skanky bids for fourth base here. "More than Words" is the gambit teenage boys with boners have used since the dawn of time: "If you loved me, you'd show me." "End of the Innocence" visits a discrete level of evil; he's preying on a girl whose parents are in the middle of divorce, other things are falling apart in her life, she's vulnerable - he even taunts her to "offer up her best defense" - and to top it off, he even tells her it's a one-nighter. Wham bam, thankyou ma'am! Henley's "Dirty Laundry" was his first reaction in song to getting busted for having nekkid underage girls floating around stoned in his pool; this is the "prequel" about how he got them there in the first place. "We've been poisoned by these fairy tales." Do tell, Don.

Breakout by the Foo Fighters
It's intriguing that the current savior of rock and roll, the great Dave Grohl, was the drummer in the band with the previous savior of rock and roll. This hilarious song is about getting zits from stress, not breaking free of something, as I first thought. "I don't wanna look like that." Scream along with Dave at the end of the song, "BREAKOUUUUUUT! ... BREAKOUUUUUUT!" It helps clear the skin. Promise.

Some Kinda Wonderful by Sky
You probably haven't heard this song (check out the sample). It's done by a Canadian act that hasn't broken in the states, yet. However, it's such a sticky-sweet wad of pure bubblegum, it is surprising the pop stations didn't squeeze this in between Britney and the various iterations of the new Monkees. It comes off as your standard "my girl is the best" pop staple. However, "My Girl" and the nearly identically monikered "Some Kind of Wonderful" don't contain the lyrics, "You can call me baby if you let me hold your soul," and "the eyes are kinda freaky, and the horns are there to stay." She's a little devil, that one.

Sample and Hold by Neil Young
Queue the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the others." I got this one first time out, but I have secret knowledge that enabled my revelations, which I will share with you now. Please use discretion in dissemination. The song is about ordering a robot woman to "sample and hold." Tee hee. But, "sample and hold" is the basic mechanism for the generation of all synthesizer music; a tone is created by something, a chip or analogue oscillator, and the synth samples that sound and holds it to create a note when you push one of the keys. This and other songs on the Trans album are created entirely with synthesizers, including Neil Young's "singing." This project resulted from his trying to find ways for his children, who have cerebral palsy, to communicate easily. "Transformer Man" on the same album is a love song to his son. Neil discovered that his son could control model trains, and that it gave him a feeling of control over something, so the song is about his little boy, the Transformer Man.

What songs have surprised you?