She's a very kinky girl...
 

I was talking with a friend recently about songs that we used to sing as kids, but whose lyrics we didn't really have a grasp on until we were much older. The two that stand out the most for me are "Start Me Up" by The Rolling Stones, and hilariously enough Rick James's "Superfreak".

When I was about 11 years old those songs were fairly new, and a friend brought the singles to my birthday party, along with others, as my gift. I still have the image in my head of my friends and I blasting the music, singing and dancing to the words we knew by heart.

I honestly didn't know "Start Me Up" was anything sexual, even though the ending line is "You make a dead man cum".

As sad as it is, I also didn't "get" what Rick James meant by "I'd really like to taste her every time we meet". So there we were, 11 years old and singing at the top of our lungs about oral sex.

Do you have songs that you didn't "get" when you were a kid, and now look back and laugh at what you were singing about?

Pretty much any and all songs that were veiled tributes to illegal drugs went over my head until I was around sixteen.

It wasn't until I heard "Last Dance With Mary Jane" that I tilted my head and said "waaaaaaaaaaaaaait a second!".

I wasn't cool enough to be offered drugs and I wasn't cool enough to understand songs about them.

Let's just say that when I found out that "We Are The Champions" by Queen was really just Freddy Mercury's homosexually charged anthem I was in shock. I sang that song all the time when I was a kid and then:

I also grew up listening to The Cure so I knew a ton of the songs and a song on their first album "Three Imaginary Boys" by the name of "Accuracy" was a pretty good song... Little did I know I was singing about lines of cocaine. :p

Speaking of cocaine... Eric Clapton was a pretty big hit when I was 7. I didn't even speak English at the time but hell "Cocaine" was a ROCKIN' SONG~

Then in 1990 I was introduced to the wonderful world of gangster rap. Most rappers out there really didn't hide a lot of subliminal messages into their songs; everything was out there in the open... Big screen TVs, blunts, 40's and fucking bitches... However, Ice Cube did a lot of great songs in the early 90's and his album Death Certificate had a song I specifically liked... A LOT. Why? Because it started out with Big Bird from Sesame Street. :tpg:

Great song though. Seriously. Most of it went over my head when I was 12 but now that I know more about how fucked up things were in the early 90's with Republicans at the helm I have a FAR better appreciation for this track.

One that comes to my head immediately is "Walk this Way" with Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith. Walk this way = losing your virginity. Hell at one point in the song Stephen Tyler sneaks in "just give me some head".

Another one is the 80's classic "I'm so excited" by the Pointer Sisters. The entire song is about how they can't wait to get home and get fucked. The chorus is, "I'm so exited, and I just can't hide it. I'm about to lose control and I think I like it."

Hell another one that comes to my head is "Are you Experienced?" by Jimi Hendrix. By "are" He means *have* and by "experienced" he means *taken drugs*

I can't really recall any that I sang when I was little since my parents were restrictive of what I listened to when I was little, but what bothers me these days are little kids listening to rap and hip hop.

They sing along with the words, but they have NO idea what the hell they mean. All they remember is that dance that goes with it.

"Meet me in the trap... It's goin down
Meet me in the mall... It's goin down
Meet me in the club... It's goin down
Any where ya meet me guaranteed to go down.

It's about sex, dammit. Not some crappy lean back movement Young Joc ripped from another song.

Actually that song was inspired by the Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein. At one point in the movie when Gene Wilder (Frankenstein) first meets Igor, Igor begs Frankenstein to "walk this way" and he starts sidling/walking in a weird way. Gene Wilder does the same.
Aerosmith wrote the song "Walk This Way" in tribute to the film, basically.


As far as songs that I listened to when I was a kid and didn't grasp...I guess a lot of the oldies (60's and 70's stuff) that my dad listened to was over my head. Take Neil Diamond's "Cherry Cherry". Yeah, obviously it's about a girl who's great in bed and Neil wants to get her back in there to see her moves again (read: a good lay). But when I was a kid I was just like "yay, it's a happy song!" :eagletear:

A tribute that has nothing to do at all with the original film.

GENIUS. THEY'LL MAKE MILLIONS!!!!

Seriously calling bullshit on that. Also, I'll bet you're unaware that that song is way older than the Run DMC remix, and that their career was basically over until they did a co-tour with Run DMC. And some jerk had to go kill Jam Master Jay, what the fuck. World, get out.

Back on topic:

I actually understood most songs were about love and girls and stuff at a very young age, and eschewed almost all popular music for that reason. For the longest time the *only* "pop" (not counting classical/jazz/The Beatles) CD I owned was The President's Of The United States of America's eponymous album. It wasn't until 2002 when I got into Radiohead did that change.

I remember "Jump" and "Walk Like An Egyptian" as a kid. I still don't know what they're singing about...

I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" a few weeks ago and even the full translation makes zero sense. That just makes me feel stupid and contagious...

I remember "Nightrain" (GnR) from awhile ago and didn't realize he was referring to a type of liquor (figured it was just speeding on the highway or something). I don't drink alcohol, but the song now always crosses my mind when I down an energy drink during a cram session for school. Been doing that a lot recently. It's my "victory" song when I get something major finished.

I like how the artist for "I'm Turning Japanese" is very ambiguous about the meaning of the song. He's both admitted and denied it's a song about masturbation in seperate interviews.

God knows what they're talking about in my favorite Jpop songs.

Ahahaha. Classic hits with hidden sexual meanings (hidden to most) reminds me of a running gag from Arrested Development ='D Cripes, what song was it they kept singing...

Only thing that comes to mind is that wacky song "Shut Up And Sleep With Me" (artist unknown), which I constantly misinterpreted as "Slip With Me", Slip being some kinda dance I was not familliar with. Ah, how naive I was as a youngster.

'In Bloom', by Nirvana, is a song about sexual maturity.

When I was 5 I used to sing "I Touch Myself" all the time. I can remember one instance at my 6th birthday party singing the chorus to the Divinyls song and my aunts looked shocked and amused. Wasn't 'til I was about 14 that I finally understood the term and was just like "nooooo." And I guess "Love Shack" would be another one I sang but a lot of the lyrics are also just fun too.

kupomog, I think you win for "I Touch Myself". I cannot stop laughing over that one.

Which running gag, what?

It's like I can almost picture it in my head, but I can't... quite... remember.

I'm right there with you, Kupomog. I used to sing parts of "I Touch Myself" at school. Thankfully I did realize that it had a dirty meaning, but I just didn't know what it was. That at least kept me from singing it around teachers.

Haha, that was the best. It was "Afternoon Delight," apparently by the Starland Vocal Band.

That song was out when I was really very young and I remember thinking it was about a sundae or something. I did used to sing that, but didn't know enough of the words for it matter. The little bit I did know was pretty much "Sky rockets in flight, afternoon delight, aaaaaaaafternoon delight", and that was as far as it went.

It is funny to me now that I thought it was about going out for dessert.

Read this.
They liked the "walk this way" gag from Young Frankenstein so much that they threw it into the lyrics and made a kind of tribute song to it.


Are you sure?
I always thought "Princes of the Universe" was more of a "hey I'm a gay dude in the world" song.

Hotel California, by the eagles.

I seriously didn't know what it meant until I was about 19.

Almost every song by Queen is about Freddie Mercury being gay when you really get down to it.

Shit, I'm going on 24 and I still don't know what that song's about.