10 songs that resulted in conspiracy theories
The beauty of music is how many different interpretations can come from it. As much as it might mean one thing to the artist, there’s a good chance someone else has a completely different idea of what the song is actually about. Then again, some of the biggest names in music, like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, have had their songs poured over a bit too much for many people’s tastes.
Throughout rock history, there have been many songs that no one knows what the hell they’re about. When you let the more analytical side of the population run wild with it, they start pouring over every single word that the artist put in the track, determined to get to the bottom of what they’re thinking. It might be fun, but also some fairly insane theories ensue as well.
Just like directors get theories that follow them around about their scripts and scenes, everything from a stray guitar part to a vocal that sounds out of place came under fire for allegedly having some hidden meaning behind it. While many artists took it in stride, some others went along with it, thinking that it would be better to keep the audience guessing.
In the end, do any of these hold water? Probably not, but that doesn’t stop them from being a great theory for what it means. There’s always a possibility that these have a nugget of truth to them, but there’s no telling what rock and rollers were really on about when they decided to put pen to paper here.
10 songs that created conspiracy theories:
10. ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ – AC/DC
The entire rock world didn’t feel like AC/DC could have recovered from Bon Scott’s death. They had already had the epitome of what rock vocals should sound like, so what are the chances that there was another guy that sounded like that? The band did find their replacement in Brian Johnson, but there was some question as to what the credits were behind ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.
For years, rumours had persisted that Scott was the one who initially wrote the lyrics to the song, only to be sold to the public without his name in the credits. While the song and accompanying album are a tribute to Scott, there’s a good chance that he heard the beginnings of the song but didn’t survive long enough to add anything to the track. Still, if Scott didn’t write the lyrics, the song feels like it had his seal of approval pre-stamped on it.
9. ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ – Green Day
Every American had a rough time recovering from 9/11. No one gets over a national tragedy like that overnight, and survivors and loved ones were bound to spend the rest of their lives with a tragic shadow behind them. Green Day may have already been venturing into politics around the time of the attacks, but ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ was a lot closer to home than many thought.
Although Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the song as a tribute to his late father, who died in September when he was young, a lot of fans mistook the lyrics to be about recovering from the attacks. Even though Armstrong had a different outlook, the song actually works in both directions, being both a sad lament for the tragedy and a touching song from a son to his father. For all of the gross overgeneralisations that happen with conspiracy theories, this is one of the few times where it feels like everybody wins.
8. ‘Love Rollercoaster’ – The Ohio Players
Usually, conspiracy theories tend to come from the world of rock and roll. Since it was known as the devil’s music, obviously, this is the genre that would get the most flak. Funk wasn’t necessarily safe from a few accusations, either, and fans were more than happy to go to the macabre side of music when looking through The Ohio Players’ classic, ‘Love Rollercoaster’.
While The Ohio Players were nothing but a bunch of incredibly funky musicians in their time, there is a high-pitched scream that comes on halfway through the song. Coming from bandleader Jimmy Williams, many fans insisted that the scream was actually a cry for help by someone in the studio, either being stabbed to death or being burned by the honey on the cover. There was never anything nasty going on behind the scenes. Williams just has a way of going with the music, even if it does sound a bit macabre every now and then.
7. ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ – Bobby McFerrin
It’s about time someone gives some sort of praise on ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’. It might be considered one of the worst songs by some media outlets, but the carefree vibe and the relentless desire to chillax whenever you hear it is a lot more lighthearted and fun than many give it credit for. If something is this innocent, naturally, that means that someone has to go ahead and make it dark for no reason.
Since Bobby McFerrin never put another song on the hit parade, there was a persistent theory that he had actually killed himself in the meantime. It might have lived on as a dark joke for years, but McFerrin is still firmly among the living and has continued to bring his signature brand of acapella music to the masses. It may have been funny in middle school, but anyone still laughing at the idea of a man committing suicide should seriously consider their moral principles.
6. ‘In the Air Tonight’ – Phil Collins
By the time Phil Collins launched his solo career, his marriage had collapsed. After trying his hand at putting things back together, Face Value was his way of making up for lost time, including pouring every bit of himself into every song. That meant everything was personal, but ‘In The Air Tonight’ was not as specific as saving someone from drowning.
While Collins mentions images of drowning in the song, the persistent rumour for years was about how Collins saw someone one night who had the chance to rescue someone from a riverbank and refused to help. If this theory is to be believed, this was Collins’s way of confronting the guilty party at one of his shows, saying that he knows the vile act that he committed. Whenever asked about the song, though, Collins said it was just about good, clean revenge, but the theory does at least have a good chance of being used in a daytime soap opera in the future.
5. ‘American Girl’ – Tom Petty
There weren’t many people prouder to be from the US than Tom Petty. Whether it was celebrating California or the sounds of the heartland, Petty was ready to share the wonders of what America had to offer, and ‘American Girl’ couldn’t have been a better introduction. Somewhere in this free-spirited American girl is a dark side, and fans were more than happy to connect the dots.
As Petty sings about her standing alone on a balcony, many fans claimed that the girl in question actually committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a building that happened to overlook Route 441. Petty always refuted this claim in the past, thinking that it was about the kind of girl that every boy dreamed of, who practically reappeared in the song ‘Free Fallin’. If the song were specifically about death, though, why the hell would Petty go through the trouble of making it sound so lively?
4. ‘Rhiannon’ – Fleetwood Mac
There’s always been a certain mysticism that’s followed Fleetwood Mac around. They may have just been an amazing blues band at one point, but Stevie Nicks brought her magic into the fold and took the band to a different level with Lindsey Buckingham in tow. Nicks never shied away from her spiritual side, but she may have been dancing a bit too close to the fire when she wrote ‘Rhiannon’.
Modelled after what she called “an old Welsh witch”, many fans claimed that there was some kind of seance going on whenever the song was played live. Since Nicks got more lively throughout the performance, many claimed that the ghost of Rhiannon was taking over her body as she played. There may have been some ghostly forces at play in rock and roll, but anyone thinking that Nicks would be casting spells on different people through her performance clearly hasn’t seen a rock and roll frontwoman cut loose before.
3. ‘Hotel California’ – Eagles
No artist is obligated to tell you what a song is about. It’s what they feel, and it doesn’t matter how much shouting someone does that will force them to change their tune about what a song is actually meant to say. When Don Henley said that the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ was about a journey from innocence to experience, that was open-ended enough for the religious fanatics to have a field day.
From examining the back cover of the album to playing the song backwards, the band came under fire from certain groups who felt they had created a satanic anthem. While the band had dabbled in the darker side of life when making the album, this is more about the problems that come with becoming a celebrity, with California practically being a trip into the Twilight Zone. Many fans have dreams about what it’s like to be famous, but there’s a good chance that if you’d been on the road and through the rest of the industry machine, Henley’s lines make all the sense in the world.
2. ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – Led Zeppelin
For years, fans have been itching for confirmation that Led Zeppelin were trying to turn their audience into Satanists. Jimmy Page already had a fixation with Aleister Crowley, so it wasn’t completely out of the question for them to hide a few messages in between the grooves of the vinyl. When they were making their signature tune ‘Stairway to Heaven’, though, Zeppelin got clapback from people wondering whether the lyrics had some sort of coded message behind them.
As people started to play the record backwards, people thought Robert Plant was advocating for Satanism when he sang, even singling out lines like, “Here’s to my sweet Satan” being played in the background. There was never anything going on, though, with all of the overlapping words being entirely coincidental. Even if the religious sort thought that there was something sinister going on, doesn’t the backwards version of a song called ‘Stairway to Heaven’ confirm that the song is actually more morally affirming than anything else?
1. ‘Helter Skelter’ – The Beatles
If we had taken a look at every single Beatles conspiracy, chances are we’d be here all day. Whether it was the Fab Four replacing Paul McCartney back in the 1960s or the undying hilarity that they wrote a song about leaving a dog in a hot car, the band have not had any time to rest in the minds of music fans since 1964. While many conspiracy theories might hold a little bit of water, the darkest one was when it actually turned real.
Like everyone in 1968, musician and occasional murderer Charles Manson listened to The White Album, only to be convinced that ‘Helter Skelter’ was a sign of the coming Armageddon. Determined to get ahead of the game, Manson started to put together his notorious family to strike down the beautiful people, including painting the song title in blood at one of the famous crime scenes. All of these urban legends must be taken with a grain of salt, but the fact that someone got something so evil out of a song about a playground slide is beyond human thought.