Song Meanings
The stories and meanings behind well-known songs.
99 Red Balloons: The Meaning Behind the Song
The most cheerful-sounding song about nuclear annihilation ever recorded. Ninety-nine balloons go up, a radar operator misreads them, and by the last verse the singer is...
Song MeaningDog Days Are Over: The Meaning Behind the Song
A song that sounds like unmixed joy and is actually about being so used to sadness that happiness arrives like something coming to hit you. The...
Song MeaningWild Horses by The Rolling Stones: The Meaning Behind the Song
Keith Richards started it as a lullaby for a baby he was about to leave behind. Mick Jagger kept one line of it and wrote a...
Song MeaningSouthern Cross by CSN: The Meaning Behind the Song
A song about sailing away from a broken marriage, built on someone else’s discarded track about a pair of magic boots from a fairy tale. Here...
Song MeaningBeast of Burden: The Meaning Behind the Song
The two men credited with writing this song disagree about what it means, in public, on the record, for decades. One says it is an apology...
Song Meaning25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago: The Meaning Behind the Song
One of the most argued-over titles in rock is a man looking at his watch. It is twenty-five minutes to four in the morning, or possibly...
Song MeaningRhiannon by Fleetwood Mac: The Meaning Behind the Song
Stevie Nicks picked up a paperback, liked a name in it, and had a finished song about ten minutes later. She did not know at the...
Song MeaningGolden Brown by The Stranglers: The Meaning Behind the Song
A punk band that had been written off by its own label released a harpsichord waltz in a time signature nobody could dance to, and it...
Song MeaningOne Headlight by The Wallflowers: The Meaning Behind the Song
A song that opens at a funeral, describes the death of the narrator’s only friend, and is not about a person dying. Its writer has said...
Song MeaningNutshell by Alice in Chains: The Meaning Behind the Song
Four minutes of acoustic guitar and one voice, recorded in a week, on an EP the band made to fill time between albums. It is the...
Song MeaningUnsteady by X Ambassadors: The Meaning Behind the Song
A song written from inside a house where a marriage is ending, by a man who nearly did not write it because he thought divorce was...
Song MeaningKilling Me Softly with His Song: The Meaning Behind the Song
A woman goes to a club to hear a singer she has heard is good. He plays something that describes her life so precisely that she...
Want to find a song instead?
Type the words you remember and find the track fast. No humming, no app, no sign-up.