Does it really matter....

Sugar Ray

... how we interpret any of the songs we hear?

Seriously I was thinking about this when I was reponding about my thoughts on given to fly.

How much of the way we interpret a song depends on the way we were brought up? Our personal experiences and troubles?

Think about how many times people must have gone to Ed and said how Alive has changed thier life and that they found the song inspirational when really it has little to do with anything inspirational...(I reference a interview he did in Rolling Stone magazine for his interpretation of the song)

So with all that said I ask you... has your personal experience given you a much different take on a song than what the "standard" or "actual" meaning of the song is? Moreover... is there such a thing as an ACTUAL meaning to a song?

Cheers,

R3

tina vedder

I think we understand a song how we want to understand it.. we are looking for a message when we are listening to music and so we find in it the message we most need in that moment..So it's easy that a song with a vague text and meaning is appreciated by more people because everyone can feel it like his personal song..maybe that's what a good song should do.

Omarama

i think different songs mean different things to everyone.i don't think it matters whether eddie or stone etc.wrote them to mean one thing or another.you can't expect a song to mean the same thing to milions or even hundreds of different people just because it was written for that purpose.

bigtimps

I am new here, but I loved your question and felt compelled to respond. Your posting seemed to answer your question both ways, both yes and no. We do bring our own personal experiences into our interpretations of songs that we hear, but if we didn't, what would any song mean. At the same time, songs, (for the most part) don't have a "standard" or "actual" meaning. They are an artists interpretation of their own experiences that they share with us. Art, for the most part, is what we interpret it to be. For example, I pose this question...if you knew Mona Lisa's or Leonardo da Vinci's "standard" or "actual" meaning behind the painting, would it be such a masterpiece? So my answer to your question is, that a song only means to you, what it means to you, because if it doesn't, it means nothing to you..