Stories behind songs

I love a song with good lyrics. Vocals and music are incediblty important to me too, but I am not one of those people who don’t pay attention to the lyrics. Because the story is right there. Since I am a rock fan, the songs I listen to are full of different stories. Romantic, funny, passionate, dreamy, hopeless, hopeful…it can go on forever. But sometimes the lycris are not talking about what you thing they are or sometimes the situation is deeper than you think.

Think about the start of this century. Before the downloading mania. New CDs could be expensive so often I would stick to old casettes. And I remember the funny looks on the clerks’ faces when I looked for Poison. God forbid-if you listen to something from the 80s and 90s. Of course some bands remain more popular through the years like Bon Jovi or Metallica. But when you go to a person who is only aware of eithert the current charts or just know the 70 stuff like Zeppelin and Floyd, you are in for a funny reaction. Anyhow, I searched and finally found a Poison album.It was the best of. And the band had thought of including the stories behind the songs.

* “Life goes on” :

I used this song in a story of mine (Yeah, I write stories with dialogues and write the name of the song that I think will go with the scene). The character is slowly coming to terms with her boyfriend’s death. It has been a little over a year. She was madly in love with him and surviving his loss has been an extremely painful process. The lyrics go something like this:

“So I pretend youre here by my side, tonight on this lonely ride…I keep telling myself that :

Life goes on while youre miles away and I need you
Time goes on as night steals the day Theres nothing I can do.”

* ” Something to believe in” :

It has a similar story.  It is also about loss, having been written after a loss of band members’ friends:

“I tried all night not to break down and cry
As the tears rolled down my face
I felt so cold and empty
Like a lost soul out of place”

“Every rose has its thorn” :

However, “Every rose has its thorn” has the fun story. The lyrics contain these verses:

“Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn”

We naturally think the girl is the rose and the thorns are her flaws and/or the difficulties in their relationships.It turns out the girl is thorn and the rose is poison’ s career: the girl dumped bret for a guywwiith more money. then the song becomes a hit and bret becomes more popular than that guy will ever be.It is not a romantic song. It is just mistaken for one.

“You give love a bad name”:

* This Bon Jovi song is rumored to have been written after Diane Lane, with whom Jon Bon Jovi dated before marrying his wife. Watching Diane’ s movies, she just seems so pretty and sweet- well, but I guess she does give love a bad name in the movie “Unfaithful” where she cheats on her husband (played by Richard Gere). I am pretty sure if I was Diane and Jon wrote a song like this about me, I would be pissed. But being a die-hard Bon Jovi fan; all I can say is:the story behind the song doesn’t matter much here. It is fantastic and and an all-time classic:

“Shot through the heart
And youre to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name”