I'm not a songwriter but I've always wondered about this.
If you wrote a song that went on to become a hit, but the the lyrics were completely misinterpreted, would you be content or not, as an artist? Let's for arguments sake take money completely off the table. That is, you are either independently wealthy from some other source, or from music, such that you don't need the money. The song has become unbelievably popular. People love it. You hear it on the radio. But when you overhear people talking about it at a bar, or critics writing about it in Rolling Stone, it's obvious that people don't really get what you were trying to say.
Are you happy, sad, pissed off, indifferent? would you consider that work of art a success..failure?
that's quite a poser. since i've never had a song noticed really it's a tough one to figure. i like to write using current slang, like holland k smith did about 15 years ago with his song about a "walking heart attack". which that song there was no mistaking the meaning. i need to think about this. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
Songs often get misinterpreted. Remember Ronald Reagan using Born In The USA as a campaign theme song? Pissed Bruce right off. Or Joan Osbourne's rendition of "One of Us" ("What if God were one of us?") That was misinterpreted by both the far left and the far right. Which was odd given the lyrics only ask questions and do not give answers. Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It" is another one. The chorus sounds defiant but the verse actually has the guy without enough nerve to actually say it to his boss and quit. It's really kind of wimpy.
Some songs come ridiculously quick. Others take forever with sweat poured over every word and constant editing and rewriting. When you've put that much care into crafting something it isn't a good thing when someone completely hears it wrong. Having said that, it's quite common. How many songs are there where everybody knows the chorus but not the verse and so really don't know what the hell the song is about?
If I write what I know to be a good song it can never be a failure. If I was lucky enough to write a commercially successful song, I would assume there were great numbers who understood it and I would take great satisfaction from that. If it was a commercial hit which however somehow got completely screwed up in the public mind and that misinterpretation was the well known reason they bought it in vast numbers, I would console myself with a Margarita (no salt, on the rocks, top shelf) while lounging on my private beach beside my beautiful home complete with hot and cold running women somewhere in the Caribbean. Sad and tragic would I be.....yeah, right. ---------- LSC
it would definitely be a failure. art is a form of communication. if you aint getting your point across, you aint communicating very well.
if i had written the song as a 1 time thing? i would be indifferent. i would think that i am not a song writer so the results i got were to be expected.
if it was my profession and the audience didnt "get it", i think i would be sad or frustrated. it would be like trying to say something important to someone that doesnt understand english.
however, if some critic was incorrectly interpreting my song, i would be pissed. i never understood how anybody can tell others what the artist was trying to convey unless the artist explained it first. they are being bit presumptuous, imo.
I think in that in the age of the internet (and other neat forms of communication), writing a song is the most inefficient way to get a message out.
I remember about fifteen years ago David Bowie said in an interview that if he had to do it all over again these days, he would bypass music altogether.
I was going to mention the Joan Osborne song! There are entire schools of literary theory discussing that subject. If you want your brain to slowly go numb, Google 'Reader Response Criticism'.
Different things have different meanings to different people. In fact, if you take the time to write a song that can't be interpreted differently by different people you are probably going to end up with a boring song. Heck, people even argue over silly stuff on how to interpret things like the Constitution.
If someone turned one of my songs into a hit I could care less what it sounded like. I would love opening that mailbox and seeing those royality checks. My friends Timbuck 3 had a huge hit with The future is so bright I gotta wear shades. Nike and big companies used the punch line. The song was about nuclear holocoust... Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
I think if I wrote a song that had a message, I would be upset if it was misinterpreted.
But the fact is while I thought I had to have a message when I was younger or that I had to write something that was deep, I don't really do it now because frankly, I haven't thought of a unique message that hasn't been delivered by many others.
I think messages are ultimately divisive, nothing wrong with that. I'm just here to bring people together.
Now I write from the heart about simple stuff that people can relate to, it seems unlikely that it would be misinterpreted, I would be bummed if people couldn't relate to it, but then it probably wouldn't be a hit. ---------- Shane,
Bob Dylan got misinterpreted all the time. This is the first part of an hour long interview from 1965 mostly about that subject. If you have a spare hour i think its hilarious.
the other 5 parts are on youtube too
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2012 4:18 PM
Some songs the meaning is known only to the writer. Take for instance Mac Arthur Park. What the hell is the meaning in that song? I've written several songs and the meaning in all of them is pretty simple, but then again, I'm a simple song writer. ---------- Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2012 9:32 PM
I don't know the song by Timbuk 3 (none of their songs, actually), but I have in mind a similar example that I find quite hilarious : the song "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers being used in a commercial for bread !
It's like if you used Rolling Stones's "Brown Sugar" in an ad for candy...
LSC makes a good point, when you bust your ass to get a particular concept onto a page and out a microphone, it can be frustrating to have people miss the point. most of the stuff i write it would be hard to misinterpret but anything is possible. there are at least two sides of writing- lyrics and then music. Jolene and i both come up with great ideas for lyrics and then we both collaborate on the groove. i depend on her to find some tasty way to present the music for a given song while she depends on me to make lyrics fit and flow in a particular way.
i know sometimes when we are busking especially, i see people dancing or bouncing up a storm even if the song is a sad one. that tells me they are not hearing what the song is about. most sad songs are slower but that doesn't stop some folks from grooving to them. kind of weird to see someone moving to st. james infirmary or backwater blues. but the bright spot is at least they are feeling it. i heard carly simon's "anticipation" song selling ketchup in the 70's and it was the first time i remember really liking a song and then not liking it any more. she did not write that song to sell ketchup. but then she turned around and decided the money was too good to pass up i guess. this is a question that is hard to process without the incentive of financial compensation. part of the struggle to write good quality songs is the hope of selling one to a famous artist and getting author credit and compensation. part is also the hope of a clapton, guy, or other big player "getting" what you're writing and holding true to the idea. this has not happened to us here yet, i'm supposing here based on what i hope will happen. if you have a copyright, and someone adopts your material to their style and warps it too much, you have the option of taking them to court and suing to get your rights respected or compensation or whatever. other than that, i think that once something is unleashed on the world, it can't be simply called back. it will always be in the public eye and ear. in that respect one may want to prepare for unintended fame. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
Many, many years ago I wrote lyrics to a backtrack I was listening to and I like how it came out, simple to the point and easy for someone else to remember the words and melody...
WARNING: the recording is terrible, the vocals are below average and the harmonica playing sucks, but other then that it's okay... lol
there's a song called Shivers...the guy who wrote it was absolutely taking the p!ss out of the intensity of teenage angst...totally tongue in cheek "i've been contemplating suicide, but it really doesn't suit my style" "my babys so vain she is almost a mirror and the sound of her name sends an almighty shiver down my spine". people took it totally seriously, adopted it as their theme...Nick Cave delivered it that way... theres another one "no aphrodisiac (like loneliness)"...its a joke, but it is taken as a serious "beautiful" song...well, by si think they are sweetly ironic successes. i do think Keb Mo totally missed the point of Folsom Prison Blues when he rewrote it...but then maybe it was much more relevant to his situation that way...could have just done a totally different song though. FPB is about unexcusable wrongdoing and undeniable inescapable guilt, but Keb just changed those lines and the song is now about undeserved punishment and oppression. like ok,i can dig that means more to him but its a totally different song now, so why not just write your own?
If I wrote a song that were very personal to me, I couldn't blame anyone for not understanding it or misinterpreting it. At best, they can guess, or empathize with what they feel the topic is about and if they apply it to events or feelings in their own life, (even incorrectly) they're going to make it their own, even if it's 180 degrees from the mark.
It sort of depends upon metaphors, too. An example would be the pop/rock song "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers. Jakob is quoted as saying that it has to do with "the death of ideas", and the metaphors in the song illustrate that. Anyone casually listening might think something else.
Maynard James Keenan of Tool often plays games with lyrics, admittedly - writing riddles or passive coincidences that provoke people to explore meaning or to wonder. Neil Peart (Rush) often writes very personal songs and metaphors that have been debated for decades now, unless you catch him explaining them in interviews.
But I think as a songwriter that wanted to be understood, I'd be more upset by the mis-heard lyric of a recording "there's a bathroom on the right", "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" etc.) and be mis-quoted or mis-heard ad nauseum than to have clear lyrics which de-railed for a person's creativity or interpretation.
When it all gets down to it, you can only control what you think and say - everyone else gets their fair share at interpretation unless they ask for correction or clarity.
Priority #1 for the artist who hates his words being misunderstood is to do a couple well-publicized interviews. Fact out, argument done.
Yankee Doodle is another good example of a song that was written one way and taken entirely enough, or at the very least deliberately taken another way.
