Wait- OMG! The song is really about...?


Elton John's High Flying Bird is a song about.... suicide??! Thought for years it was just another song about lost love. For whatever reason the full meaning of he lyrics didn't sink in until today on the drive in to work, "The white walls of your dressing room are stained scarlet red. You bled upon the cold stone like a young man... in the foreign field of death." 

That song will never be the same for me again. Its much, much better now. Damn that Taupin was good.

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Billie Holiday's classic "Strange Fruit" is about lynchings in the South.  Lyrics are very obvious but the title isn't:
  

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is a fruit for the crow to pluck
For the rain to wither, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

 
One that I always found sadly amusing was Sting's "Every Breath You Take," which was about stalking an ex. To show how little attention people pay to lyrics/music's message, this was a popular wedding dance song. 

As a Christian I disliked how the Beetles imported Eastern religion in to "My Sweet Lord", where halfway through the song the backing vocals shift from "Hallelujah" to "Hare Krishna", etc. 



What I find amusing is your take on George Harrison's art.

" Harrison wrote "My Sweet Lord" in praise of the Hindu god Krishna,[1] while intending the lyrics as a call to abandon religious sectarianism through his blending of the Hebrew word hallelujah with chants of "Hare Krishna" and Vedic prayer.[2] The recording features producer Phil Spector's Wall of Sound treatment and heralded the arrival of Harrison's slide guitar technique, which one biographer described as "musically as distinctive a signature as the mark of Zorro".[3] Preston, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and the group Badfinger are among the other musicians on the recording."
One that I always found sadly amusing was Sting’s "Every Breath You Take," which was about stalking an ex. To show how little attention people pay to lyrics/music’s message, this was a popular wedding dance song.

YES! Good one! I tell people that’s the most popular song ever about a stalker and they look at me like I’m the one who doesn’t get it!

Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around but it’s you, I can’t replace
I feel so cold and I long for your embrace
I keep crying baby, baby please
THIS is a WEDDING dance song?!?!?! Just play Evergreen, people. Better boring than Orwellian!