Today's Decomp: Songs That Aren't About What You Think!

     So, I've got my iTunes on shuffle and all the sudden, "Shannon" by Henry Gross comes on. If you don't know what this song is about, then I won't spoil it for you until later in this post, but suffice to say that it is NOT about some girl named Shannon. That's when I started thinking about a TON of songs that have back stories you just NEVER would have guessed, or they're about something deeper than what the lyrics betray. I'll post videos with the lyrics, but make sure you actually listen to the words first, decide what you think the song's about and then I'll tell you at the end. 

So, with that, let the spoilers begin!

Shannon by Henry Gross

One of those mopey 70's songs that are a guilty pleasure for those of us born in the late 60's to early 70's (lyrics courtesy of www.oldielyrics.com):

Another day's at end
Mama says she's tired again
No one can even begin to tell her
I hardly know what to say
But maybe it's better that way
If Pop-pa were here I'm sure he'd tell her

Shannon, is gone I heard
She's drifting out to sea
She always loved to swim away
Maybe she'll find an island with a shaded tree
Just like the one in our backyard

Mama tries hard to pretend
That things will get better again
Somehow she's keepin' it all inside her
But finally the tears fill our eyes
And I know that somewhere tonight
She knows how much we really miss her

Shannon, is gone I heard
She's drifting out to sea
She always loved to swim away
Maybe she'll find an island
With a shaded tree
Just like the one in our back yard
Ah, just like the one in our back yard
Ah....
Just like the one in our back yard

Ben by Michael Jackson

Another mopey 70's tune. More people know what this one is about, but still worth adding (bonus points for having seen this movie and its prequel, "Willard"!) The lyrics are already listed, so I won't post them.

I Don't Like Mondays by Boomtown Rats

Okay, once I looked at the lyrics, I realized they really ARE about what they say they are. As a kid, though, I never knew ALL the words or the backstory, so I just sang the bridge and chorus in complete oblivion:

Beds Are Burning by Midnight Oil

This 80's tune has PIECES of what it COULD relate to in it, but if you understood this tune out of the gate without any help from Casey Kasem (or Wikipedia now!), then you get a medal for...smart music lyric-ky-ness...that I just made up:

Black Bird by The Beatles

A mellow little Beatles tune that always makes me smile:

Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison

A favorite tune from the 60's:

Hello I Love You by The Doors

A song by The Doors that gives just one line that hints at what the song is truly about:

You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone

The 70's were incredibly prolific for these sweet love songs!

Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townshend

This was an early 80's tune that's made a big comeback, now that all the Saturday Night Live alumni-turned-actors are in their 40's:

So, got all those in mind? Understood the meaning behind them (or think you know?). Great! Let's match up what you think with the truth and see how close you were! BTW, if you want to check out more songs and meanings, I usually use Songfacts.com for lyrics, meanings, etc.


Shannon: It's about a dead DOG. Seriously. And more specifically, it's about Beach Boy Carl Wilson's dead Irish Setter. Henry Gross wrote it as a tribute. Not much more to that, really!

Ben: It's about a RAT and is actually the theme song to the movie of the same name. Ben and Socrates were two rats from the 1971 movie "Willard" in which this meek guy (Willard) ends up getting some rat friends who help him face his problems. Eventually this gets out of hand and Willard regrets having these rat buddies a little too late. "Ben" is the 1972 sequel in which Ben goes elsewhere and befriends a kid who's also not having the best life.

Ben and his rat horde help this kid, too, but then the cops come to wipe all the sewer rats out and the kid has to get Ben to leave. I remember thinking the sewer looked like an awesome place to play when I saw this movie on TV...thank goodness I saw the drain scene from Now and Then before I tried it! Also, for those who like Crispin Glover, he apparently made a remake of Willard in 2003! On the DVD, he sings the song Ben with a rat that looks like a giant possum...no idea why all the hot chicks want the rat so bad, though:

I Don't Like Mondays: Unfortunately, this one is in response to a true story. On January 29, 1979, 16 year old Brenda Ann Spencer sat in her house with a rifle and opened fire on Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street. She ended up wounding eight children who were waiting for the gate to open and killing both Principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar (who tried to get Principal Wragg to safety after he'd been hit). The song title was part of her actual response when asked why she'd done it: "I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day." When the Boomtown Rats sing about seeing "no reasons, 'cause their ARE no reasons", they're actually saying the words we all feel (even now) about such senseless acts.

Beds Are Burning: This one is a protest song about giving back lands in Australia to the native Pintupi people. Like the Native Americans, they were forcibly moved from their homelands to settlements created by the government. The title line (which you hear in the lyric "how can we sleep when our beds are burning?") is essentially about the guilt the non-aboriginal people ought to be feeling about the treatment of the natives for the past 200+ years. The guys of Midnight Oil felt (and rightly so) that the Australian government should apologize and give them their land back (which the Prime Minister refused to do). They also performed this song at the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney while wearing all black with t-shirts that said "Sorry" on them.

Black Bird, Brown-Eyed Girl & Hello, I Love You: All about black girls! Remember that the 60's were a time of civil unrest. African Americans were fighting for equal rights and in many places in the US, interracial marriages were still against the law (strange to think I couldn't have been married to my soulmate because of a stupid law, but there it is). That didn't stop others from finding grace and beauty in those whose lives were embattled, but in the music business, that support was always coded so as not to upset radio stations (who could make or break the tune with airplay).

For the Beatles, the word "bird" is actually slang for "girl", so black bird refers to a black woman. Paul McCartney has been looking for ways to lyrical support civil rights in the US, so lines like "you were only waiting for this moment to arise" is symbolic of the long suffering that had finally become an outright protest against inequality. For The Doors, their song is about seeing a black girl walking along the beach and the only line that hints at who they mean is near the end "Do you hope to make her see you, fool? Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?" (dusky, of course, suggesting a darker color!). And finally, Van Morrison's hit was ORIGINALLY titled Brown SKINNED Girl, but was changed so that radio stations would actually play it (oddly enough, some would still ban it for the "making love in the green grass" line!).

You Light Up My Life & Let My Love Open the Door: Both songs about GOD but in a round about way. Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" was originally a love song for the movie of the same name. Didi Conn (who'd later watch an angelic Frankie Valli descend from heaven while singing "Beauty School Dropout" in "Grease"), lip syncs the song in the movie. Later, Debby Boone decided it was more of an inspirational Christian tune and sang it to God instead.

With "Let My Love Open The Door", the connection is less direct. In the liner notes of the Townsend Gold CD, Townsend refers to this song as "Jesus sings", so quite a few folks have interpreted the "my love" part to be "God's love".

So, there's the songs and all the hidden stuff. If you have more that I don't know about, post them in the comments below. I LOVE hidden stuff!

Today's Decomp: Runaround Sue by Dion & the Belmonts

"Why is it that when I'm right in the middle of the Glee-induced flashmob, impressing kids with my skill on pink spangly speed quads while we sing Runaround Sue, I have to wake up to Tuesday morning???"

That was going to be my Facebook status Tuesday morning. I thought the better of it, but a total fluke of a coincidence today made me have to revisit this song. (oh, welcome back to my special brand of crazy, btw! Been a LONNNNNG while, but with school winding down for the year, I've got a little less fuzz in my brain and a LOT more pent-up snark in my commentary!) This particular decomp has more twists and turns than an MC Escher painting, so try to keep up!

So, here's the scenario: I'm on a field trip to a roller rink with a bunch of my old students, who're all around middle to high school age again. It's like a sort of farewell/graduation party provided by the school, but just for kids that have had me as a teacher. We get there and the kids all find their skates pretty quickly, but I spend most of the dream searching through walls of lockers and skate racks trying to find my size and style (old school quad speed skates, size 8.5). I FINALLY find the "right pair" which, contrary to my waking preferences, needed to be pink and spangled in a CLASSY sort of way...

Like these, but with the low cut speed boot so I look...uh, cool?

(I know, even my OWN brain did the record scratch sound for THAT one. I think I've kept my inner girly-girl imprisoned for so long that she's finally hijacking my dreams and using her Bedazzler all over my subconscious. On that note, I wonder if my whole tomboy vibe might be a natural defense mechanism; puff up into a sort of larger pseudo-male to ward off the more fashion conscious predatory female? But I digress...)

Anyway, I put them on and spin a little to test them out. As I come out of the spin, Runaround Sue by Dion and the Belmonts starts playing. Being in my 40's and relatively fit, I can't resist the chance to look like a rock star by showing a bunch of teenagers I can still "boogie down" on the skate floor. Clearly, I have not mastered the current teen vernacular for explaining it, but since I didn't say it out loud, I'm cool (or hot or phat or...something...).


(okay, here's where I stopped writing this blog and thought "Too bad I can't just SHOW people what I mean with the skating." Just for laughs, I thought I'd try and see if there WAS a video of someone doing some moves to Runaround Sue and found this...close enough!)


So, now I'm singing the song and dancing in the skate rental area. My street cred has dropped to subzero, but my cool old lady points are through the roof. The kids do what ALL people do when they're about to burst into a planned spontaneous activity...exchange glances of delighted amusement before jumping up to join me. I skate backwards singing to them, they skate toward me singing the right backup lines, we're all looking cool and harmonizing beautifully (hence the aforementioned Glee-induced flashmob).


This is probably what makes me realize I'm dreaming (I mean, seriously, what kid today actually KNOWS the words to Runaround Sue?) and thus forces my body to wake up. I'm disappointed that my music video has melted away to my normal Tuesday morning grog that I lay in bed and type the status you read above, but general malaise takes over and I decide to forget about it.

Cut to today, Saturday afternoon at home.

My addiction to this game is FRIGHTENING...

I've just found out that my busy weekend of doing a show at ComedySportz, participating in a charity softball tournament, and getting school & around the house stuff done has just been downsized by one event...the tourney's been postponed because of the rain. This means I don't have to cram everything I wanted to do for school and the house on Saturday, so I decide to relax and turn Pandora on the tv while playing a little Dungeon Rampage. I'm supposed to be hearing stuff that relates to Eric Carmen's "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" (hey, make fun of my need to impress teenagers, but don't drag my soft rock of the 70's into your petty mockery!), but Pandora has been really strange lately. Random stuff's been popping in, such as hearing AC/DC doing "Thunderstruck" right after Paul Davis sings "Do Right" and Queen doing "Another One Bites The Dust". I'm just about to change to another station when, out of the blue, Pandora takes a running leap into 1961 to play (...wait for it....) Runaround Sue.


You see what's happening, right? It's totally obvious! Dion DiMucci is secretly using his powers as a former teen idol to channel through me. I'm not sure why he'd pick someone who's his polar opposite as his conduit, nor do I have any idea of what his message to the world is, but the lyrics are simple enough:

Here's my story, sad but true
It's about a girl that I once knew
She took my love then ran around
With every single guy in town
Ah, I should have known it from the very start
This girl would leave me with a broken heart
Now listen people what I'm telling you
A-keep away from-a Runaround Sue
I miss her lips and the smile on her face
The touch of her hand and this girl's warm embrace
So if you don't wanna cry like I do
A-keep away from-a Runaround Sue


Ah, she likes to travel around
She'll love you and she'll put you down
Now people let me put you wise
Sue goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows
I fell in love and my love still grows
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
Keep away from-a Runaround Sue


She likes to travel around
She'll love you but she'll put you down
Now people let me put you wise
She goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows
I fell in love and my love still grows
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
Keep away from-a Runaround Sue

Dion...Doofenshmirtz...both begin with D!

So our hero, Dion, falls for a troublesome strumpet in bobby sox, has his heart broken by said strumpet, then warns other young men of her wanton behavior lest they suffer the same dehumanizing fate (Being associated with a girl who goes on DATES? With other MEN? The very IDEA!). Seems pretty straightforward, right? But perhaps there's a DIFFERENT story, a peevish underbelly to this simple precautionary tale of a song that the great Dion himself may not even have come to terms with. My newfound Harry Potter-esque connection with this rock & roll era Voldemort may provide us all with some valuable insight (if you expand your definition of "valuable" to include things that are the exact OPPOSITE, that is). Try this on for size:

Dion and his buddies from Belmont Avenue have known Sue since their childhood days. They all  hung out doing the kinds of wholesome things required of any redblooded American kid back then: playing stickball, catching frogs, shooting marbles, singing on streetcorners, and posing for Norman Rockwell paintings. Unlike other girls, with their jacks, dolls and hula hoops, Sue is the original tomboy who loves to climb trees, wrestle in the dirt, and wear jeans rolled up to the knee and boy's shirts rolled to the elbow. She's just about the best at everything she does because she's constantly proving herself to the boys (who, again, adore her for it).

Yeah...THAT plane ride. :-(

As they get older, Dion starts his singing career (something a boy with the name of Dion almost HAS to do, or be teased for the rest of his life). He talks some of the neighborhood boys into joining him, but despite Sue's amazing singing voice, she can't go because nice girls aren't allowed to sing outside of church yet. After signing with a record company and getting on American Bandstand. The now famous Belmonts live the wild and crazy life of teen pop idols. This whirlwind of popularity eventually leads to the infamous Winter Dance Party tour, where one frosty night, Dion chooses not to pay the outrageous price of $36 for a plane ride to the next tour stop in Moorhead, MI. In doing so, he avoids the deadly fate of the OTHER headliners on this same tour.

Suddenly, he realizes the importance of life and family and those pictures of boys and girls sipping the same ice cream soda with two straws and BAM! he remembers that SUE is a girl, and right now, he'd REALLY like a chance to wrestle in the dirt with her...! Filled with newly discovered love for his old friend, he rushes home to Brooklyn by bus to pour his heart out to her. He's exhausted after hours on the road, but he immediately goes to see Sue (who's now progressed from beating the neighborhood boys at everything into training to become the world's first female decathlete). He asks her out and she agrees, thrilled to have her ol' pal Dion back.

Okay, so not exactly diner friendly, but stick with me on this one!

All night, the two catch up, but Dion's weak attempts to tell her in words how he feels are either misinterpreted or misheard (great singer, but not much of a smooth talker, our Dion). Sue knows he's pretty tired and they've both grown up a lot, but right before they head home, she can't resist challenging him to a contest in SOMETHING. She notices a brand new game called Spacewar! (1962's version of Halo Wars, which was conceived of in 1961 and only available on a PDP-1 in the Electrical Engineering Department at MIT, but for the sake of this wildly probable love story, was being pretested at the diner, right next to the jukebox on Belmont Avenue in Brooklyn). Dion agrees, and Sue  proceeds to do what she's always done...spank him soundly and jokingly taunt his abilities.

"Man, I love you, Dion!" she says, causing his heart to soar! She HAS heard his heart's cries and she feels the same way about him! He's trying to figure out if he can get a nice engagement ring with the $36 he's already got conveniently saved, until she adds. "You GOTTA love a guy who'll get creamed by missile fire that easily!" Dion's already shattered manhood is even further decimated by her playful laughter; once the music that his soul sang to, now it is the dirge that makes him long for the cold emptiness of the Winter Dance Party tour bus. So, as the night ends with her saying, "Well, I gotta run, Dion...early morning for the 10k tomorrow. See ya around, though, okay?", he waits until she's out of earshot before mumbling the toughest words his traumatized ego can muster, "Yeah, you BETTER run...around....Sue."

Disgusted with himself and Sues everywhere, he storms back to the tour bus, barely holding back his tears as he scribbles the lyrics to his shame in the backseat. The song is recorded and the passion he pours into singing in sends the song to the top of the charts. That, along with Johnny Cash and Shel Silverstein's combined lyrical efforts) effectively ruins the name Sue for both genders and forces nearly two generations of girls named Susanna into the use of their God given (and not easily sewn onto a Pink Lady jacket) first names instead of the once proud, but now sullied nickname.

Sue, being fully absorbed into her training regime, never even hears the song. She sometimes misses her friend Dion and wonders if there ever could have been anything between them, but since he never told her his feelings, she assumes that a strong female figure is too much for the world to take. She hopes to change this in the 1964 Olympic Games but sadly, the Olympic committee chooses to introduce the women's pentathlon instead (women's decathlon will not become an event until 2000). Having practiced 10 events for so long, Sue is told that she is overqualified and is turned away at the qualifiers. Having no prospects for her future, Sue continues to run and one day, disappears forever, never to be heard from again (like a Helen Reddy tune, but without anyone going crazy or ending up in a radio).

(pauses to pant for breath and to follow her tangent backward...)

No one has hair this perfect without something to hide...

Note the evil black hat, shades, and facial hair?

So...Dion DiMucci. Blameless teen idol victimized by a heartless wench? Or insecure pop singer who has spent the bulk of his 70+ years on this earth besmirching the honor of or indirectly driving talented young woman to run themselves into oblivion striving for a goal 50 years beyond their reach (or more recently, using his latent 50s teen idol powers to channel honey bunches of crazy into a poor 5th grade teacher's snarky musical commentary blog)?

Although...

...come to think of it...

...both "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" and "Runaround Sue" ARE songs about guys that have bad relationships with a woman.

Guess Pandora might have connected them for that reason....huh...

(longer pause to try and recover lost sanity)

Well...

...Dion is still probably...y'know...with the mind control stuff...

...so...this isn't just a CRAZY MADE UP RANT, ha, ha, ha...!

The (living a RICH fantasy life, despite all attempts that sanity keeps making to creep back in) Sprite