Sometimes literal is better

I think English teachers, well meaning all, have destroyed people's ability to understand song lyrics.  I came to this realization when I looked up the lyrics to TV on the Radio's "Wolf Like Me" and found a raging discussion about what the song was 'about.'

To me there is no mystery what the song is about: it's about werewolves.  Don't believe me?

Got a curse I cannot lift
shines when the sunset shifts
when the moon is round and full

and later:

We could jet in a stolen car
but I bet we wouldn't get too far
before the transformation takes
and bloodlust tanks and
crave gets slaked

 It ends with the singer repeating: "We're howling, forever" over and over.

So what did the internet discussion board decide?  The song is about sex.  I'll give them this much - the werewolves are having sex.  But it isn't a song with the werewolf as a metaphor for sex - it's a song about a werewolf.


The problem is, people view lyrics (and poetry, and etc) as something to decode.  If we can just figure out the imagery, we'll know whether the song is about sex, or drugs, or life, or death or whatever.  And once we have the one word answer, we don't have to wonder about the lyrics anymore.  I've had people tell me several times about songs I thought were mediocre "listen to what he's singing about" as if mediocre songs become better once I realize he's singing about the environment.  If the song had something interesting to say about the environment, great.  But we don't judge songs by subject matter, and we don't understand them by decoding.

For example, another TV on the Radio song, this one called "Ambulance":

I will be your accident if you will be my ambulance
And I will be your screech and crash if you will be my crutch and cast
And I will be your one more time if you will be my one last chance

Are the lyrics more masterful when you think of it as a love song?  Is your understanding enhanced?

Another one is "There She Goes" by the La's, which I happen to think of as one of the most sublime love songs ever written.  I know people who say "That song is about drugs," as if I'll go "Thank you, now it makes sense."  It might have been written about drugs, it might be about a girl.  More interesting to me though, is the possibility that it is comparing love for a girl to love for drugs, or (more intriguingly) comparing love for drugs to a love for a girl.

My final example, though, is a Beatles song - "Happiness is a warm gun."  At the end, they start singing in doowop mode, and John sings something like "When I hold you, in my arms, with my finger on your trigger..."  I once heard someone comment that "Yeah, 'my finger on your trigger' - I wonder what he's singing about."  But that's the point!  He is singing about a gun!  That's what's so brilliant.  He's not using a gun as a metaphor for sex or as a phallic symbol, he's comparing the way some people treat guns to a metaphor for sex or a phallic symbol.  He's not singing a love song as if it were to a gun - he's singing a love song to a gun!

Sometimes, things aren't cloaked in metaphor - the more literally you take some songs, the better you might understand them.