In an episode of “I’m Alan Partridge”, the titular hero says that U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is a song that “really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday” when you have to “mow the lawn” and “wash the car”.
Partridge is gobsmacked to discover that the song is actually about the Bloody Sunday massacre, but he can console himself that many a song has been misunderstood. For example, you didn’t really think that “Y.M.C.A.” was a gay anthem, did you?
‘Y.M.C.A.’ – Village People
This week, Victor Willis, who lead singer who also wrote the lyrics for Village People’s camp classic, said that the song is not a “gay anthem” and advised anyone who wants to says it is to lawyer up.
“Come January 2025,” he wrote on Facebook, “my wife will start suing each and every news organisation” that “falsely refers to YMCA” as “a gay anthem”, adding that anyone who thinks it is should “get their minds out of the gutter”.
The line “you can hang out with all the boys” is “simply 1970s Black slang for Black guys hanging out together for sports, gambling or whatever”, he explained, insisting that “there’s nothing gay about that”.
‘Every Breath You Take’ – The Police
“I think it’s a nasty little song, really rather evil,” said Sting of his band The Police’s hit “Every Breath You Take”, because “it’s about jealousy and surveillance and ownership”. Greg Kot, on the BBC, agreed, saying it “expresses the kind of sentiment that gets a guy tossed in prison for stalking”.
In the lyrics, Sting “takes the part of a stalker or voyeur”, said the Financial Times. But countless “smitten couples” have chosen it as a wedding anthem, with “many miles of wedding aisle” walked to it and “numerous pledges” being “trothed” to the sound of Sting singing about “every vow you break”.
Sting isn’t all that bothered, said the New York Post. He said he “always loves when people have a different interpretation” to the meaning he puts into his lyrics, because it “widens the song”.
‘Eton Rifles’ – The Jam
Paul Weller was less magnanimous when David Cameron said that he was a fan of The Jam’s song about inequality “Eton Rifles”. The former Conservative prime minister, who went to Eton College, said the track “meant a lot”, adding that: “I don’t see why the left should be the only ones allowed to listen to protest songs.”
Speaking to Mojo, Weller said: “The whole thing with Cameron saying it was one of his favourite songs… I just think, ‘Which bit didn’t you get?'” In a separate interview with The New Statesman, Weller said the track “wasn’t intended as a f***ing jolly drinking song for the cadet corp”.
Speaking to The Guardian later, Cameron said that “of course I understood what it was about”. He knew Weller was “poking a stick” at Eton and privilege, “but it was a great song with brilliant lyrics”.
‘Born in the USA’ – Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen’s famous anthem “Born in the USA” has also been misunderstood by a conservative politician. A lot of fans heard it as a “feel-good, patriotic anthem”, said Kot, and so did Ronald Reagan, who praised Springsteen and his song of “hope” during his re-election campaign of 1984.
But beyond the “big, seemingly uplifting chorus”, the song “confronts the emptiness of the American dream”, as Vietnam veterans returned to a country “in which working-class people are treated like little more than cannon fodder”. The crestfallen verses “mock the empty slogan in the chorus”.
‘Perfect Day’ – Lou Reed
With its sweet melody and lyrics about walking in the park and feeding animals at the zoo, “Perfect Day” seems to many to be about two lovers having an idyllic day out. A star-studded version was recorded for a BBC charity appeal in 1997.
But is “Perfect Day” quite as wholesome as all that? Some pundits have argued that the song is in fact a romanticised ode to Reed’s addiction to heroin. The relationship in the song is “fed by the push and draw of addiction”, said Nick Walker in The Independent.
This feeling was reinforced when the song featured in the soundtrack of “Trainspotting”, a film about heroin addicts. But Reed later said the song was about “a perfect day, real simple”, adding: “I meant just what I said.”