Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

This is a "Wild Mass Guess" entry, where we pull out all the sanity stops on theorizing. The regular entry on this topic is elsewhere. Please see this programme note.
Music And Music Videos
Jeff Tweedy performed a massive Xanatos Roulette to have a moderately successful band
Jeff Tweedy is best known for his involvement in Uncle Tupelo and Wilco. Uncle Tupelo was successful, but he was never satisfied sharing the songwriting credits with Jay Farrar. What he wanted was a successful album in his own band, which he knew how to get.

He started by joining a garage band with Jay Farrar and his brothers and swiftly changing their name and lineup. The new band got a good reputation fast by looking like a new genre and getting a few good reviews, which were engineered by Tweedy. Uncle Tupelo then proceeded to shun major record labels so that no one would suspect a thing. They finally signed with Sire Records, a division of Warner Bros. Records.

Soon after, Jay Farrar conveniently left the band, leaving Tweedy and the other members of Uncle Tupelo to rename themselves 'Wilco'. Having just signed with a division of Warner Bros., it was easy to sign with a different division of Warner Bros. That was Reprise Records, whose president, Howie Klein, allowed him to make increasingly experimental records.

After Wilco had a moderate fanbase, Tweedy somehow tricked Time Warner, which owns Warner Bros., into merging with America Online and forcing it to cut costs. This included firing Klein. The new president didn't want to pay for the new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, so Tweedy raised an uproar about it and sold the album to yet another different division of Warner Bros., Nonesuch Records. The resulting news coverage caused loads of critics to notice the album and they proceeded to dump massive praise on the record. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is still their best-selling album.

Kid Rock is lying about his age.
"It was 1989, my thoughts were short my hair was long....Singing 'Sweet Home Alabama' all summer long..." But that song's from The Seventies; in '89 we were rockin' out to Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli. '70s music was too old for Top 40 radio and too new for oldies stations- NOBODY listened to it, unless they were old enough to have bought the albums when the songs were current.
  • It's a cover story for his true identity: a werewolf. He probably hasn't been to London, though. (For those who have not heard the song, the backing track samples "Werewolves of London".)
  • The song was a tribute to his dad, who loves to party (seriously, he may look like a clean-cut car dealer, but he'll have rock music blasting every weekend. His motto: "Since you're awake anyway, come join the party!"), and his dad played the "Best of Lynyrd Skynyrd" LP a lot.
  • No, his designated ghost-songwriter was born in 1989.
  • Obviously you are unfamiliar with the American South (the entire region, not just Alabama). Regardless of the year, we DO sing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long.
    • Michigan is considered part of the South?
      • Shhh. That's a secret. Kid Rock is patriotic, and he is ashamed of being from the same state as Michael Moore.
      • Kid Rock mentions being in Michigan in the song in question.

Tom Petty's "Melinda" and Roy Orbison's "I Drove All Night" are about the same couple.
The lyrics to Melinda recount the narrator's efforts to save up enough money to go and see Melinda. He indicates that upon his arrival, which will probably be in the dark of night, he shall have to enter her home through a window. I Drove All Night is the conclusion, in which the narrator relates his journey to Melinda herself after waking her up (and making love), having indeed arrived at night. Also, in the first song, he had intended to depart for Melinda's first thing in the morning...but apparently couldn't wait that long.

The song "Don't Come Around Here No More" is about The Mad Hatter falling for Alice and getting mad when she leaves the tea party he went to all that trouble to set up for her.
This would explain why The Hatter eats Alice at the end of the video (Revenge!).
  • No, the Mad Hatter is GLaDOS. No cake for Alice.

MC Skat Cat and his gang come from the same world as Roger Rabbit.
The style of the characters (toon and human alike) and the world in which they live in the music video of Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" bears a striking resemblance to that of Roger Rabbit's world.

The "it" in "Oops!...I Did It Again" and the "that" in "I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)" are one and the same.
The "this" in "U Can't Touch This" is entirely unrelated. We're not sure about the "it" in "(You Got It) The Right Stuff".
  • The "that" in "I'd Do Anything for Love" is explained in each lyric. Meat Loaf sings two things he will do for love and then one thing that he won't. Then he sings that he "won't do that", referring to the one thing he referenced earlier. Example:
    I would do anything for love, I'd run right into hell and back
    I would do anything for love, I'd never lie to you and that's a fact
    But I'd never forget the way you feel right now, oh no.
    I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. Oh no, no I won't do that
    • Unless Britney Spears is referring to forgetting how her lover feels right then, not going all the way that night, doing it better than she would with her lover, forgetting her lover, leaving her lover, or cheating on her lover, it isn't.
    • And if it is, then we should feel very sad for her lover.

Voltaire's "When You're Evil" and Warren Zevon's "Mr. Bad Example" are being sung by two crooks engaged in an Eviler Than Thou - type contest.
  • So who won?

The infamous mondegreen from the Jimi Hendrix song Purple Haze is in fact not a mondegreen at all!
Although nervous record execs forced an "official" explanation of the strange lyric, Hendrix (known for stirring up things) knew exactly what he was saying. "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy!" Further, he refused to go along with the "official" lyric in concert, where the execs could not touch him.
  • Also supports the theory that Hendrix was bisexual.
    • Hendrix registered as a homosexual with the US army, supposedly to avoid the draft. ()
      • "Whatever it is that GIRL put a spell on me"
      • Now, that's a Mondegreen. <grin>

Taking the above even further: there are no mondegreens at all! Those are the actual lyrics in all cases.
So Eddie Vedder is talking about forty five virgins and a pelican ("Glorified G"). Sade is recounting the adventures of a Spoon Operator. Benny and the Jets have electric boobs (her mom does too), Steve Winwood wants you to bring him a pile of love, and the guy in Gin Blossoms really is assuring us that he's no sheep or dragon (anyway he's got no place to go; "Hey Jealousy"). The only question is, what does this mean? (Aside from certain songs being more interesting.)
  • So what happens when something is misheard more than one way?
  • The above theory is, for the record, all Simon LeBon's fault. "Shake up the picture of the lizard mixture"? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

The hero of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" did shoot the deputy — but not the sheriff.
There are several major questions left unanswered by the song: what's all this about the deputy? Who did kill him, when and how and why? Why is everyone convinced the singer did it? And why are they after him "for the killing of a deputy", as opposed to the killing of the sheriff and a deputy — don't they know he killed the sheriff? Isn't it a coincidence, when all is said and done, that the deputy was killed pretty much at the same time as the sheriff but apparently in a completely unrelated manner? A possible explanation: after years of taunts and veiled threats from the sheriff, the singer is a paranoid wreck. The day he's set to leave town, he's so convinced that the sheriff won't let him go that the moment he glimpses a police uniform — not the sheriff at all, just the deputy wandering by — he shoots and flees, believing that he'd killed the sheriff in self-defense.
  • I'd always had it playing out like this... the deputy actually cottoned on to the sheriff's persecution of Bob. When the confrontation went down, the deputy advised the sheriff that his threatening to shoot Bob was illegal, and he would be forced to take the sheriff into custody. The sheriff drew his weapon on the deputy, and Bob fired on the sheriff in defense of the deputy's life. However, the sheriff was able to fire on the deputy before Bob could take him down. The officers that arrived on scene found a guy with a criminal record holding a gun, and two dead LE Os. They made the natural assumption. However, Bob is hoping that the results of the ballistics tests will bear out his story, and that his cooperation with the investigation of the shootings will help his defense in the shooting of the sheriff; if he admits to shooting the sheriff, why deny shooting the deputy...UNLESS he's telling the truth.

The protagonist of Cake's "The Distance" is literally on a horse.
The song seems contradictory — if he's "going the distance", therefore only covering the same amount of ground as the other drivers, and "going for speed", therefore going very fast, how come he's taking so incredibly much longer than everyone else, so long that the trophy's been handed out, the fans have gone home, "the sun has gone down and the moon has come up"? Surely that would imply he's going very slow, that he's not going for speed at all? Unless when they say he's "striving and driving and riding on his horse", they're being perfectly literal. This nut has entered the Daytona 500 on a horse, and although he's going very fast by horse standards, even with minimal rest periods, it's going to take him forever. No wonder his girlfriend's pissed.
  • Just because he's "going for speed" doesn't mean he's getting it. (You can't rev a horsie to 200 mph.) Nonetheless, this is an excellent explanation.

The woman the letters are addressed to in Elvis Presley's "Return To Sender" does not exist, nor does the address she supposedly lives at.
Why would this woman, trying to ignore her former lover, go through all the trouble of sending back his letters instead of, say, burning them? Plus, it'd take longer than one day for the letters to go through the post office, into her mailbox, back out, and returning to the singer's. Also, such things are usually denoted with a stamp of some sort, which the average woman isn't likely to have. The whole love affair was a delusion, and neither the woman nor her mailbox exist.
  • This is pointed out in the song's chorus:
    "Address unknown
    No such number
    No such zone"
  • You don't have to have the stamp. Writing "Return to Sender" on the envelope will work. If she intercepted the mailman at the mailbox and immediately did this, the letter could indeed get back on the very next day.

The woman in "Return to Sender" is progressively upping the ante on her rejection.
First she tells the post office that the letter should be returned ['Return to sender']. Then she tries to deny the existence of her house ['address unknown' and 'no such number'], and then she tries to deny the existence of the area ['no such zone']. She even tries to deny her own existence ("no such person"). This is in the forlorn hope that the sender will get the message that she doesn't want to see him. We do not want to know what happens when he attempts hand-delivery.
  • Two words: Restraining. Order.

The video for Yellowcard's "Light Up The Sky" takes place after the Third Impact.
Two Words: Tang Rain.
  • Did you see how depressed and slightly deranged they all looked? None of them had a special person who made them happy; and even after surviving, they couldn't relate to each other. The "Tang Rain" made them happy because they knew what it meant by then: an all-powerful being had given them a second (third?) chance at happiness.
  • Given that the song's about dedication to a heartbroken loved one, this actually makes a little sense.

The devil deliberately lost the wager in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" as part of a Xanatos Gambit.
As Fry correctly notes in Futurama "Hell Is Other Robots," a fiddle made of gold would sound really bad. Surely the devil was aware of this; we can only conclude that he lost the wager on purpose to further some other more nefarious plot. Johnny had better be careful because he's not out of the woods yet. And Johnny's boast at the end, "I'm the best that's ever been," sounds an awful lot like Pride, widely regarded as first among the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • In "The Devil Came Back To Georgia," Johnny lost the rematch, having used the golden fiddle; this is not made clear because Charlie Daniels could not bear to portray the devil winning.
  • The yet unreleased sequel to "The Devil Came Back To Georgia" is called "Johnny Realizes What An Idiot He Was To Bet His Soul On A Fiddle"
  • Also in "The Devil Came Back to Georgia," we learn that Johnny now has a baby boy. It's possible that the ultimate goal of the Xanatos Gambit was to get two souls, not just one. (Or even three; it's not stated in the song who the child's mother is or whether she's married to Johnny.) And if Reaper is to be believed, parents can sell/bargain/wager away their children's souls without the consent or even knowledge of the child.
The Devil set up Johnny so that he would get his soul whether he won or lost.
If the Devil won, then he gets the soul outright; if Johnny wins, then the devil gambles on Johnny being proud enough for it to be sinful and getting sent to Hell when he dies. Either way, the Devil wins.
  • Johnny even acknowledges that it's a sin for him to accept the wager, and it could well be a mortal one. Also, as pointed out on McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Devil was looking for a soul to steal. Not win in a fair contest, but steal. The devil tempted Johnny, Johnny accepted, and the contest itself didn't matter in the slightest. Johnny was already lost.

God will recruit Johnny of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" in His eternal battle with the Devil.
Despite being human, Johnny managed to defeat the Devil in a fiddling contest. That's no simple task.

The golden fiddle in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is metaphorical.
It symbolises the proof that Johnny is the best fiddler ever because he beat the devil. That's why, in the return match in "The Devil Came Back To Georgia," Johnny says he has to "get the fiddle back in tune": he's trying to get his skill back after years of lack of use.

Particle Man is one of Dr. Wily's creations, and he's weak to whatever Triangle Man is packing.
Let's see... The song features Particle Man, Triangle Man, Universe Man, and Person Man, all of whom fit the naming scheme for Robot Masters, and their varied and bizarre descriptions suggest that they're just the kind of weirdoes that a mad scientist would assemble. What Particle Man himself is like is, the song says, "not important", which suggests he doesn't have much characterization beyond how he moves across the screen, "doing the things a particle can", i.e. the standard theme-based move-and-attach patterns of a Mega Man boss. Even less is said about Triangle Man, but "they have a fight, Triangle Wins", in the case of both Particle Man and Person Man. Not Triangle Man, necessarily, just Triangle, and most bosses in the Mega Man series give you a weapon that's named after them: Metal Man gives you Metal Blades, Top Man gives you Top Spin, etc. Universe Man is the largest of the level bosses, but "usually kind to smaller man", so as intimidating as he seems, his weapon isn't likely to be very strong.
  • Or Smaller Man is another level boss, friends with Universe Man, and got his name because they hang out together and Universe Man is so huge. Although that does make me wonder what Smaller Man's weapon would be.
    • A shrink ray!

Alternatively, Particle Man is a retelling of the story of Watchmen by Alan Moore.
Particle Man is the second Nite-Owl, a man of science with a submersible flying machine and an inferiority complex, Person Man is Rorschach, a seemingly disturbed individual with a very mysterious identity he no longer sees as being his true self ("What's he like? It's not important."), Universe Man is the godlike Dr. Manhattan, and the pyramid-themed supergenius Ozymandias is the victorious Triangle Man.
  • But "What's he like? It's not important," refers to Particle Man, not Person Man.
    • Still fits, as Person Man 'lives his life in a garbage can', alluding to Rorschach's poor sense of hygiene.
  • Alternately, Particle Man might be the Comedian. "When he's underwater, does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?" I.e., did a callous, degraded society make him into a ruthless killer, or have his activities caused society to be more callous and degraded than it otherwise would have been? Besides, what's the very first thing that happens in Watchmen? They have a fight. Triangle wins.

"Particle Man" is a retelling of the Elric family tragedies from the Full Metal Alchemist anime.
Inspired by this video, but while Particle Man is Ed, and Triangle Man is Envy, Hoenheim is Universe Man, as evidenced by his mastery over Alchemy and immortality (second hand is his life and family amongst the mortals, millenium hand is his immortality, and eon hand is the Truth), and Alphonse is Person Man, comparatively the normal observer, no special powers and not a very outstanding personality for most of the time, with his most noticeable feature is living his life as a garbage can.
  • Don't remove the link just because the video was taken down. Please note that it was taken down due to a copyright claim by WMG. XD

"Particle Man" is the story of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man.
It warrants mention. Death is Particle Man, "doing the things a particle can" like being in two places at once, being two things at once, moving through walls. The Auditors, who hate Person-ness and Death after he gains a personality, as well as existing in threes, are Triangle Man. Azrael is Universe man (he's got a clock with a second hand, millenium hand, and an aeon hand) and is the only one not to be even temporarily defeated by, or even challenged by Triangle Man (the Auditors). And Person Man is people.

The statue kills the singer by atomizing him. Also, the song makes reference to a "monolith."

The mysterious virus in the Australian version of the "What I've Done" music video is the T-Virus of Resident Evil fame.
The pharmaceutical company that created the virus looks suspiciously similar to that of the Umbrella Corporation, and the description of what the virus was supposed to do ("social control") certainly fits the destructive nature of the Ebola virus, from which the T-Virus spawned.
  • Wasn't the T-Virus reverse-engineered from the Mother virus, which was itself found in a dead queen ant?

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree of "James James Morrison Morrison" by the Chad Mitchell Trio is the same person as the narrator/singer in Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree".
Dupree is staying on his Aunt Faye's couch because his mother disappeared at the end of town. His brains have turned to applesauce from the trauma of losing his mother at the age of three... The very same age when he and his cousin used to play together so frequently, which is why he's seized onto her as the major female figure in his life.

Delilah from "Hey There Delilah" is a prostitute (with a Heart of Gold, of course).
Most of the music video consists of her wandering the streets and standing on corners wearing a lot of makeup and a tiny skirt. It's an interesting twist to a sappy song.

Leon Redbone is divine
He was first born the love child of 18 year old Jenny Lind and 56 year old Paganini in 1838 in Bombay. The gods wept at the glory of his birth, causing monsoons. He was born again on October 29, 1929 and the uproar caused the stock market crash 34 minutes later. Getting it wrong twice, he reincarnated himself as a musician.

Every 1980s song takes place in a shared universe
My Michelle is friends with Gina (who is Living on a Prayer), and they are both bridesmaids at Little Sister's White Wedding. Unfortunately, the groom wishes he had Jesse's Girl, who comes from a small town (in a lonely world), a suburb of Paradise City, Where The Streets Have No Name. The seedier parts of Paradise City are known as the Jungle. You can get there if you have a Fast Car, but you just Can't Drive 55. Jack wants to run off to there, but Diane insists they aren't missing nothing. SOMEBODY in this mess wears a Raspberry Beret.
  • But which of them was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar?
    • The chick with the Raspberry Beret?
  • And they all wear sunglasses at night.
  • And they in turn have spawned the modern generation of song characters. Wendy, who split up with the narrator of "Born To Run", is the mother of Dani California. Dani's officer father has a sister named Rita who's a meter maid.
    • The narrator of "Born to Run" then was forced into the draft for the Vietnam War, (which is good for absolutely nothing) where he lost a brother(who had a girlfriend named Rosallitta in the states and was in a rock and roll band before he got drafted). When he came back to the U.S.A., where he was Born In, he wandered around aimlessly for a while, eventually coming back to the town he went to high school (located in the Badlands) in where he met up with his old friend the baseball player and reminisced about their Glory Days and the "Freeze Outs" they used to have on 10th Avenue. He also met his old girlfriend Mary who lives up the block with her kids that she's raising all by herself. He tried writing a book, but got tired of it one night and convinced Mary to go Dancing in the Dark with him. Eventually, she and her kids ran off with him in his Cadillac down Thunder Road. They settled in Baltimore, but one night he went out for a drive Into the Night on the Backstreets in the Darkness at the Edge of Town and didn't come back. He wandered around with a Hungry Heart for a while, hooking up with an old girlfriend in Atlantic City at one point, but while he was driving around listening to Radio Nowhere he came back to town just in time for The Rising, where he was Blinded By the Light and met Mary again and they have been living together happily so far, who knows what will happen when they're Living in the Future.
  • Jack vents his frustration by burning down the house.
  • What about Debbie, who just hit the wall, and her husband Ben, who's a CPA?
    • She's Gina's cousin.
      • Debbie also had an obsession with a girl named Jenny (whose number was on the wall), until her cousin Frankie simply told her to relax.
  • And yes, this is a Land of Confusion, also who has the invisible touch? Whodunnit? Who read Between the lines? And best of all, who's an Illegal Alien. Genesis
    • Yeah, Only in Your Dreams, Sweet Child o' Mine. Maybe you're Turning Japanese or Dancing on the Ceiling? Your dreams remind me of childhood memories.

The girl from the "Damn Good Times" video is Ana Ng.
The store clerk is the singer of "Ana Ng," while the singer of "Damn Good Times" is a bystander.

The narrator in Modest Mouse's video for "Dashboard" is an older version of Near from Death Note.
The story about visiting the Sargasso Sea to chase down a fish is clearly a metaphor for Near's chase of Kira; the loss of the narrator's right hand symbolic of Near losing most of the SPK to Mello's Death Note.
  • Also, observe his behavior at 3:10 in the video. That must be Near.
  • Also, it took place in the fisherman-filled pub from the episode of The Mighty Boosh with Old Gregg. Death Note and The Mighty Boosh would make one hell of a crossover, especially with the entirety of Modest Mouse on board.

The narrator in Modest Mouse's "Dashboard" is Shinji
Based on mental impressions from hearing the song. He's delusional and thinks a carload of mannequins (not even complete mannequins - guess which one's head is broken off?) is him and the other teenagers on a fantastic road trip. "And we screamed and we screamed...!!!"

Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" is narrated by Satan addressing his worshippers just before the battle of Armageddon.
"I lost my soul when I fell to Earth" and "I left my throne a million miles away" refer to him being cast out from Heaven. Lines like "Give me the strength to split the world in two now" further support this interpretation.
  • If not that, then it's about the Master from Doctor Who. Specifically, the John Simm version. Lyrics like I've been stuffed in your pocket for the last hundred days - Fob watch anyone? And his throne a million miles away? Galifrey.
  • He's some kind of Eldritch Abomination. Cthulhu would be the obvious choice, but Cthulhu never seemed to care about splitting the world in two; that was just kind of what would happen when he woke up. Maybe Nyarlathotep? It doesn't have to be out of HPLovecraft Lovecraft. And the "throne a million miles away" has to be some kind of poetic license since, in space, a million miles isn't far at all. For comparison, that's just under four times the distance to the Moon at its apogee.

Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" is narrated by Megatron or Galvatron.
Most of the lyrics can fit into this theory, but here are the highlights. *"Stuffed in your pocket for the last hundred days" could refer to Megatron's reverse-engineering while offline and helpless in the live-action movie or Animated, or Galavtron's enslavement by Unicron.
  • He did split the world in two in many continuities when he raised up the Decepticon army.
  • "I lost my soul when I fell to Earth" could be the incident in Beast Wars when BW Megatron "borrows" the spark of the original, or to Megatron's reforging into Galvatron by Unicron, completely destroying his personality as a result of his falling in battle on Earth... That line could be anything, as most Megatrons did fall to Earth.
  • "Built in my nightmares and using my name" could be another reference to BW Megatron taking the spark of the original... He was, metaphoricly, asleep; hence it was a nightmare in which the new body for BW Megs was built, and BW Megs did use his name.
  • The car in the field in a column of flame is an Autobot; certainly, he's killed enough of them.

Electric Light Orchestra's "The Whale" is a Space Whale.
Just listen to those synthesizers.

The whale from The Decemberist's "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is the ghost of the protagonist's mother
The protagonist mentions hearing her after her death; the whale appears after the protagonist hears her and gives her son a chance at taking revenge into his own hands.
  • Or they're on Captain Ahab's ship going after Moby Dick. The ship does go down; however, along the way, Queequeg nearly dies and orders a coffin to be made by the ship's carpenter, which he then decorates with carvings of his own design. After the ship breaks up, the narrator finds it floating and uses it like a canoe. yeah. (Oh, and Ahab harpoons himself to the whale.)

The narrator of "We Both Go Down Together" by the Decemberists is the 'lad of eighteen' from "The Mariner's Revenge Song"
The narrator is callous, handsome, and deluded. He would rather believe that he's in a tragic love affair with a lower class girl than admit that he's, well, a crazy rapist. And now the girl's pregnant, and he's going to push her off a cliff and scarper. Romantically, of course. (The baby is Leslie Anne Levine, but that's another story.)

The person who wrote the song "MacArthur Park" is GLaDOS.
Both of them talk in a Cloudcuckoolander manner, both seem to have no concept of humanity, and (most damning) both of them are obsessed with cakes.
  • Does this mean Richard Harris is Cave Johnson?
  • Also if the song really isn't about cake that means the cake is a lie.
The protagonist of "Hollaback Girl" is a hollaback girl.
Sure, she says she "ain't no hollaback girl". But the title refers to her, and it could have easily been "No Hollaback Girl" if she were telling the truth.
  • If she's not a "Hollaback Girl," then why, in the video, does Gwen Stefani drive a car that has "Hollaback Girl" emblazoned on the bonnet?
  • Also, double negative: "ain't no hollaback girl" = hollaback girl.

The "tall handsome man" described in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Red Right Hand" is, in fact, God
Every single line of the song can fit into this theory, but here's the best ones:
  • "He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a guru" - pretty clearly fits into the Father/Son/Holy Ghost schema, plus a "spiritual teacher" to boot.
  • "He'll reach deep into the hole, heal your shrinking soul..." sounds pretty God-like to me. "...but there won't be a single thing that you can do," the next line, reinforces how sinister this God-figure is.
  • The section beginning "You'll see him in your nightmares..." all the way through to "...on the TV screen" evokes the idea of omnipresence, or at least of memetic omnipresence. The "God as meme" idea has been around as long as the idea of memetics itself (of course, the word "meme" originated with prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, so make of that what you will).
  • "You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan" - well, who are we always told has a Plan for the universe? According to many, this "great Plan" will lead to the eternal damnation of billions of people - if that's not catastrophic, I don't know what is.
  • And, finally, the phrase "Red Right Hand" itself is from Paradise Lost, where it refers explicitly to the vengeful hand of God. Look at the bullet point directly above - what kind of plan would a vengeful deity design and direct? The liner notes to Murder Ballads, another album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Red Right Hand originally comes from their previous album, Let Love In), erroneously identify the phrase as referring to Satan (it appears in Song of Joy on that album, but it's only mentioned once); but hey, this is Wild Mass Guessing. That particular note is a deliberate Red Herring.
  • Alternatively, the song refers to either Hellboy or Randall Flagg in one of his many guises.

The subject of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' "Red Right Hand" is, in fact, Santa.
  • Consider the line: "He'll wrap you in his arms, tell you that you've been a good boy." Who else but Santa Claus would need such a gesture, as he is known for making the ultimate distinction between "naughty" and "nice"?
  • "He'll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy" - this line refers to the dream of Santa, which usually disappears as a child grows older. In this song, Santa has returned to instill Christmas spirit in the hearts of adults.
  • "He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a guru": Santa Claus has the omniscient powers of a God, the compassion of a man, the mysticism of a ghost - how exactly does he enter and deliver presents for so many houses in such little time? - and the spirit of a guru who teaches that giving is better than receiving. Enough said.
  • The lines involving him giving you money and finding you a car if you don't have one clearly refer to Santa's sack of gifts for every boy and girl.
  • The line "You'll see him in your nightmares, you'll see him in your dreams" is a reference to the darker side of Santa. Just look at another well-known song about him: "he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake." This Santa is fully aware of the power he has over you and can be a terrifying figure if you've been bad.
  • When you see him "in your head, on the TV screen," it is a sign of the pervasiveness of Santa come Christmas season.
  • Lastly, the description fits: his coat is probably "dusty black" from climbing down so many chimneys, and he wears his gloves to cover the Red Right Hand that corresponds with his general red-and-white color scheme. No doubt about it: the "tall handsome man" is Santa.

The singer of Blue Öyster Cult's "Burnin' For You" has taken the place of someone who was condemned to Hell.
A prominent line goes "I'm livin' for givin' the devil his due", and given the title and most common phrase in the song, what else could this be referring to? However, he may not be in Hell yet; he speaks of time being against him and needing to savour it.

In the future, all music will be produced by Timbaland, and all singers will be kidnapped and forced to provide vocals for his run-of-the-mill pop songs
Weezer knows this. See "Pork and Beans".

"Tribute" by Tenacious D refers to the events at the end of The Pick Of Destiny
At the end of The Pick Of Destiny, Tenacious D go up against the Devil in a rock-off and end up winning, partly due to their awesome music, and partly because of luck. However, the rock-off is so awesome (to mortal minds, at least) that Tenacious D end up not being able to hold on to the memory of the rock-off completely; they just remember that they battled him for their souls in some form of musical contest and won. Realising that they needed a way to hold on to that memory, they wrote Tribute as a literal tribute to their efforts that day and as a way of immortalising it.

Either because they forgot, or because "we had a rock-off with the devil and lost" does not make good music.

The Greatest Song In The World from "Tribute" is...
... one of the following:
  • "Stairway to Heaven"
    • Not only is Stairway regularly placed at the top of lists of the greatest songs ever, the HBO version of "Tribute" transforms into a Stairway homage at the exact moment they start playing the Greatest Song In The World.
  • "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"
    • Certainly the shiny demon would appreciate the irony, as well as the song being quite good. The only issue is neither Kyle nor Jack appear to play the violin.
  • "Helter Skelter" (original by The Beatles)

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer is a Mutant
His nose light not only glows, but also cuts through heavy fog at such a rate that a fast flying sleigh has clear enough visibility for landings all over the world. Clearly the Marvel Celestials weren't just messing with human DNA.
  • He's a flying reindeer. Good thing, too. He'd be useless to pull a sleigh at night otherwise — road vehicles are only supposed to show red lights to the rear.

Serj Tankian is Altair from Assassin's Creed.
Being a Time Lord who lived during the Third Crusade (if only through VR), he is disgusted about our behavior in the current age and thus tells us in music during his spare time. Hopefully, he won't decide to kill us. And as anyone with eyes (And Google Image Search) can tell you, the being now known as Serj was previously Frank Zappa.

The person being scrutinized in "What's He Building in There?" by Tom Waits is a Promethean, and the singer is suffering from Disquiet.
Most of what the singer claims about the subject are baseless rumors spread by others who have suffered Disquiet from the same Promethean. However, certain items are true. "He has no dog" because the Wasteland would cause the poor thing to suffer. "He took the tire swing down from the pepper tree" to discourage the neighborhood kids from coming near. "He has no friends, but he gets a lot of mail"; the mail is from his throngmates. "He has subscriptions to those magazines" to facilitate his study of human life. When the singer claims "He was on the roof the other night/Signaling with a flashlight", he has misidentified the use of Pyros. What the subject is "building" is a new Promethean, and he recently suceeded, which was what was "moaning low".

Tom Waits is not a Real Human Man; he was made up to scare children
Eat your greens, or Tom Waits will come into your bedroom at night and drink all the liquid out of your brains!

Tom Waits is the Evil Twin of the Cookie Monster
They both have gravelly bass voices. Listen to "C Is for Cookie." Now listen to "God's Away on Business." Doesn't it sound like Cookie could sing that other song?
  • Best. Theory. Ever!
    • Hey, have we ever seen them in the same room? And that's why CM appeared on the Colbert Report - Tom already went on the Daily Show.
  • Nonsense, Tom Waits is clearly Rowlf the Dog... or a shadow counterpart to Jim Henson.

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and NIN's "Only" and "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" is from the POV of a mental patient
And that patient is Shinji Ikari.

Trent Reznor lives in a shitty house
Have you ever seen a Nine Inch Nails video? "Closer" has entire rooms full of broken lightbulbs and cockroaches. "Perfect Drug" has a stupid swamp in the garden and two zombie women apparently haunting the place. "Into The Void" is just a big red box. People who have more knowledge on the subject will surely be able to confirm or discredit this assertion.
  • For a time, he moved out of his house and into the scene of the Manson Family murders. You need to live in a pretty crappy place for that to be a step up.

James LaBrie of Dream Theater is the reincarnation of Victoria/Nicholas from "Scenes from a Memory".
The news report at the end of the album refers to the JFK assassination, meaning Nicholas's part of the story takes place in 1963. Assuming that Victoria was reincarnated immediately after her death, this would place Nicholas's birth in 1928, which means he was 35 when he went to the hypnotherapist, who, according to band interviews, was the reincarnation of Edward and killed Nicholas at the end (the record static at the end of the album indicates that the phonograph was bumped during the struggle.)
  • James LaBrie was born in 1963, the same year Nicholas died, and was 35 years old while the album was being recorded (1998-99).
  • 'cept that the news coverage is of John F. Kennedy Junior's death, which took place in 1999 ("another tragedy in a long string of misfortunes"). All this means, however, is that Labrie WAS Nicholas, but he survived the assault and is pretending to have been killed so the nest reincarnation of Edward wont come after him.
The Point-Of-View character of Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" has... issues.
C'mon, what sane person would use slicing herself open as a metaphor?
  • Oh, I dunno.
  • Agreed: Everyone around her thinks she's going crazy and obviously thinks this guy, whoever he may be, is bad for her and is trying to keep her away from him for her own good. So is he married or abusive or a mob boss or is she too fragile to be in a relationship or what?

The Point Of View character of Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" is Harley Quinn.
At least one AMV with that song, Harley Quinn, and the Joker demonstrates this.

'Al' from Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" is a stranded time traveller.
"Angels in the architecture" could be a reference to Renaissance sculpture. Al could be 'Betty's' "long-lost pal" if he went back in time and became one (after getting his Time Machine working again). Al asks "What if I died here?" which would be quite a problem if it happened in another time, since your loved ones ("Where's my wife and family?") wouldn't have any idea what had happened to you. There's a few references to Al being "a foreign man" without any explanation as to how he got to another country, and it'd be natural for him to have "no currency" since money from his time may not be recognised by other times.
  • Note that not all time travellers are Time Lords.

Al from "You Can Call Me Al" is Albedo Piazolla.

Al from "You Can Call Me Al" is Alfonse Elrich
There's evidence on You Tube. And the name's right.

Al from "You Can Call Me Al" is Chevy Chase.
It's right there in the official music video!

'Uninstall' by Chiaki Ishikawa is about Haruhi Suzumiya's thoughts during the 11th Hour. She's just created the mother of closed spaces, and the universe is about to experience of mother of all reboots.
The lyrics in the song refers to 'being a speck of dust in the universe', an idea Haruhi came upon while attending a baseball game and tries to fight throughout the series. The lyrics also mention the urge to destroy everything and anything, which can be related to Haruhi's 'melancholy'.

David Bowie is from another planet.
The Man Who Fell to Earth is based on his life, but with technology instead of music.

Bowie is also Major Tom. He either lost communication with his home planet (which is also called Earth - he probably thinks our world is named "Terra") and drifted through space until he wound up here, or was abducted and returned by aliens. Ziggy Stardust is the translation of his alien name into our language.

The people in the "Saving Me" video are given Shinigami Eyes
When they find the eyes, they see what it does. Once they save someone, they die of a heart attack.

Regina Spektor is our universe's Purity Sue.
Let's break this down: Meaningful name ("Queen Spirit")? Check. Beautiful singing voice? Check. Spunky and cheerful? Check. Proficiency with a random musical instrument? Check. Speaks several languages fluently? Check. Defector From Decadence (Soviet Union)? Check. Humble? Check. Sickeningly sweet? Check. Smiles and Sunshine and Universal Love in her presence? Hell yes, you can power a lightbulb just by holding it near her. Just plain cooler and better than you? Check. Red hair (because Heroes Want Redheads), bright blue eyes, "pouty lips," and "large and supple breasts?" Check. Unique, frilly outfits? Check. New words get made up to describe her? Reginasaurus, anyone? She probably has a fucking magical katana and an exotic, telepathic animal companion, too. Total unrealistic Mary Sue.
  • Therefore, Regina Spektor is a self-insert of God. Who is a 13-year old girl. Who is also Robin Williams. Who is Revolver Ocelot. Who was...Russian. With a spectre for a father and a warrior queen for a mother... it all makes sense.

The Point-Of-View character of Pink's "Cuz I Can" is Murdoc Niccals.
Listen to "Cuz I Can". Doesn't that song describe Murdoc perfectly?

The Gorillaz will cover "Cuz I Can" any day now

The New Kids On The Block's infamously terrible Cartoon is a Parody of Celebrity Toons
Consider: In one of the show's interview segments, the guys mention that the show's writers lived with them for a while and picked their brains for cartoon ideas (despite all evidence to the contrary).

Now, we know that both Joey and Donnie have a mischievous streak. More important, they were children in the seventies. Anyone growing up on a heavy diet of Saturday morning television in Boston then would have had more than enough terrible Celebrity Cartoons (think "Super Globetrotters", "The Brady Kids", "Partridge Family In Space," and so on). It is not entirely out of the question that they "fed" the writers the most crazy, bent, cliched, Trope Overdosed ideas they could think of just to see what would happen. (Though they did have the good sense not to suggest "make us all superheroes!" "Send us into space!" or "Add a squishy little alien to the cast!")
  • Alternatively, the whole thing is intentionally bad because it is a Writer Revolt.
  • A similar argument can be made for their Christmas Album, which, aside from a couple of songs, sounds downright half-assed... perhaps intentionally.

Daft Punk are a rogue Dalek and Cyberman
Always appearing in mechanical looking "costumes", electronically distorted music, knowledgeable about aliens...

Kelly Clarkson's "Never Again" is about a woman who was murdered by her boyfriend.
It's implied that the guy's current girlfriend will be his next victim ("But when your day comes/And he's through with you/Then he'll be through with you"). The chorus also mentions the singer's face being 'everywhere', which could refer to her murder being a hot topic with the media. "It was you/Who chose to end it like you did" and "You knew/Exactly what you were doing/Don't say/You simply lost your way" is a less Anvilicious way of saying, "Don't even try pleading insanity." "She may believe you/But I never will" is self-explanatory.

Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You" is told from the perspective of the daughter of one of the protagonists of Brokeback Mountain.
She's talking alternately to her parents, who kept secrets, were ashamed of themselves, and undoubtedly took their frustrations out on their children. Now that she's old enough for her own romantic relationships (whatever they may be), she fears them because of how badly her own parents got along (or because she knows they can be deadly, if her father was Kaworu Nagisa Toby Maguire's character).

The couple in Live's "The Dolphin's Cry" are Dinotopians.
What with all that jazz about the dolphins, of course. But the damning evidence is the line about "breathing together". The Dinotopian word for marriage literally translates to "breathing together" — and this term, in turn, came from the dolphins. Now the question is this: why assume the couple are human?

Avenged Sevenfold's "Bat Country" was made as propaganda by Nyarlathotep.
After he decided to use rock music as one of his tools. (That decision came early enough.) Just look at the lyrics — the singer talks about seeing the world differently after some experience, and more specifically seeing everything burning and shaped in unnatural ways. And he loves it. While Nyarlathotep never expressed a taste for fire, the words otherwise more or less exactly sync up with the rapid decay of the narrator's mind in the original tale. And it's not as though the Crawling Chaos is unfamiliar with propaganda — other than the 1,000 forms, it might be his defining trait.
  • Same thing with "Black Hole Sun".

Voltaire's "The Headless Waltz" is narrated by Robespierre.
Seriously. A depressed, half-dead, hallucinating Robespierre.
  • Or maybe...Voltaire?
    • Truth in advertising with that pothole there. Incredibly.
  • Alternately, it's Saint-Just.

Madonna is a cyborg.
Her voice sounds a little more synthesized with each album she records. And she refuses to age. In 20 years, she'll sound exactly like GLaDOS.

The narrator of Barenaked Ladies' "Another Postcard" has a split personality.
This explains why he's being stalked by mail rather than in person and how the stalker found him "even though I packed and moved my home." The choice of chimpanzees, which would initially amuse him, eventually creeps him out but keeps him captivated; who else would know him that well? The narrator even began suspecting that he was going crazy, and a split personality is a brand of craziness.

The Servant's "Cells" is about playing video games.
"Now you go to bed
I'm staying here
I've got another level that I wanna clear"

"We eat Chinese off our knees
And look for each other in the TV screen"

The song is obviously sung from the perspective of a man who spends all of his time either playing video games ("the Sun goes up and the Sun goes down") or daydreaming about playing them because his life is so boring.

"Hotel California" is the Hotel Earle from Barton Fink.
A Hell Hotel in Los Angeles where you can check in any time you like, but can never leave? Sounds like the Hotel Earle. However, because "Hotel California" was released years before Barton Fink, either the Hotel Earle is real, or the Eagles are capable of Time Travel or prophecy.

The songs "Mr. Richards" and "Diminished" by R.E.M. are the same event from different perspectives.
Both deal with a man facing the consequences of his actions. It is implied in both songs that it was due to something he said or some sort of public relations nightmare. In both songs, the man is also experiencing legal trouble as a result of his actions. "Diminished" is from the viewpoint of the man in question; "Mr. Richards" is narrated by a member of the accusatory public. Which viewpoint is truer is left for the listener to decide.
  • Also, since "Diminished" takes place largely in a courthouse, and "Mr. Richards" mentions the subject's conviction and imprisonment, the latter is a sequel. It also came out chronologically later.

The narrator of Elvis Costello's "Alison" is planning on shooting the title character.
When he says "I know this world is killing you" and "my aim is true", he means them in more than one way.

Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" is about the Museum Fremen in God Emperor of Dune.
God Emperor of Dune is set thousands of years after the first three Dune books. The planet Rakis (formerly known as Arrakis) has become a lush paradise, although a small region is preserved as desert, and a small group of descendants of the Fremen still practice the old ways. They are considered more of a curiosity and a tourist attraction than anything and are now known as "Museum Fremen." The second verse of "Wish You Were Here" describes them perfectly:
"Did they get you trade
Your heroes for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for a cool breeze
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
a walk-on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?"

Since "Wish You Were Here" came out a few years before God Emperor of Dune, Pink Floyd is also capable of time travel.

Jimmy Page is cursed.
The following people connected to Jimmy Page all died in their 30s.
  • Keith Relf, lead singer of the Yardbirds- dead at 33
  • Keith Moon, The Who drummer and the one who (allegedly) inspired the name "Led Zeppelin- dead at 32
  • John Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin- dead at 32
  • Sandy Denny, guest vocalist on "The Battle of Evermore"
Can this be a coincidence? Obviously not.

Fifty Cent is a Terminator.
He's got the right build and the right voice, and he's survived being shot nine times. He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever.

"I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd is about a date rape.
Yeah, the title is blatant; but if you listen to the lyrics, they're rather disturbing at times. For instance, "We can do it till we both wake up". The spoken word part near the end is also incredibly creepy.
  • So it's essentially a non-seasonal sequel to Baby, It's Cold Outside?

The KLF are timelords
Or rather The Timelords... So Yeah.

The KLF will have a reunion, or a re-release of some of their work in 2010.
Why? They started in 1987, and 2010 is 23 years later. The KLF, being Discordians, can't resist it.

Morrissey's cover of "Moon River" is about Perry Smith, sung from the perspective of Truman Capote.
The song was originally written for the film version of Breakfast At Tiffany's, but Morrissey seems to have had In Cold Blood in mind instead. The eerie backing track and vocal delivery combined with samples of a woman's terrified sobbing certainly gives the song a much more sinister vibe than previous versions. One starts to wonder if the "two drifters" are Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. And Truman Capote was widely rumored to have have been in love (and possibly sexually involved) with Perry Smith. To top it all off, it's performed by an artist whose work includes both homoeroticism and "the romance of crime" as reccuring themes, often combining the two.

The members of Kraftwerk are robots.
They even admit it in "Die Roboter."

"Voodoo Cowboy" by Cat Empire is about Death of the Endless.
The main character is a wanderer with oddly coloured eyes; he purposely heads out to the very wastes of the desert "where ghost and spirits walk around like you and me" on horseback. He either falls asleep there, exhausted, or wanders into the Dreaming, and accidentally encounters Death in her brother's realm, in a dream personified for him as an endless lake in a contrast to the desert. He sees Death and falls in love, following her and preferring to embrace her (and die) than live to die alone.

Why does he call her Annabelle? Annabelle is simply one of Death's pseudonyms, or a name the main character chooses for her upon seeing her, not daring to ask for her real name.)

The person referred to Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is Roger Daltrey.
And concurrently, the same person referred to in "Who Are You?" is Carly Simon. The two had a tryst in the early 1970s that ended badly. Carly wrote "You're So Vain" to get back at him. When he finally realised what was going on, Roger came up with "Who Are You?" to express his feelings about the whole thing - lamenting that nobody can measure up to her but recognising that she was a duplicitous, evil woman who he never truly knew.

The person referred to Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is the same person in Billy Joel's "You Had to be a Big Shot" and Sheryl Crow's "My Favorite Mistake".
And probably also whomever Alanis Morissette is angry at in "You Oughta Know". And possibly the real Deep Throat.

"You're So Vain" is about Odin, ruler of the Norse pantheon.
  • "Your hat strategically dipped below one eye" Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to drink from the Well of Wisdom, giving him knowledge of the past, present, and future. In his guise as Vegtam, the Wanderer, he's often depicted with a hat with a wide brim, angled to hide his empty socket.
  • Likewise, he "had one eye on the mirror" because he only has one eye, period. Two-eyed people are typically incapable of keeping just one eye on something.
  • "Your horse naturally won." Odin's eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, naturally wins races against ordinary four-legged horses.
  • "You flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun." There was a total eclipse of the sun in Nova Scotia on July 20, 985, just about the time the Vikings were spreading into Greenland, and that Norwegian Bjarni Herjolfsson may have landed in Newfoundland. Given that Odin would likely be with his worshippers in either of those places, it's not that far of a flight (the "Lear jet" is obviously a modern metaphor for whatever transportation Odin would have used) to Nova Scotia.

MTV WANTED Britney Spears to make a comeback.
They have become too dependent on pop music. Once Rap and Rock pushed Pop music out of the way (for the second time), they were left with no music that had MASS appeal. So they tried to get people interested in Britney again by HELPING her manager and parents get her career back on track, hoping not only to restart her career, but also to help boost pop music back into the top ten so MTV could benefit.

Why do you think they keep trying to manufacture pop groups? It's a symbiotic relationship!!!
  • This also explains why they haven't given up calling Michael Jackson "The King of Pop."
  • They call him the "King of Pop" cause that's what he was. but they wasn't benefiting from doing this after hios personal troubles. Either way MTV's attempt at starting another whitebred pop boomed failed anyway. Unless you count the urban pop artists (and i use the term urban loosely).

106 & Park: Top 10 is rigged
This rumour started when Beyonce had a song off the Gold Member soundtrack that popped onto the top 10 within a day of its debut and then disappeared after the film had run its course - which was no longer than a week.
  • Another example: Bone Thugs N Harmony debuted a song on the show that never broke through despite fans organizing a small army of internet posters to vote. Ironically, that group of fans had no problem getting the vid on TRL.
  • BET has a "blacklist" that lists artists as "irrelevant" or too "intelligent." This list is given to vid programmers and explains that they must not put these artists in heavy rotation. This might explain the Bone situation. Apparently, they don't want artists that are too old and "irrelevant" or that are too intelligent. It explains their longtime shunning of alternative rap (with the possible exception of Outkast). Although Outkast was waaay too popular to ignore.
    • They also have now just recently started to ignore old school vids that was made prior to 2005 (before that it was 2001!!). They use to play old school vids from The Eighties, and The Nineties on 106 & Park's old school jam of the day. Eventually they turned it to the flash back of the day that showed vids that were only a couple of years old, Which the original VJ's (Free, and AJ) Lamp Shaded. Conspiracy Theorists believe BET is trying to bury old school hip-hop, Kinda like a Plausible Deniability but for hip-hop. They also believe this is one of the reasons Free and AJ was let go, as they started to become vocal about the direction of the show.

Dani California was shot by an insane lover..
..who also happens to be the narrator. Dani left him for the "North Dakota man" (who's also the "gifted animator"). The narrator was then sent into a spiraling depression that eventually drove him mad. "It only hurts when I laugh" because of Dani's desperate attempts to fight back.

The narrator of "With or Without You" by U2 is talking about his relationship with a prostitute.

Yes, it's a beautiful love song and everything, but the core lyric from the chorus does sound like it's talking about addiction, as opposed to love. Also, the repeated lyric "And you give yourself away..." To other men, perhaps, in exchange for money?

The woman in "With ot Without You" is a vampire.
The "stone set in [her] eyes" is the way the narrator describes the strange colour of her eyes. All the metaphors for addiction in the song and references to pain ("on a bed of nails she makes me wait", "my hands are tied", "thorn twists in her side") reflect the narrator's dependence on her, even though he hates to be dependent. She "gives herself away" by turning other people - including the band - into vampires.

"Running To Stand Still" by U2 is not about the effects of heroin addiction on a young couple in Dublin. It's about vampirism, too!
"So she woke up, woke up from where she was, lying still" is the woman waking up from sleep in a coffin. The whole song is an account of the narrator's turning. "Sweet the sin, but bitter the taste in my mouth" and "the poison from the poison stream" are thinly-veiled metaphors for tasting the woman's blood and being turned. The "needle chill" is the woman's fangs.

Kid Rock hired people to make a big deal about him "stealing" from "Sweet Home Alabama" so that people wouldn't notice the "Werewolves in London" ripoff.
It would have worked if Warren Zevon hadn't had any fans. It works better in redneck country.

The narrator in "I Shot the Sheriff" shot the sheriff because the sheriff shot the deputy.
The deputy found something he shouldn't have, and the singer walked in just as the sheriff shot him. Bob Marley wouldn't say who shot the deputy because he knew the sheriff's gang (a combination of actors to be run out of town when it looked like the sheriff was getting lazy, and corrupt officers) would be able to keep him alive for a ''very'' long time. Later, when the sheriff had hired Eric Clapton for a temporary job, Clapton found the incriminating evidence, and realized that Marley hadn't shot the deputy. The sheriff attacked him, and the current deputy, not knowing the truth, joined the fray (no, not The Fray). Clapton accidentally shot the deputy in the confusion, who shot the sheriff during his Just Between You And Me speech. Clapton wanted to spare the deputy's unsullied name, knowing that the charges of shooting the corrupt sheriff would be cleared but still leave a mark.

The child in "Cats in the Cradle" is an Enfant Terrible acting on the Law Of Disproportionate Response
The second verse describes the father casually saying that he is unable to play with his son. The budding young psychopath swears vengeance: "He walked away, but his smile never dimmed, he said 'I'm gonna be like him, yeah, ya know I'm gonna be like him." Content to let his plot simmer for decades if necessary, the child finally has his revenge in the last verse:
I said "I'd like to see you, if you don't mind."
He said "I'd love to Dad, if I can find the time.
You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu,
But it's sure nice talking to you Dad,
It's been sure nice talking to you."
And as he hung up the phone it occurred to me,

One can almost hear the son's maniacal laughter as he hangs up the phone.

"Please Don't Stop The Music," "Low," and "Just Dance" are all taking place at the same night club
"Please" and "Just Dance" are about girls who went to a dance club and got swept up by the atmosphere (or the alcohol or the prospect of a hookup). "Low" is from the point of view of a man who's watching "Shorty" get low low low, low low low low and hoping to score with her.

There is no such thing as Music.
"Music" is random waves of energy that are perceived as being sound. Only the deaf are at all free of this fairy tale, and even they get sucked in by those ever-more-powerful bass lines.

The Song "Provo's Lullabie" isn't a lullabie.
Rather, it's one last heartfelt goodbye from one provo to another. Consider:
  • The song mentions "bullets humming". They are in the middle of a firefight!
  • The mentions of gray hair and eventual death don't mean that the provo is still alive. It means that the second provo is trying to convinve the first that he will live to an old age.

The "Prom Queen" from Lil Wayne's song also rejected Avril's "Sk8r Boi"
What a bitch.

The shooting in "99 Problems" is somehow related to the one in "Can’t Knock the Hustle."
Think about it: Both videos are shot in black and white, one being his first single from his first album, and the other being what should’ve been the last single of his last album. He gets away in "Can’t Knock the Hustle," but "99 Problems" closes his story by having his past come back to get him. And since the shooters in the first video were all women, a bitch was one of his problems – the one he forgot about.

The narrators of "Skullcrusher Mountain" and "The Future Soon" are the same person at different stages of his life.
He eventually does come close to achieving his dream of becoming Emperor Scientist, but winds up with Everything But The Girl in the end. It's rather sad. Possibly "Code Monkey" fits into the cycle as well when the protagonist is trying to raise some money for his experiments after college by taking a day job.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's "Weeping Song" is narrated between two vampires.
The child-vampire is newly made, and the vampire who turned him has decided to show him the way life works. The people in the village are weeping because they'll all eventually die; but the undead are exempt from this— or so it would seem. Immortality is an upsetting lot, and even though they should be theoretically free from sorrow, the vampires still grieve for something lost. (Alternatively, the vampire-father isn't weeping— he's covered in blood.) The younger vampire might not realise that he is a vampire. Both are apathetic observers of the kind of misery they no longer have to take part in. The two vampires wait out their first long night together, finally falling asleep by dawn.

Yuri The Only One by the Leet Street Boys is not a pop love ballad full of geek/otaku references, but a pop ballad about a Yuri Fanboy explaining to a girl who is interested in him that Het Is Ew.
It's all kind of obvious if we analyize some of the shout outs.
  • First, the title. It clearly states that the male singer is only interested in Yuri.
  • "Like a persocom I'm teaching you." Teaching her that Het Is Ew.
  • "Like a Pokemon I pikachu." I'll look, but not touch.
  • "Like Gundam Seed you're my destiny." Considering the reputation of Gundam Seed Destiny, that is not a compliment.
  • "For Yuna and Zelda and Chi I'd do anything." If it's a love song, why mention three other girls? Unless he wants yuri of them.
  • "Yuri the only one for me." Once again, we have the singer claim to be only interested in Yuri.
  • "Priceless Like a PS 3" and "You and I make Nintendo Wii." If the girl has the market value of a PS 3, but her physcial specs plus the singer's are equivlent to a Wii, then the girl is seriously overpriced.
  • "You're my Angel out of Tokyo-3." First off, due to Hype Aversion and Internet Backdraft, comparing anything to "Evangelion" is probably not good. Also, that implies that the girl is an Elderic Abomination dripping in Freudian and Religious symbolism, quite likely to turn around and Mind Rape you at any point in time.
  • "Cell-shaded face in an AMV." No AMVs make good use of Cell shading on anything that wasn't cell-shaded before.
  • "Just like Ranma you're the better half of me." Ranma hated his genderbending.
  • "Sephy's Mom has got it going on." Okay, this part is a Big Lipped Aligator Moment, but it still has the singer mentioning the appeal of another woman sort of.

REM's "World Leader Pretend" and Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" are being sung by the same narrator
The Narrator is a world leader of some sort dealing with a struggle. However, unlike most interpretations, the struggle isn't from within, but without.

He's some sort of dictator or warlord, most likely of eastern European or African origin. Various forces are coming down to take his position of power from him. For years, he thought himself to be all powerful, ruler of all he sees; but he certainly isn't now. He's a "pretend world leader".

Also, he makes mentions on how he "knows the barricades" and recognises the weapons. Decades before, he too was a "revolutionary" who gained power by defeating the old, corrupt regime, only to create another corrupt regime. Now it's his time to be thrown from power by someone else, like his predecessor before him.
The second song comes after he has been overthrown. It's some sort of speech he's giving at his war crimes tribunal. It makes many mentions of how he's been humbled, that he "sweeps the streets [he] used to own". He starts to make references to religion and similar themes. He admits he was a liar and a crook, but "that was when [he] ruled the world". He even claims that his rise to dictatorship wasn't his intention, that a "wicked and wild wind" blew him towards the eventuality. He admits that people were disappointed that he just became another warlord: "People couldn't believe what [he'd] become". He goes on to mention the revolutionaries who want him dead and bemoans being in such a position of power. He then admits that "Saint Peter won't call [his] name", admitting his guilt for the acts that he had committed. Whether this is honest truth or lies to get the jury on his side is up to you to interpret.

In the song "Copacabana," Lola shot first.
Either Rico or Tony dropped the gun in the scuffle; Lola took it and shot Tony by accident.
  • Tony was the one who got shot. The lyrics say, She lost her love. and She lost her youth and she lost her Tony/Now she's lost her mind!. But that doesn't mean that she didn't accidentally shoot him.

It would explain why she's so depressed in the last verse.

None of the members of ZZ Top can leave the band without the band breaking up entirely.
Let's say one of them left, and the other two tried to perform together. It wouldn't work. They would be considered a subgroup of the original three-member ZZ Top, and as everyone knows, the number of members of a subgroup must evenly divide into the number of members of the original group. Two simply does not divide evenly into three. To have a successful subgroup, they would have to go solo.

They know this; after all, it is known as La Grange's Theorem.

The tale of Imaginos Desdinova in Blue Oyster Cult Imaginos Concept Album is true.
Imaginos after helping to instigate World War 1 for Les Invisibles continued to 'Sing Songs Nobody Knew' by using his powers to take the form of different artists over the years, eventually deciding to write and perform songs based off his own life... by forming Blue Oyster Cult as Sandy Pearlman.

All of Rob Zombie's lyrics are drawn from real life experience

Jesus really did live his life in a cheap motel on the edge of Route 66 (yeah). Suicide tanks, living dead girls and Pig Heaven are out there somewhere. Oh, and Mr. Zombie is both a Superbeast and an Electric Head. No wonder his movies are so twisted...

The Queen song "Bicycle Race" is about a young Chinese man in China shortly after the Cultural Revolution finished
He's not in it for the revolution, but he doesn't give a damn about American pop culture icons either. He's completely apolitical, not caring about the Vietnam War or even being a good communist. He's in it for the cycling.

Some Bands music videos exist in their own universe.
The My Chemical Romance Theory:

Revenge era MCR is the Same band as Black Parade MCR, the music video Im not okay is how they meet in high school and formed a band, Teenagers was a concert they put on for their classmates that ended up in a riot, Helena is about the lead singer lossing his girlfriend and peforming at her Funeral, after they died in an accident through a series of event they became the black parade which lead to the WTTBP, I Dont Love you is a music video they made in the after life, Famous last words is kind of the end, they are no longer popular and lost their followers, if your wondering where the Ghost of You fits in, it is a story of their ansistors.

The protagonist in Gary Moore's "Over the Hills and Far Away" was framed by his best friend.
The friend found out about his wife's affair with the protagonist. He staged the robbery and planted the protagonist's gun at the scene, either in revenge or in a failed attempt to force the couple to confess their relationship.

Most of the video for Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" is a dream or a hallucination
At the start of the video, she's getting touchy-feely with her 'boyfriend' and then she falls or gets pushed off a balcony. The rest of the video is a dream that she has while unconcious or dying, which explains why it's so damn weird.
  • A better plot summary is this: Lady Ga Ga's love flame tries to exploit her for money from the paparazzi; when she resists his advances, he has a fit of rage and throws her over. She proceeds to go from being paralyzed to physical therapy (the sequence where she tries to walk in her gold body brace) until she's back in shape. She goes back to her 'partner' (who thinks nothing of it — after all, plenty of starlets put up with worse) and then colorfully murders him. Calling the police on herself may seem strange at first, but it's a Xanatos Gambit: See how the tabloids respond? The video is about how people's obsession with the fame and the culture that surrounds Hollywood is completely insane. When the Ga Ga character is a victim of near-murder, the media makes fun of her; but when she does murder someone, they treat her like a hero. Draw your own comparisons to how insane, unfair, and backwards the tabloid media in Real Life is.

Lady Gaga's Bad Romance is about Renesmee seducing Jacob.
While she knows French and has a thing for Hitchcock films, she only looks mature ("You're a criminal as long as you're mine"). Plus, "Gaga" is an appropriate name for an 18-year-old toddler.

Shakira isn't human
Humans don't move the way she does in the video for "She Wolf." Of course, this raises the question of what she is.
  • Maybe she's a werewolf?
    • That's one theory. This Troper's brother thinks she's an alien, and there's one DJ who voiced the theory that she was a robot.

The kid from The Offspring's "You're Gonna go Far, Kid" is the same person as the Narrator from the Flobots' "Handlebars"
Given that his methods included the use of a thousand lies and a good disguise, it should be no surpise that it ended in pain.

The girl who released the balloons in "99 Red Balloons" knew exactly what the consequences would be.
Didn't it ever strike you as strange that the narrator of the song is not only the sole survivor, but also the one who started the whole thing? Maybe she's an evil genius, maybe she's the Devil, maybe she's God. But whatever she is, she knew perfectly well what she was doing.
  • And she was even willing to kill her beloved to do it. Her beloved was clueless about what the balloons would do, though.

This page is controlled by Warner Music Group.
Same initials; deprecating music videos (just like what Warner Music Group did to You Tube); insulting Kid Rock (in revenge for Kid Rock slamming Atlantic Records); thinking Dragonforce is God (they are signed to Warner Bros. Records); there are many other examples right on this page. And odds are good that some people here edit The Other Wiki saying Weird Al sucks.
  • That also explains why The Beatles WMG is on a different page.
    • And Bohemian Rhapsody, Soulja Boy, and The Protomen. Actually, Bohemian Rhapsody was disowned by this page because Queen switched record labels from Elektra, part of Warner Music Group, to Capitol (and then to Hollywood).

The members of the band A-ha are comic-book characters come to life.
The music video for Take On Me tells a true story, albeit in a more romantic and poetic way. All back-stories of the band members are fabricated. They were originally pencil sketches in an unpublished comic book starring them as band members who lead secret lives as motorcycle racers, but became self-aware and broke the fourth wall to escape their comic book. This explains why they're ridiculously hot, they never age, Morten Harket's angelic singing voice, and the fact that they have Power Trio personalities. After escaping from the comic book, they decided to continue on as a band and have hinted at the fact that they are comic book characters in several of their music videos.

All of Tool's music videos take place inside Adam Jones's subconscious, Psychonauts style
No wonder they're so weird and Mind-Screwy.

Alternatively, the videos are allegorical dream sequences imagined by Maynard James Keenen, which inspired him to write the songs.
Weird Al Yankovic turned to music as therapy against an eating disorder.
Look at his songs. "Fat". "Eat It". "My Bologna". "Lasagna". "I Love Rocky Road". "Living in the Fridge". "Spam". "Addicted to Spuds". "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch". "Taco Grande". "Waffle King". "Grapefruit Diet". I posit that no other human being has ever written this many songs about food. Not to mention other things, such as the fact that he did a much-belated parody of "MacArthur Park" (which is about a cake), and "Albuquerque" is bookended with a rant about sauerkraut and has a roughly one-minute stretch where all he does is list different types of doughnuts. But hey, it seems to have worked for him; he's been thin as a rake throughout recorded history, except during parts of the "Fat" video.

"Hotel California" is a cockroach's revenge for the Roach Motel.
Roaches can check out any time they like but they can never leave.

"The Land of Make Believe" by Bucks Fizz is set in the Warhammer 40000 universe
It's about a small child with psychic powers who is slowly going mad as a daemon possesses her. "The Land of Make-Believe" is the Warp, where dreams are reality. The daemon begins by whispering into the child's mind and sending alluring visions ("voices whisper, 'will you come and play...'"). The child resists at first ("never, never ever!"), but the daemon keeps "waiting, patiently till it can have [her] heart". Soon, the child's defences weaken, and she allows her new playmate to take control of her mind. As those around her realise what's happening, a witch-hunt begins ("you're an outlaw once again"), and the child must flee on a spacecraft ("into the blue, you and I"). The only place in the galaxy where she can now find safety is the Eye of Terror ("the Circus in the Sky"), where Chaos spills over into the material universe and the very laws of physics are twisted with insanity. "Superman" and "Captain Kidd" are the Chaos Space Marines and pirates that inhabit the Eye, and "time to change" refers to the mutations that the Chaos Gods bestow on their followers. At the very end of the song, we hear a little girl's voice reciting a poem that suggests the daemon has destroyed the mind of its host, and is now looking for another soul to consume... and the listener may be next.

The only thing wrong with this theory is that the song came out several years before Warhammer 40000 did. But, well, time flows strangely in the Warp...

There is no Pretty Texas Girl in Anna Nalick's "Soldier."
The Pretty Texas Girl is a metaphor for something else, other than fighting, that serves as a way for the narrator's lover to serve his country, which could mean any number of things. It starts off with the narrator and the soldier falling in love, despite knowing that he will have to go off to fight soon. ("We didn't have time to feel sorry for what we did.") Then he's injured and comes back home and has no idea what to do with himself ("He was a soldier, he always was") and the pretty Texas Girl, the answer to his prayers, who makes the soldier believe he can live again, is whatever he chooses to do with himself after that, letting him continue to serve his country and feel useful. When "he called me tell to me he'd fallen in love with her," it means that he told her what he doing. Presumably, this career path took up a lot of his time, and the narrator will effectively still be sharing her lover with America. This explains why the narrator seems so chill about losing her man to someone else; it's not someone else, it's something else, and this keeps him from getting hurt again. Then, in the last verse, 'I'll be a gambler, and he'll be home free' means that she won't know when he'll have time to spend with her, but she's willing to make that sacrifice for him to be happy. And 'he's loving Texas, and I'll marry melody' means that she understands his need to serve his country because of her own need to express herself through music. 'Smile at the gates, 'cause their hate don't belong to you' could mean that her soldier got out of combat before getting too scarred for life, or it could mean that he went into politics but was of the rare honest breed of politician who genuinely wanted to help people and because of that, wasn't that succesful, but at least he had his integrity.

The chorus could refer to his frustration at having been kicked out of the military and now having to jump around from random jobs because his need to be involved with his country is not being satisfied by deskwork. 'And if this life doesn't give you the love you expect, there's always the next' could mean that even if this job doesn't work out (or, even though the military didn't work out) there's still hope for the future.

The "Sk8r Boi" is CD-I Link.
In both "works," BOI is mispelled. Also, CD-I Zelda rejects CD-I Link twice, much like The Libby in Sk8r Boi.

The singer of "The Christmas Shoes" is an Unreliable Narrator.
This is why the song makes no sense if you examine it. (Why is this little boy with a dying mother all by himself in a store on Christmas Eve? How come nobody ever explained to him that Jesus doesn't care about Mommy having nice shoes when she reaches the Pearly Gates?) What happened was this: the boy was just an average kid who was just a little bit short of the cash needed to cover his shopping bill. The narrator, who has already admitted that he was "not really in the Christmas mood" and the kid had "counted pennies for what seemed like years" covered the rest (no more than a dollar or two) with the spare change in his pocket out of impatience and an interest to move the line along and get his own shopping done. He then concocts this tale of the sweet innocent waif and his poor mother on her deathbed so he can pat himself on the back for his act of "charity."

The little boy in "The Christmas Shoes" is one half of a father-son con-artist team.
The father drops him off in front of stores. The child goes inside, grabs the merchandise his father orders, and tells the sob story to whoever is around so they'll pay for it, in whole or in part.

"The Golden Vanity" is sung by the defense attorney at a mutiny trial
Who wouldn't mutiny after what the captain did?

"Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me" is about Rape Is Okay If Its Divine On Mortal.
Elvis's girlfriend apparently was swept off the ground against her will by Santa Claus last year. He is now unsuccessfully pleading for Santa to bring her back.

REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes" is about the Transformers.
Autobots, roll out!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was born near a Soviet nuclear dumping ground.
The USSR simply threw their nuclear waste in the river, and that's where his mutation comes from. Presumably, his parents died of radiation sickness and Santa took pity on the orphaned fawn.

The three ships "I" saw come sailing in to Bethlehem were starships with solar sails.
They contained Christians from an extraterrestrial LARPing group on a pilgrimage to the Holy Planet.

In "Bust a Move", Larry's marriage is fake.
We know Larry doesn't know the "you" of the song that well — he's only described as his best friend's brother. So why choose him as the best man? Because the entire wedding is a sham, done for immigration purposes or something similar. Everyone who's close to Larry knows this and wants no part of it, so Larry's forced to turn to to "you".

Judas Priest's "Painkiller" and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" are two chapters of the same story.
In "Iron Man," a man is sent travelling through time and turned into a metallic effigy of himself. During the time he had to relearn how to move his heavy body, he had plenty of time to develop some serious rage against the normal humans around him. When he could finally move again, he set out to kill all of the soft pink humans.

Just when human civilization was on its last leg, a metallic messiah, the Painkiller, arrives and battles the Iron Man for the fate of mankind.

The Hotel California (The Eagles) and the House of the Rising Sun (covered by The Animals) are in the same universe
The following takes the lyrics more or less at face value.

The Hotel California simply traps your own body and soul for eternity. The House of the Rising Sun also traps you for eternity, but it will let you go just long enough to go bear a child. After you die, the House will call on that child, and then that child's child, and so on and so forth. In short, the Hotel California will only torment you forever. The House of the Rising Sun will torment you, your children, their children, and all your descendants, forever.

The friends in "All My Friends Say" lied to the protagonist.
The fact "All my friends say" is repeated over and over again suggests an unreliable narrator. The narrator really just broke down sobbing when his ex walked in with a new man and then drowned his sorrows; when his friends took him home, they agreed to lie to him about the fun he had should he call and ask what happened.

Bad Romance is about an alien princess getting revenge on her human conquerer with Death By Sex.
It would explain the bizarre video. Think about the line "all your love is revenge" ... and the way that in the video Lady Gaga almost looks like she's being presented to a bunch of guys engaged in vaguely Roman-style debauchery, and in some shots she has freakishly large eyes and what looks like spikes on her back - plus the bizarre outfits. She's seducing him with the promise of "Bad Romance" - when really she means Flaming Death by Sex. It would explain why she sets the guy on fire in the end and then is seen sitting calmly in the charred bed jauntily smoking a cigarette. She's gloating over the corpse of the one of the guys who enslaved her people!

Emilie Autumn's "Gothic Lolita" is about a girl in an arranged marriage.
It explains why "the law won't arrest you, the world won't detest you", even though it's implied that the girl was raped.

The uncle in Rush's "Red Barchetta" is Rob's son.
Just think about it. He has a country place that no one knows about, similar to the cottage in the movie. Also, Rob drives a topless car that looks suspiciously like a red Barchetta. Eventually, he bought a new car and handed his old one down to his son. Somehow, over the years, Rob's veterinary clinic was transformed into a farm. When the "Motor Law" came, the son hid away the car in his barn. Even more coincidental? The album Moving Pictures came out in 1980, the same time period that the movie takes place in!

At any given time, somewhere on planet Earth, at least one radio station is playing "Stairway to Heaven".
Either that or "Hotel California".

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesWild Mass GuessingThe Beatles