I took the liberty of moving this here because it seems a bit questionable:
- "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc is clearly a satirical Anti-Love Song, yet has been a popular slow for couples for decades. Tori Amos covered it in 2001 and changed chairs with the song, by actually addressing the fact that the girl in the song informs the guy: "I'm not in love with you, either, sucker!"
Listening to it, it's far from 'clearly' an Anti-Love Song; leaving aside that the songwriter originally wrote it for his wife to try and find ways of saying "I love you" without actually saying the words, a listen to the lyrics can suggest that the singer is very much in love with the subject of the song; he's just deeply in denial about it. Which makes it an actual love song (if a somewhat darker than unusual example). It's arguably more of an Obsession Song than an Anti-Love Song, and even the Anti-Love Song page makes the case that you can go either way with it. In any case, there seems to be enough ambiguity about it to suggest that people who take it on face value as a love song aren't necessarily misreading it, which in turn means that it's not necessarily a misaimed fandom.
Edited by DoctorNemesis
The Irony of the Born in the USA example is Reagan was an FDR Democrat who's modern Fandom (and Hatedom) is completely misaimed. He probably did agree completely with the real message of the Song, whether he knew what it was or not.
You gotta get yourself some marble columns
Removed
- Michael Jackson had problems with this:
- With "Black Or White", there were people who interpreted the line "I'm not going to spend/My life being a color" as Michael saying he didn't want to be black — it didn't help that when the song arrived in 1991, he was substantially paler than he was ten years prior and he had not yet revealed that this was (at least partially) due to vitiligo. The lines meant that he wouldn't spend his life being seen as his race, i.e. a stereotype, rather than a person.
- "They Don't Care About Us" was interpreted as anti-Semitic due to its use of anti-Semitic slurs: "Jew me, sue me/Everybody do me/Kick me, kike me/Don't you black or white me". The song was written as a protest against injustice and prejudice in general, but the vague lyrics proved extremely easy to misinterpret, so besides issuing a formal apology, he re-recorded it for later pressings of the album and the single release.
That seems more misinterpretation in general, rather than fandom or hatedom attributable to the misinterpretation.
Edited by 216.99.32.44 The child is father to the man —Oedipus
Anybody want to make a case for Avenue Q's "Everybody's a Little Bit Racist"? I'm pretty sure the song was about how everybody is capable of being a bigoted jerkass and is not exclusive to just one race. Yet, there's plenty of people who think it means "celebrate bigotry" and "justifying xenophobia" which I don't think was the intention behind the song at all.
Sorcerer in training
Reading this section is very justifying. I always insist on knowing the lyrics to songs I like, and I have been teased for it.
The only hard part is I find it difficult to get irony and sarcasm at times. This sort of list is very helpful for that.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
Can we get an artist for the example about "Easy?" Like, are we talking Barenaked Ladies? Rascal Flats and Natasha Bedingfield? Another song by that title?