The final third of our adventure is upon us. Today, all is subject to opinion.
Day 20: A song that has many meanings to you
2020: “Mis-Shapes”, Pulp
Pulp, again. Could you tell they’ve always been a favourite of mine?
Anyway, yes, being the clever clogs I was, I wondered to myself who this song was truly for.
Nerds and outcasts? Definitely plausible.
Communists? ‘We’ll use the one thing we’ve got more of/that’s our minds’. Also possible.
As I weigh my options for today, I must admit to finding myself facing a dilemma. Well, two dilemmas, the first is to find another song that I like which has one more than one meaning to me. But the second is that kind of thing can bring out your inner wanker when it comes to music. How many times have artists been rubbed the wrong way because listeners have scoured through every word in their songs, misinterpreting and reinterpreting them solely to sound cleverer than their peers?
And it’s at this point I remember I haven’t chosen a Beatles song yet. Perfect.
2025: “I Am The Walrus”, The Beatles
The song made to drive the people who seek meaning in the tunes they hear absolutely bonkers. John Lennon had grown tired of people saying ‘Ooh doesn’t this song talk about this?’ or ‘Well it’s clearly about that’. So he cooks up a few verses of word salad and serves it up to get the audience’s head in a spin. The whole thing being powered by acid certainly helps.
So what does it mean to me?
- It represents the peak of psych-era Beatles.
- It shows that drugs are bad, m’kay?
- It demonstrates that some good did come out of that godawful film.
It’s meaningfully meaningless. See, I told you this kind of thing brings out your inner wanker. Ah, the joys of writing about music.
A-Side Glance 