My Top 10 Misunderstood Songs Review

The song Turning Japanese is not about masturbation.This is all quoted from Wikipedia: The song's lyrics mainly consist of the singer talking about pictures of his love on the wall of his prison cell.
The song reflected how singer/songwriter Dave Fenton was meant to have felt whilst separated from his love. In the U.S., the song was believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.[1] In a VH1 True Spin special the band denied this. Fenton explained: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to."[2]

On "Adults Only 20 to 1: Saucy Songs" screened on the Nine Network Australia 2nd April 2009 the rumour that this song was about "masturbation" was highly exaggerated. The truth is that David Fenton would alternately confirm and deny the rumour, but he finally admitted that he just thought of the title when he woke up one morning and he views it as a love song.
I myself thought it was also, and referred to going blind while um...you know. Anyway, just thought I would help set the record straight. You can definitely confuse it easily with the help of the lyrics.

This is TERRIFIC! Wish I'd written it. Wish you'd made big bucks on it. Laughed and laughed and laughed. Loved Mama's Squeeze Box. Oprah calls that the vee-jay-jay. My most misunderstood song came from a way different era. I could never figure out why Selsun Blue was included in one of Neil Diamond's lyrics. Like subliminal advertising or something? It was years before I found out it was SONG SUNG Blue. Those I told were incredulous! This has been great fun, Patty. Thanks!

Last edited on Apr 12, 2009 at 1:13AM

Squeeze Box ... Kegel Exercise during sex

MacArthur Park ... about an acid trip

I have never heard of any of these songs but I have been laughing reading the comments. Okay, here are a few of my songs:

Kenny Rogers "Lucille." I used to sing it, "with four hundred children and the crops in the field." My brother said it was four hungry children. He said, "If I was Lucille with 400 children I would leave too."

Travis Tritt's: I smell TROUBLE. I used to sing it, "I spilled tea all over your BLT."

Garth Brooks: Friends in low places. The line, "I'm not much on social graces." I sang, "I'm not one for sausage and gravy."

The Christmas song: We Three King Eternals. All of my siblings and I used to sing it, "We three kinky turtles."

You should go to the discussion boards and start this topic. I'm sure it would get a lot of threads and the neat thing would be each time we bring another "misunderstood song" to mind we could post.

My cousin used to sing all country songs with the words Satin sheets as satin cheese.

I do not know this for a fact but it sounds like a plausable theory. I think I'm turning Japanese was actually about a guy masturbating to a picture of a girl who may or may not be his girlfriend. Turning japanese means he's closing his eyes while he climaxes. Just thought I'd share.

Hi Patty. That is unbelievable about Dancing With Myself. I've had that single for years (on white vinyl no less!!) and never realised what it was really about. It will never sound the same again.

Ray in Consett, England.

Hey Patty - enjoyed the read. I just found out that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" was a slurred, " In the Garden of Eden". Keep em coming ..

LOL.......I was speechless to find out what it (Turning Japanese) really meant......LOL.....great review!

Last edited on Mar 24, 2008 at 12:30PM

LOL. I never knew that about the Billy Idol song either... now I'm going to look at it in a whole new light everytime I hear it. lol.

I love it!!!!!!!! This was great :) :) Thanks! I needed this.

Yes, engaging song, and heck I loved it....but was too younge to really listen....just loved Richard Harris and his King Arthur past. I personally feel it is more related to being dumped, like someone left him or his love and the recipe of creating the love or finding it again would never be the same.........the cake etc. and green icy , yuck to me was a jolly fun idea by the lyracist who wrote it. gardenias09

Wow. I sure feel like an idiot because I didn't know what any of these mentioned where about. I just thought that they were weird songs!

Good List, and VERY good points. Possibility of number ten...Drug cooking? I just finished watching "American Gangster", and there's a part where they test heroin for impurities-a serum is dropped on a sample, and it changes different colors based upon what the pure heroin has been "cut" with. Maybe they're referring to the test-or the packaging. Just a thought!

I always thought the song "Manic Monday" by the Bangles was actually "Just another Man NAMED Monday." I sung along to it like that until many years later my husband explained what the lyrics REALLY were. That really cleared things up for me...I could never understand whay someone would name their kid "Monday".

Thanks a lot, Patty, for that trip down Memory Lane. My own problem with songs which have misled me has often a matter of hearing the music but not quite catching the lyrics. For years, I enjoyed and often sang out loud a song which I thought was called "There's a Bathroom on the Right" instead of "There's a Bad Moon Out Tonight!"

Great fun Patty, thanks for sharing. Ok, maybe having a 20 yr old and a teenager means I have to listen more carefully -- but I did know a few of them. Honestly I love just about all music and like you don't look for hidden meaning -- I mean who needs to with Big and Rich and "Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy?"

This is hysterical, especially #5! I admit to being ignorant of most of these. Great topic.

Very interesting thoughts Patty! Quick comments on your last few... I think you're right on Meatloaf. I had to look up the lyrics but the verses before the one you posted shows it better:
[Girl:] After a while you'll forget everything
It was a brief interlude and a midsummer night's fling
And you'll see that it's time to move on

[Boy:] I won't do that! No I won't do that!

As for #10 ... probably just a good acid trip I would guess. ~Carrie

I had to go listen to "Follow Me" because I like that song and there's no way that it's about drugs. It's just a good love song. It's no more about drugs than "Puff the Magic Dragon" is about drugs, which many people claim it is. Nonsense! You can read what you want into a lot of songs but I'm confident that those two songs were not written about drugs. Fun essay!

--Bob

Pete Townshend says he wrote Squeezebox after he bought himself an accordian on a whim, and taught himself to play it in a few hours. It really is jusy aboput playing the accordian, even though it's rife with double entendres.

That is hilarious. Now I know what some of those mean too.

LOL @ Unskinny Bop. I loved that song, back in the day and never knew what it meant either. I was just singing along!!

First of all, even after you explained what "unskinny bop" was ... I still don't get it. How does that mean a porno queen? I'm so lost. lol Also, I had NO idea that Follow Me by Uncle Kracker meant that! Great list. Very entertaining. Oh and I don't think that Meatloaf means cheating ... no, no, no ... Now you have my head spinning and I am going to google everything! haha!

I just read your review. Thanks for the laugh. I'll also have a chat with my fiance about it (he used to be a dj) and there's something I'll look up. I will answer you in the near future.

Last edited on Feb 23, 2008 at 2:32PM

Wonderful piece. All of us have mis-heard a lyric and sang it loudly until someone called us on us explaining the lyric actually was .... and there are indeed many songs that actually do or seem to have deeper or alternate meanings and you may not be aware of them. You put a lot of thought and time into this piece and it's a real winner.


Turning Japanese.. I did know what it meant and I never laughed so hard when SCTV did a parody of the song pretending Mel Torme re-did the song.


Lucy was indeed based on a child's drawing, For the Benefit of Mr. Kite was based on an old poster, Lennon loved creating FOUND lyrics.


Several Beatle's songs have multiple lyrical meaning possibilities like Martha, my dear. Actually the story of Paul naming his muse after a girlfriend which became the name of his sheepdog, doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a love song to Linda... which it probably is.....but not completely romantic and sappy so he'd not win any points by naming it Linda. Ah the possibilities....


Then there's Norwegian Wood. As a young child I loved the song having absolutely no idea what it meant... that it was a song about a one night stand and there's a detail about the log in the fire....or is the nationality of the ....ah you can have several meanings perfectly clean or if you insist on stretching it... somewhat dirty.....now don't get me started about George's truffle song....


bravo Patty...

Last edited on Feb 23, 2008 at 12:09PM

For me, that's the wonderful thing about music. A lot of the lyrics mean a specific thing only to the person who wrote them, but all are open to your own interpretation. Sometimes, singers don't enunciate well and the words come out kind of, uh, funny. How about Manfred Mann's "Blinded By the Light". "Revved up like a DOUCHE"???? What the ##$ ???. Turns out, they changed a line in the original (written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen) and the word is actually "duece" in both versions--which is an old Ford......and here I thought they were singing about a femine hygiene product!!

Last edited on Feb 23, 2008 at 7:37AM

For me, that's the wonderful thing about music. A lot of the lyrics mean a specific thing only to the person who wrote them, but all are open to your own interpretation. Sometimes, singers don't enunciate well and the words come out kind of, uh, funny. How about Manfred Mann's "Blinded By the Light". "Revved up like a DOUCHE"????

Patty, this was hiliarious! ;-) I have long paid attention to songs that had words in them I couldn't quite make out (and there's even a word for those words that you hear wrong, but I can't remember what it is). But this was a very funny topic, and made me think. I can solve one of your dilemmas, I believe....isn't a squeezebox simply referring to the part of a woman's anatomy (think chest) that men like to squeeze? That's what I've always assumed that song meant. I'm anxious to read what other folks come up with for their own mystery lyrics.

You are a riot! I have to agree with you on all accounts! Me, I know just about every word to every single Doors song and haven't got a clue what any one of them are about! Dave Matthews is my absolute favorite, but Jeez, I have to wonder what those boys were smoking when they came up with some of their lyrics..IE: "I was there when the bear ate his head cause he thought it was candy"????

Follow me will always be my favorite no matter what it really means ;) I would have to say the biggest surprise to me was " Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" I still love the song but was floored when I found out it was about L.S.D. The Beatles and Elton John both did this one. I found one site that gives the meanings and some songs have many...www.songfacts.com ;) Ron