Have you ever listened to a song and realized you had never really paid attention to the lyrics? This goes beyond simply mishearing the lyrics. Who hasn’t sung the wrong lyrics from time to time, right? This involves not truly understanding what the song is about. That’s how you end up singing something inappropriate at a bar mitzvah.

Here are some songs from musicals that will make you say “”Wait, THAT’S what that is about?”

Related: Top 10 Broadway Musicals You’ve Never Heard Of

10 “Edelweiss”–The Sound of Music

When The Sound of Music premiered on Broadway in 1959, the world instantly fell in love with Maria and the singing von Trapp kids. Nearly every song has entered the American vernacular—the titular opening, “Do Re Mi,” “So Long, Farewell,” and one kid-free tune: “Edelweiss.”

“Edelweiss” comes at a turning point in the show. Captain von Trapp has previously disapproved of his childrens’ singing, but when he hears his daughter playing the song, he’s moved. “Edelweiss” is meant to represent the Captain’s home country of Austria, as the edelweiss is a small white flower found in the Alps.

Over the years, rumors have spread that “Edelweiss” is an old Austrian folk tune or even the country’s national anthem. But Oscar Hammerstein II biographer Hugh Fordin says that even though “Edelweiss” was widely believed to be an old Austrian song, Hammerstein composed it for The Sound of Music.^[1]

9 “With You”–Pippin

From weddings to proposals, “With You” from Pippin has been used for years as a profession of love. On the surface, the lyrics do seem to point to a beautiful ballad meant for a loved one. Pippin claims his life would be “Twice as fair” if he could share his days with his girlfriend.

Except he’s not singing the song to his girlfriend. The scene is actually a huge orgy—Pippin weaves through women, comedically singing about “you” to dozens of women. The lyrics are meant to be humorously ironic, highlighting Pippin’s lack of commitment and genuine affection.

So unless you’re in an open marriage, probably leave this one out of the wedding reception.^[2]

8 “All You Wanna Do”–Six

There are thousands of songs with dark messages that are overlooked as such due to their poppy tempos or catchy refrains. Think about “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, which is actually about a school shooter. Or “Hey Ya” by Outkast, which, despite its upbeat meter, is about how love never really lasts.

In 2020, “All You Wanna Do” from Six the musical went viral on TikTok. Six tells the story of the six wives of Henry XIII from their point of view. “All You Wanna Do” is sung by Katherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife, and details the history of how they met. On TikTok, people danced to the groovy title lyrics as Katherine talks about how all men want to do is have sex with her. This is already kind of sad. But if you listen to the whole song and not just the danceable parts, it gets even darker.

Katherine relays her first romance with her tutor: “He was 23 / And I was 13 going on 30!” And it doesn’t get better from there. As Katherine sings about her past boyfriends, the song ends with, “All you wanna do, baby / Is touch me, when will enough be enough?”

I’m not sure the kids on TikTok can really relate to that on a personal level. At least, I hope not.^[3]

7 “Not While I’m Around”–Sweeney Todd

“Nothing’s gonna hurt you / Not while I’m around” are the opening lyrics of this song from Sweeney Todd. Young Toby is held by his surrogate mother, Mrs. Lovett, as he protectively lets her know that he will do whatever it takes to shelter her from harm.

Sounds sweet, right? Not really. Lurking in the background of the show is Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber. Toby doesn’t know it, but at the moment, Sweeney is on a rampage, ready to kill anyone in his path (Spoiler alert: including Mrs. Lovett and Toby. And himself.) The song is meant to be ironic and sad, showing Toby’s innocence in contrast to literally every single other character’s murderous rages.^[4]

6 “Hope”–Groundhog Day

While this song may not be as popular outside of the theater community as other songs on this list, it’s the perfect example of a song that is significant only within the show itself.

Based on the Bill Murray movie of the same name, Groundhog Day follows jaded reporter Phil as he is forced to relive February 2nd over and over and over again. Both the movie and musical are humorous but have darker themes lying beneath them. One of the most jarring parts of the plot is after Phil decides he is done sleeping around, eating whatever he wants, and generally being a menace with no repercussions. Instead, he opts to kill himself.

It doesn’t work. He wakes up the next day and tries to kill himself again. In the musical, this happens during the song “Hope.” With lyrics like “Never give up hope / Never let yourself be defeated,” it’s easy to read this as an optimistic anthem. In reality, each chorus of the song shows Phil finding a new way to commit suicide, from dropping a toaster in the bathtub to jumping off a building.

The song ends with “Hold on to your faith / You may wanna live / But baby don’t give up hope,” revealing Phil’s true meaning was to keep hoping one day the suicide will work.^[5]

5 “You Will Be Found”–Dear Evan Hansen

“Have you ever felt like nobody was there?” is the opening line of this song from the musical Dear Evan Hansen.

Apparently, a lot of Christians feel that way because as soon as Dear Evan Hansen premiered on Broadway in 2016, “You Will Be Found” became an instant religious classic. The song skyrocketed from theater kids’ playlists right into public thanks to performances from Brigham Young University’s acapella group and other religious congregations.

The message of “You Will Be Found” is right there in the title. “Even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need someone to carry you,” main character Evan Hansen sings an uplifting tune. Or is he?

The person Evan is singing about isn’t himself, but a boy named Connor who recently killed himself. Evan wishes that everyone could be found, but Connor never had someone care about him the way Evan describes. It’s a heartbreaking lament about suicide, not a cheery little ditty to sing at church.^[6]

4 “What I Did for Love”–A Chorus Line

One of the most influential Broadway musicals of all time (and the seventh-longest-running Broadway show ever), A Chorus Line is noted for its lack of plot. The show consists of a chorus line of dancers telling their stories to a casting director, each one hoping to be hired. Through song, monologue, and dance, each performer is given a moment to shine.

“What I Did For Love” has become a part of popular culture thanks to artists like Bing Crosby, Aretha Franklin, and Josh Groban recording the song for albums. Out of context, the song sounds sweet: “As we travel on / Love’s what we’ll remember.” But the refrain “I can’t regret / What I did for love” doesn’t refer to a person; rather, it’s meant to convey the performer’s passion for dance and her reaction if she could never dance again.

It’s a song of intense suffering as the dancer recalls how she has poured her entire life and career into something that could be taken from her at any time. Some have even interpreted the song’s lyrics to be referencing the casting couch, a euphemism for performing sexual acts in exchange for a job. This was especially rampant in the 1970s when the show premiered.

Either way—it’s not about romantic love.^[7]

3 “My Favorite Things”–The Sound of Music

Okay, this song is pretty straightforward. So why is it on this list? Well, people not very familiar with musical theater have probably still heard this song on the radio in December. For some reason, “My Favorite Things” has become associated with the holiday season. Anyone listening to the lyrics “Warm woolen mittens / Brown paper packages tied up with strings” and mention of sleigh bells might assume that within the show, it’s Christmas morning or Eve.

In reality, this isn’t the case. “My Favorite Things” is sung by governess Maria to her children after they are frightened by a thunderstorm. It’s a sweet song that has gained international acclaim, but it has nothing to do with winter or Christmas.^[8]

2 “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”–Gypsy

This song has been referenced in everything from The Simpsons to The Muppets” but rarely with the original intent of the song.

The main character of the musical Gypsy is a stage mother who, halfway through the show, learns her talented youngest daughter has eloped. In a fit of rage and mania, she sings “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” to express her desire to have her older daughter, Louise, become a star instead. The title and refrain are a pun on the stage mother’s name, Rose. Thus, “roses” represent rose flowers and happiness, but also herself. Everything will come up Rose’s way.

Despite the big, brass notes and fun lyrics, the song isn’t triumphant or as happy as it seems. Ethel Merman biographer Brian Kellow says that the song is often misunderstood, as it’s meant to be a “chilling illustration of blind ambition with megalomania.”^[9]

1 “Cabaret”–Cabaret

The titular song of this tour-de-force of a show is quite famous thanks to stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and Judi Dench’s recorded renditions. Within the show, the song is sung by Sally Bowles, a pregnant former cabaret star. Out of context, the lyrics seem to be praising the joys of humanity: “Life is a cabaret old chum, come to the cabaret!”

The song has been used in movies and TV shows for years, usually as a delightful little ditty. But that’s not what the song is about. Sally isn’t happy at all—she’s coming to terms with the rise of Nazism in her home city of Berlin. Rather than addressing the emerging politics of the 1930s, she makes a vow to live her life in ignorance, having fun wherever she can. This includes making sure she’s unattached to her baby’s father, so the song ends with her deciding to get an abortion. In some stagings, such as the most recent Broadway revival, this is depicted through Sally punching herself in the stomach multiple times.

Unsurprisingly, the Louis Armstrong version of the song chose to leave those lyrics out.^[10]

For as long as humanity has been around, the fear of certain animals has been pervasive and entrenched in our various cultures, all the way from ancient mythological depictions of animals as exaggerated monsters, to our modern society’s urban legends and misconceptions, certain animals have earned a horrible reputation and millions of people fearing them, often without much to back that up.

Top 10 Odd Animals

10 Camel Spiders

Starting off strong with a creature that’s certainly terrifying looking, a horrible alien from a sci-fi movie perhaps, solifuges or camel spiders, neither camels nor spiders, have more than a few urban legends going around about them, claims that they’re incredibly fast, lethally venomous, and grow up to a metre long, killing pets and humans alike, there have been a ton of stories and a few viral images going around that certainly painted a clear and consistent picture.

That picture, however, was nothing more than an illusion. While certainly fearful in appearance and not exactly slow or small, the largest camel spiders grow to be 12-15 cm-s or 5-6 inches long, certainly not a metre, alongside the facts that no camel spider species possesses venom nor a way to inject it, these horrid-looking relatives of spiders prefer to simply run away, and while a bite may be unpleasant, these arachnids are certainly not lethal.

9 Snakes

While the fear in this case isn’t entirely unfounded, snakes are certainly misunderstood, and incredibly so. Often the most dangerous venomous animals, or perhaps most dangerous animals in general in any given area, certain species of them are absolutely something to fear, but, as usual, exaggeration frequently occurs.

While it is true that no one should approach a wild snake, especially not if they don’t clearly recognise the species as a harmless one, most snake species aren’t aggressive and really want nothing to do with humans, let alone waste their precious venom or risk themselves taking down a person, something that’s really not an efficient food source for them, the fact remains that, while they certainly demand a careful approach, less than a tenth of snake species are estimated to be actually dangerous to humans, they often inflict a dry bite even when attacking since most typically would rather warn than envenom, and with the increase in readily available antivenins, deaths from snakebites should drop in the future significantly.

8 Scorpions

Another animal that probably gets a severe reaction from many, the strange, alien-like body, large pincer-like pedipalps, and a tail that can inflict a venomous sting, many people in warmer areas of the world fear the idea of encountering a scorpion at all and while, yes, some may be dangerous, the truth is that most really aren’t.

These arachnids also want nothing to do with us generally, and while about 20-25 species of them are considered medically significant and thus dangerous, that’s out of 1,500 species of scorpions recognised worldwide. Many of them do have a painful sting, but, unless you’re extremely unlucky or live in an area with the particularly dangerous species around it shouldn’t really be worse than a bee sting. Certainly avoid getting stung, but unless you meet a deathstalker scorpion, fear of one taking your life is likely unnecessary.

7 Piranhas

Fish that swarm large animals or even humans and tear them apart in mere moments, how could that not be terrifying? Well, the answer is yet again quite simple—popculture isn’t exactly accurate about animals and loves portraying them in the flashiest of ways, often ignoring what they’re really like.

While certainly formidable predators with sharp teeth and a powerful bite, they pose little to no threat to humans, in fact, they tend to show complete disinterest in us. Some researchers even proved this, by entering piranha-infested waters in simple swimwear, the fish completely ignored them, as opposed to the bloody piece of meat they lowered in later on, which they happily ate. While some piranha attacks do occur, many people swim around them with no problems and the truth is, they’re actually quite low on the food chain and tend to move in groups for defence rather than offence.

6 Cockroaches

This one is a bit tricky. Some cockroaches, the ones we know as pests, are certainly worthy of any indignant terror and hatred they spawn, living, vivid nightmares of many new apartment owners and sometimes an incredibly disgusting surprise in specific restaurants, these species are rightfully regarded as horrible, but, what many people don’t know is that these hardly represent cockroaches well.

While most people turn their nose up at any mention of a cockroach, the reality is that, of the nearly 5,000, incredibly varied and often interesting species of cockroaches, only a few dozen are associated with our homes. Alongside this fact, one may also realise that the survivability of cockroaches is, generally, greatly exaggerated. While certainly resilient, they’d have no chance of surviving a nuclear blast, and most don’t live for decades either, contrary to another somewhat popular cockroach myth.

5 Tarantulas

Hairy and massive, some of the largest spiders in the world, or, in the goliath birdeater tarantula’s case, largest in the world by mass and body length and only second in leg span, these arachnids have unsurprisingly garnered a lot of media attention as real-life monsters, what many don’t know, however, is that they’re, generally speaking, not as scary as they may seem.

While Old-World species, species from parts of the world that aren’t the Americas, can be quite quick and aggressive, their venom isn’t considered medically significant and many New-World species, those from the Americas, are downright docile, popular in the pet trade and regarded as gentle giants. While it’s understandable that they won’t suddenly become everyone’s favourite animal, and being bitten by those fangs is certainly something to avoid, there are no human deaths recorded that were caused by tarantula bites and, really, they just want to be left alone.

4 Sharks

Another filmstar, sharks are animals many people fear, though, realistically, you’d have more reasons to be afraid of dogs than these fascinating, large fish. While films such as Jaws have made a massive cultural impact that even persists today, in real life shark attacks are rare, and out of the hundreds of shark species in the world, only about a dozen or two are attributed to human attacks, and even then, scientists suspect that it’s often because sharks mistake us for their typical prey, a group humans absolutely don’t fit into.

Shark attacks are extremely rare and fatalities only form a fraction of those. In 2018, for instance, there were only five recorded human fatalities from sharks in the whole year, as opposed to the millions of sharks killed by us annually. Your chances of dying from a shark are one in millions, and even the myth that sharks can smell blood in the water from miles away is simply that—a myth.

3 Bats

Bats have certainly always been divisive, some find them scary and even gross, others quite cool or adorable, but they’ve undoubtedly had a reputation for decades now, frequent appearances in horror media, and recently gaining massive infamy for being the most attributed root cause of the massive covid-19 pandemic we’re still experiencing as of the writing of this list.

The truth is, while bats can absolutely carry rabies and other viruses and diseases, and vampire bats that simply do harm by sucking blood also exist, this represents a very small percentage of bats in reality. Most species are not thought to be significant disease carriers and vampire bats aren’t typically interested in humans either. Misunderstood in another way as well, contrary to popular belief, these fuzzy, flying mammals are actually not blind either.

2 Poison Dart Frogs

Many people greatly misunderstand poison dart frogs, these frogs have gained notoriety for the amount of poison they possess, enough to kill nearly a dozen adults and overall considered one of the most toxic animals on Earth, they are certainly something to be afraid of, should you eat one.

Otherwise, however, worries seem to be unfounded. The popular belief that even touching or handling these frogs is lethal is entirely untrue, worrying about one of these frogs jumping on a person’s skin and resulting in one’s death or, as some urban legends go, causing extreme hallucinations is entirely unnecessary, rough handling may result in some pain but, unless a significant amount of poison can get into a person’s bloodstream through an open wound or, as mentioned above, the frog is eaten, they’re virtually harmless. Another interesting fact, surprisingly, is that they actually lose their poison entirely in captivity, leading scientists to believe they gain their poison from their diets, though it’s currently unknown from what plant or animal exactly.

1 Spiders

While the list had a separate entry for tarantulas as a special and specific case, there’s really no group of animals more misunderstood than spiders as a whole. A massive and varied order of animals, they’re regarded as the most common phobia in the world, even their tiniest individuals freaking millions or potentially billions of people out from their simple existence alone. Spiders, in reality, are fascinating and do way more good than harm, even though that’s not what their reputation would have you believe.

While their appearance can be eerie, they’re shy animals and most of them really pose no threat at all. Out of the nearly 50,000 spider species recognised worldwide, only about 25-30 of them are recognised as dangerous to humans, and even then, many spiders would prefer to flee rather than fight and even black widow spiders, notorious for their dangerous venom, rarely produce a fatality and mainly do so in very old or very young people, and still many inflict dry bites even in self defence. Spiders just want to be left alone and, aside from an irrational phobia, unless you’re living in an area with some truly dangerous species, you really have no reason to kill them, especially considering the fact that they get rid of an incredible amount of actually harmful insects.

10 Extinct Animals With Surprising Attributes

About The Author: Just a curious person with a fascination for all things science, mysteries, and misconceptions, anything interesting!

This is a list of words or popular sayings used by us all from time to time. Most of them have strange origins which, at first glance, might seem hard to believe. In addition, many also have “mythological” beginnings that people erroneously believe.

See Also: 10 Wrong Words That Are Actually Right

10Upper Crust

Meaning: Elite or aristocratic

Myth: During the Middle Ages, life was difficult, especially to those living in poverty. However, for the rich or the nobility, life was much easier and they had a number of luxuries most others didn’t. One of those luxuries was the choice piece of bread, which in this case was the top of the bread. However, there is no evidence saying it was ever used that way. Though, there is an example from the 15th century which says you should “cut the upper crust to your sovereign…” But, it doesn’t necessarily say only the nobility could eat it.

Reality: The first recorded mention of “upper crust” in regards to the elite was in 1823 and, in those days, it was used to refer to a person’s head or hat. (Alternatively, it was also used to describe the Earth’s surface.) So “upper crust” actually refers to the people at the top of society.^[1]

9 Toe the Line

Meaning: To behave or act in accordance with the rules

Myth: Spread because of the misspelling “tow the line”, itself the result of a linguistic term known as an eggcorn, wherein a word or phrase is misheard and then misinterpreted. Many people believe that it refers to a boat or other vehicle towing something, which makes a lot of sense when you realize ropes and cables on ships are sometimes called lines. Some people also erroneously believe it has to do with an old practice in the British Parliament to keep the MPs from killing each other.

Reality: First of all, it’s spelled “toe the line”, and the first recorded mention was in 1813. The end of the phrase used to include a number of words, including mark, scratch or crack. (“Up to scratch” is another one derived from the same place.) But they all referred to the practice of placing one’s feet on a designated line before a race or some other undertaking. So someone who “toes the line” does what is expected of them. It’s use often pops up in politics, especially those divided strongly among partisan groups, as their members are often said to “toe the party line”.^[2]

8 Brand Spanking New

Meaning: Entirely new

Myth: People believe that it corresponds to a newly born baby, who needs to be spanked to ensure it is able to cry. However, spanking in the sense it is used in this phrase is just a clarifier, meant to emphasize how new something is and it came into the English lexicon sometime during the 17th century. In addition, the way spanking is used in this phrase has nothing to do with hitting someone; it simply means “exceptionally large or fine”.

Reality: The phrase’s first recorded use was in 1860 and may have evolved from the phrase “brand span new”, which itself was used much earlier. The word span may have been turned into spanking in order to increase the intensity of the phrase. Also, brand new is in reference to the hot irons which ranchers used to mark their cattle, a phrase first found in the 16th century.^[3]

7Bated Breath

Meaning: Subdued breathing, usually because of emotion

Myth: Another commonly misspelled phrase, it is often changed to “baited breath”, which leads people to believe it has something to do with laying a trap or waiting. Which is ridiculous because how could you bait someone’s breath?

Reality: For the true origins, we have to go back to The Bard, William Shakespeare. The phrase first showed up in his play The Merchant of Venice, which was written in 1598. (The play is more famous for the character Shylock and his speech where he asks, among other things: “Hath not a Jew hands… If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) He appropriated the word abated, shortening it to bated, which means “reduced or lowered in force”. However, we no longer use the word bated any more, or the verb to bate, so the phrase may eventually be forever changed to “baited breath”.^[4]

6 As the Crow Flies

Meaning: In a straight line, avoiding all obstacles

Myth: Medieval British coastal vessels were said to have a cage of crows which they used to find land. Crows were said to hate water and would fly straight to land and, because they flew, the crows were able to see land much further away than the sailors on the ship. They were also said to be kept at the top of the mast, which proponents say is why the lookout’s spot was called the crow’s nest.

Reality: The first recorded use wasn’t until the 18th century and nearly all the examples refer to land distances. (In fact, the first documented use of the phrase seems to be a slightly racist opinion about Spanish people.) Observers on the ground noticed as the crows flew around, they would do so in a straight line, missing the trees, rivers or buildings which obstructed the humans.^[5]

5 A Kangaroo Court

Meaning: An illegal, bogus court

Myth: Since kangaroos are native to Australia, it is widely believed that it is Australian in origin and refers to some aspect of the kangaroos’ nature, whether the viciousness a cornered one might display or the way their jumping seems to defy the laws of nature. Kangaroo courts can be notoriously vengeful and can seem to “hop” over evidence which might exonerate the accused.

Reality: First used in America in 1849, the phrase described a trial which was a sham. Before the phrase died out, they were sometimes called “mustang courts” as well. This knowledge helps explain the true meaning: the courts were so named because of the wild, unpredictable nature of the animals. Kangaroos were probably used because of their comical nature, at least from the Americans’ point of view.^[6]

4 Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

Meaning: Don’t get rid of something valuable with the trash

Myth: In the Middle Ages, babies were said to be washed last in the tub, since they were deemed the least important of the family. Because of the immense filth the rest of the family accumulated during work, the water would be so dark that the baby couldn’t be seen and the mother would throw out the baby along with the used bathwater. The infamous Karl Pilkington once relayed this story, going so far as to say that the baby was washing itself.

Reality: The phrase is from an old German proverb with no basis in reality. The writer and satirist Thomas Murner was the first to write it down, doing so in 1512 in his book An Appeal to Fools. It was solely meant to illustrate the need to watch over your valuables.^[7]

3 It’s All Greek to Me

Meaning: Something is unintelligible

Myth: This phrase is generally attributed to William Shakespeare because he used it in his play Julius Caesar in 1601. In his play, the phrase was used by Casca to explain to Cassius that he couldn’t understand anything that was said to him. (“…those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”)

Reality: Not only was Shakespeare beaten to the punch by another playwright (Thomas Dekker), the origin of the phrase is much earlier than either of them; it comes from a Medieval Latin proverb which meant “It is Greek; it cannot be read”. The reason the writers put the phrase in was that knowledge of how to read Greek had become lost to most of the world. It’s one of the few phrases which has retained its original meaning throughout the centuries since it was introduced.^[8]

2It Ain’t Over ‘til the Fat Lady Sings

Meaning: Nothing is over until it’s over

Myth: A fat singer named Kate Smith used to sing God Bless America for the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL. The team recorded it and used as good luck, often asking her to perform it live as it became their unofficial anthem. The sheer number of victories when the song was played (fifty-two wins against seven losses in the first eleven years) meant that no game was out of reach until Smith sang.

Reality: The first recorded mention doesn’t have anything to do with sports; a pamphlet from 1976 called Southern Words and Sayings has the following: “Church ain’t out ‘till the fat lady sings.” The first mention which sprung it into the national lexicon was an NBA coach, Dick Motta, who when asked about the close score of a game remarked: “The opera ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.” (This ties in well with the fact the phrase has often been associated with Brunnhilde, an operatic role in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.)

As for the claim that Smith’s singing was the inspiration, there is one small, yet important, contradiction: she sang before the game even started.^[9]

1 Kick the Bucket

Meaning: To die

Myth: When someone would get ready to hang themselves they would stand on top of a bucket and tie the noose around their neck. After working up the nerve to go through with it, they would use their foot to knock the bucket away so they would die.

Reality: The “bucket” part of the phrase corresponds to the French word buque, which means a yoke or piece of wood. (Which is one way bucket was used in 16th century England.) When a pig was hung on a beam in order to be slaughtered, it would thrash around. Since they were hung by their feet, the pig would eventually kick the beam, or the buque as it were. Shakespeare used this meaning of the word bucket in his play Henry IV: “Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket”. (“To gibbet” used to mean “to hang”.)^[10]

Nearly everyone has had the experience of going to a movie with their friends, only to leave the theater and debate their interpretations of the ending. Well, it turns out that there are certain movies that people get wrong all the time. Here on Listorati, we’ve gathered 10 such films to talk about how you may or may not have been getting them wrong all along.

Keep in mind, some of these reveal spoilers for the end of a film, which is why we’ve chosen titles that have been out for several years…

10. (500) Days of Summer

In 2009, the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer premiered in theaters. Many people related to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s heartbroken character, Tom, and bashed Zooey Deschanel’s character Summer for being a villain who put him in the friend zone, despite being such a “great” guy. However, the film was meant to make the viewer examine their own behavior in past relationships, because everyone paints themselves as the victim after a breakup.

Throughout the entire movie, Summer makes it very clear to Tom that she is not looking for a romantic relationship. Despite her honesty about the emotional wall she put between them, Tom continued to believe that she was “the one,” and pushed his expectations on her. When she didn’t reciprocate those feelings, he felt betrayed. He fell in love with the idea of Summer, rather than listening and paying attention to the reality of the situation. During a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel revisited the film for its 10-year anniversary. Gordon-Levitt said, “I think a really fun thing to do is try to watch it and just put yourself in Summer’s shoes the whole time.”

9. Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is considered one of the greatest movies of all-time. Every single film student in the world has been forced to sit through this masterpiece by Orson Welles and analyze the deeper meaning. However, if you’re watching it as a casual viewer at home, it may be easy to misinterpret what’s really going on. In the film, we watch a man named Charles Foster Kane rise from poverty to become a millionaire. His dying word was “Rosebud,” and the journalists in the film go crazy trying to figure out what “Rosebud” actually is.

Donald Trump claimed that Citizen Kane was his favorite movie, and during an interview, he was asked to analyze Rosebud. He said, “A lot of people don’t understand the significance of it. I’m not sure if anyone understands the significance. But I think it means bringing a lonely, sad figure back into his childhood.” Throughout the rest of the interview, Trump describes Kane’s misfortune as a “modest fall,” and he said that character needed to get “a different woman” if he wanted to be happy.

Well… Trump was at least halfway right. At the very end of the film, we see the camera pan over all of Kane’s treasures, and it stops on his beloved childhood sled, “Rosebud.” Earlier in the movie, we see that he was playing in the snow with this sled during his last moments of childhood innocence. Basically, he spends the rest of the movie acquiring wealth, but he will never be as happy as he was as that care-free kid sledding in the snow.

8. The Shining

The Shining is one of the most famous horror movies of all time. But the author of the book, Stephen King, is famously frustrated that the director, Stanley Kubrick, was the one to completely miss the point of his story. The plot surrounds the Torrance family, who are spending the winter in a haunted mountain resort called the Overlook Hotel. In the beginning of the movie, Jack Torrance has been sober, and the hauntings do not begin until he starts indulging at the hotel bar.

In the movie, there is a scene where Jack is reading an issue of Playgirl magazine, which is full of pictures of nude men. Internet sleuths did some digging, and realized that that specific issue had an article about incest. There are several other clues in the movie that suggest that Danny Torrance was being sexually abused by his alcoholic father, which could explain the young boy’s deteriorating mental state. Combined with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the character, this made Jack Torrance crazy from the very start, and it’s possible to interpret the movie as being about mental illness, instead of a haunting. In the book, Jack Torrance is a good father who is struggling with his addiction, and their family tries to keep it together in the midst of a very real supernatural experience.

King notoriously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of The Shining so much that he made his own version in a TV miniseries. During an interview with The Guardian, King explains that The Shining was one of his favorite books, and the characters stuck with him for years. He decided to write a sequel called Dr. Sleep. Danny Torrance is all grown up, but he is obviously traumatized from the events of the Overlook Hotel. He inherits his father’s alcoholism, but is managing it by going to AA. We learn that he does, in fact, have psychic abilities. There will be a movie version of Dr. Sleep coming in 2019, starring Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance.

7. American Psycho

After American Psycho premiered in theaters, it was bashed for glorifying toxic masculinity and violence. It was even protested by the National Organization of Women, who demanded a boycott. But in reality, it was directed by a woman named Mary Herron, and it was meant to do the complete opposite of what everyone assumed.

As a dark comedy, we are meant to see how Christian Bale’s character Patrick Bateman is narcissistic and uncaring about other people. He also, incidentally, is a serial killer. Bateman admits that he is a murderer multiple times throughout the movie, but everyone around him is so self-absorbed that they aren’t even listening. According to the author of the novel, Bret Easton Ellis, “It was meant to be a critique of male behavior. A lot of people don’t realize that. They haven’t read the book.”

6. Donnie Darko

After Donnie Darko premiered in 2001, plenty of people felt their jaws drop by the end of the film. Fans cannot seem to decide if the character Donnie truly did send a plane engine traveling through time to save the world, or if he was simply mentally ill. Since he admits to having “emotional problems,” has visions of a giant rabbit, and frequently goes to therapy, the audience can believe either may be true. The writer and director, Richard Kelly, was just 26-years-old when he released Donnie Darko.

In 2017, he re-released a new Director’s Cut of the film so that he could go into more detail in order to answer the questions that fans had about the movie. He said, “I wanted to provide a bunch more information than was there. It’s a very dense, layered film, and there’s a much bigger world beyond the film.” So, if you’re still confused by the plot, you may just want to watch this new cut and commentary.

5. Shutter Island

Shutter Island is about a US Marshal named Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He is investigating the Ashecliffe Mental Hospital on an island outside of Boston. But in the twist ending, he is told that he was actually a patient named Andrew Laeddis, who was serving time for killing his wife. His doctor was allowing Laeddis to live out his fantasy of being a US Marshal, hoping that bringing it to a conclusion would help snap him out of his dissociative identity disorder. By the end, he relapses, and must be lobotomized. But he says, “This place makes me wonder. Which would be worse – to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?”

This had audiences losing their own minds over the ending. If you were confused as to what really happened in the movie, don’t worry — you’re not alone. Even Leonardo Dicaprio told the director, Martin Scorsese, “I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing.’”

While DiCaprio and Scorsese refuse to reveal the meaning behind the quote, most agree that Andrew Laeddis actually was cured, but he simply could not live with the guilt of his true memories.

The screenwriter, Laeta Kalogridis, adapted the screenplay from the novel by Dennis Lehane. The story was so complex Kalogridis had to make a 40 to 50 page outline, which took her an entire year, before she actually wrote down any of the dialogue. Every time you watch the film over again from another perspective, you will pick up clues about the truth that you never saw before.

4. Total Recall

In the 1990 movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a man named Quaid who pays for a service called “Recall,” which promises to let anyone live through any fantasy scenario. He says that he wants to become a secret agent, but before the procedure finishes, he finds himself caught up in a series of strange events that lead him to the planet Mars.

At the end of the movie, we see him standing on Mars, looking out onto the horizon with his new lover. Fans of the film have debated over the years whether the events of the movie were actually happening, or if it was all part of the fantasy secret agent scenario he was paying for. According to the director, Paul Verhoeven, “Total Recall doesn’t say whether it’s reality or it is a dream. It’s really saying there’s this reality and there’s that reality, and both exist at the same time.” So, basically, everyone is right, and people can stop arguing over it.

3. Inception

The characters of the movie Inception enter dreams within dreams. They are on a mission to insert an idea into the subconscious of a powerful CEO. The only trouble was Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, was haunted by the memory of his wife, and she keeps trying to sabotage their mission. Each of the characters carry a totem with them to help them distinguish dreams from reality.

At the end of the movie, Cobb finds closure in his wife’s death, and he regains custody of his children. The camera focuses on Cobb’s totem, which is a spinning top. It looks as though it may topple at any second, signifying that he is in reality. But the movie ends before we learn if he is truly in a dream or not. Fans everywhere debated with one another over this scene. However, the true message behind the ending of Inception is that once Cobb has his kids, he chooses to make this his new reality. And, according to Christopher Nolan, he would rather the audience draw their own conclusions about what the ending really means.

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a very trippy sci-fi romantic comedy. A couple named Clementine and Joel break up and choose to pay for a procedure that erases the memories of their relationship. It had many fans watching over and over again to try to see any hidden messages. Some people out there have a theory that Clementine and Joel have erased the memory of their relationship multiple times, and they are doomed to repeat this process forever. Since Clementine dyes her hair a lot, they theorize that each color represents a new timeline.

In reality, Clementine truly does change her hair color through the course of just one relationship. Each color represents the “season” of their love story — from green in the “spring” of new love, to blue of the icy cold “winter” of a breakup. The first time they got together, Joel was depressed, and expected Clementine to be his “manic pixie dream girl” who was going to solve all of his problems and make him a happier person. When she failed to live up to that expectation, things fell apart. In the end, Joel and Clementine find one another again, and choose to give their relationship a second chance. They no longer go into the relationship expecting perfection, which will ultimately be healthier for them.

1. Fight Club

The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club… Unless we’re talking about the 1999 movie, of course. After the film premiered, young men everywhere began idolizing Tyler Durden, and real-life fight clubs sprang up across the world. However, for those that walked away from the movie feeling compelled to punch somebody in the face and burn their house down, they completely missed the point.

The audience can relate on some level to Durden’s rejection of consumerism, and “working jobs we hate so we can buy (bleep) we don’t need.” But his all-out rejection of society is incredibly dangerous. It is meant to show how easy it is for desperate men to rally behind radical ideologies. In the final scene, Project Mayhem blows up the entire city. We are meant to recognize that he is crazy, and not someone to be idolized. During an interview, the author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, said: “Ideally, each person would leave Fight Club and go on to live whatever their dream was—that they would have a sense of potential and ability they could carry into whatever it was they wanted to achieve in the world. It wasn’t about perpetuating Fight Club itself.”

Animal behavior is a classic example of a topic most of us believe to be more knowledgeable about than we really are. Often, we turn out to be wrong because we should have checked our sources. However, it could also be because humans have a tendency to try to find their own habits in other species or because we have outdated information that has been disproven since our parents and teachers first mentioned a particular animal.

Here are 10 animal behaviors that humans think they may know… but might be surprised to find they’re all wrong.

10 Opossums Don’t “Play” Dead

Some people think opossums are adorable, while others hate them. But most people make two false assumptions about them: first, that English speakers are allowed to drop the first “o” when talking about them, and second, that trapped opossums feign death to scare off would-be predators. Indeed, the fuzzy creatures will fall down, tongues lolling out, discharging their bowels; they’ll lay—seemingly dead—for minutes to hours on end, making them not only appear dead but also smell too bad for most animals to eat. Humans have mistakenly assumed that this behavior was intentional for so long that “playing opossum” (or, colloquially, “playing ‘possum”) is a commonly used English expression for playing dead.

The sad truth is that the little animals involuntarily enter a catatonic state when taken by surprise. The phenomenon is closer to them being nearly scared to death. They can’t control it, and—what’s worse—they cannot get out of this state which lasts from several minutes to several hours, no matter what’s being done to them. Though their smell might dissuade most predators, opossums become incapable of defending themselves from being moved, injured, or killed.^[1]

9 Raccoons Don’t Wash Their Food

Raccoons look adorable when they take their food to a water source and “wash” it. However, they aren’t actually fussy eaters who worry about germs. What they are, in fact, are extremely tactile animals. They have four to five times the number of nerve endings in their paws that most mammals have. Therefore, they glean a lot of information from touching things. And it turns out that wetting their paws improves the nervous response to tactile input. That is why raccoons “wash their food.”^[2]

8 Not All Fireflies Are Looking to Mate

Fireflies, the common name for members of the Lampyridae family, light up our summer skies. Incredibly, there are more than two thousand species of the little beetles. They may all look the same to us, but there sure are distinctions and variations among them. We tend to assume that they light up in order to find mates, and predictably, that is the case for many of them.

However, not all fireflies are on the prowl in the same sense at night. Some of them use their phosphorescent lighting abilities to hunt. And some even use it to attract lightning bugs of a different species in a fake mating call. The unknowing bug will then fly over to them, only to get trapped and eaten.^[3]

7 Ostriches Don’t Stick Their Heads in the Sand

We all know the expression, “Don’t stick your head in the sand!” It is often associated with the idea of running away from one’s problems. In an extremely bizarre example of anthropomorphism, humans have thought ostriches literally stick their heads in the sand when scared.

Aside from the fact that they would not be able to breathe with their heads in the ground, ostriches aren’t actually dumb enough to think that not seeing danger would actually make it disappear. No potential prey animal that survived that long could possibly have such terrible instincts!

In reality, what looks like ostriches sticking their heads in the ground, is just them putting their beaks into their nests to turn their eggs a few times a day.^[4]

6 Lemmings Do Not Commit Mass Suicide

We all know the sweet—albeit disturbing—image of one lemming jumping off a cliff and the rest of the group following. Much like ostriches, lemmings don’t actually have bad survival instincts. They do, however, migrate when their population density becomes too great.

In the case of migrations, they’ve been known to try to cross a body of water that turns out to be too large for their endurance capacity, in which case many of them will drown. They’ve also been known to accidentally fall off the edge of a cliff.

For the longest time, their behavior and the resulting lemming corpses were inexplicable to humans, causing false theories about lemmings falling out of the sky, exploding, swimming into the ocean until they drowned, and jumping off cliffs.

Most notably, perhaps, these misconceptions were reinforced by the 1958 Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness.^[5]

5 Skunks Do Not Spray Every Time They’re Scared

Under the impression that skunks always spray larger animals, most people panic when they encounter one. In reality, skunks spray as rarely as possible. Indeed they try to avoid using their glands whenever they can because the liquid they secrete is limited and will fully empty itself out before getting replenished. Depending on the skunk, they can spray up to six times before they need to wait two weeks for their glands to recharge. In those two weeks, they are, of course, extra vulnerable. So skunks do, in fact, employ any other method to get away from predators before they resort to spraying.

On an interesting side note, skunks warn us that they are about to spray by doing what looks like a very specific little dance. It involves stomping on the ground and handstands, depending on the species of skunk—though, of course, what we see as a “warning dance” is, in reality, a way to attempt to scare us away. And it will work on any knowledgeable human!^[6]

4 Cats Always Land on Their Feet

Cats are extremely good at jumping, balancing, and righting themselves during a fall. Among other things, their whiskers (which do not only exist on their faces but also on the backs of their legs) help them orient themselves and keep their balance.

However, they do not always land on their feet. It’s a great evolutionary tool, but it isn’t magic. If a cat falls from too short a distance and can’t course correct or if it’s overweight, it might very well have a bad fall and injure itself or die. If you are an apartment-dwelling cat owner, keep your windows closed…^[7]

3 Cats Don’t Play with Their Prey

Another common misconception about cats is that they play with their prey. For instance, when domesticated cats have been observed hunting mice, they toss them around in much the same way as they do one of their toys. In truth, though, it is the opposite: they treat their toys the same way they treat their prey; for many predators, playtime is hunting practice time.

So why do they toss their food around instead of just killing and eating it? Simply put, all cats are highly specialized predators. They are incredibly well-built killing machines from their prey’s perspective, but if anything goes wrong, they can quickly get injured and die. Therefore, they have to be very careful in their hunting technique and avoid any risk of getting scratched or bit back.

Cat owners will, for instance, notice that the mice their pets bring home never die from a bite but almost always from a broken spine, where the cat tossed the mouse with a strong flick of its paw instead of risking getting its face too close to the little rodent.^[8]

2 The Alpha Wolf Doesn’t Beat Down the Pack

We used to believe that wolves (and, by extension, dogs) fought for dominance and that the most dominant male or female of the species became their leader. However, more recent research has disproven this theory.

Indeed, it would seem that the pack leader is no more than the most prolific breeder, who consequently has the most children in the pack, and that wolves and dogs very much just know that “father/mother knows best” and follow their parents’ guidance.

What’s even more interesting is that most wolf “packs” actually turn out to simply be singular wolf families. In that case, the supposed alpha doesn’t even need to outbreed anyone. They are simply pack leader by the fact of being the parent.^[9]

1 Pandas Excel at Mating—in the Wild

Giant pandas are famously kept in captivity in an effort to save the species from extinction. They’re adorable, have the most useless eating habits (they almost exclusively eat bamboo, which has such poor nutritional value to them that they need to eat up to eighty-four pounds of it a day), and have been branded as inept at surviving.

In an incredible twist of irony, though, it turns out that giant pandas barely mate in captivity. The females are only fertile for a very brief period of time. When set up in a scientific context, neither the males nor the females seem particularly interested in copulating. The funny (and very sad) fact is that, in the wild, pandas have no libido problems at all. In fact, it’s hard to put delicately just how much sex they have…

Now that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t die out if left alone. But it sure says a lot about humans that we think any male and female of a species will reproduce if we just lock them up together…^[10]

It’s often been said that songs are largely driven by emotion rather than meaning or complexity of the music. This certainly would explain why a scant three chords and a groovy haircut goes a long way and can help to sell a ton of records. Conversely, sometimes the lyrics can evoke equally powerful feelings — even when a song’s meaning is completely misunderstood.

From The Clash to The Kingsmen, here’s just a fraction of classic tunes that people continue to love, despite completely missing the point of what the songwriters were trying to say.

This is an encore presentation of this list, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. You can read the full list here!

Literary critics have invented a host of phrases and concepts to separate artists from their art. By far the best known is “death of the author,” which comes from a 1967 essay by Roland Barthes. Essentially, the notion is to imagine that the author cannot be asked for their intent, or how their own life experiences shaped their writing, so the theorist’s interpretation is at least as valid as the author’s intention–provided said interpretation is reasonably derived from the text.  

While that’s a worthwhile literary exercise, there can be a problem that comes from many people knowing pieces of writing through cultural osmosis instead of actually reading the text. Indeed, sometimes there are aspects of the text that simply aren’t as haunting as the passages in stories that become touchstones. So interpretations of stories can be demonstrably incorrect. As is the case with…

10. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

When the 1995 Disney adaption of this movie came out, many critics and audience members were united in decrying the supposed borderline desecration of the original story. They pointed to the 1939 or 1920 versions of the story as proper adaptations, which properly portrayed the unsavory nature of Quasimodo, the tragic fate of the gypsy Esmeralda, clergyman Claude Frollo, and so on… and all in the shadow of one of the most celebrated buildings in French history.

It was a criticism completely undermined by how Victor Hugo wrote the original 1831 version of the story. As Lindsay Ellis explains in her highly recommended video essay, in the original novel, Quasimodo is a mere bit part and certainly not a sympathetic figure. There’s no tragic romance with the gypsy Esmeralda, who it turns out was actually a caucasian abandoned as a child. In brief, Hugo didn’t write his novel as a tragedy, so much as a tribute to the cathedral itself, which at the time of writing was less a French institution than a wreck that had been vandalized numerous times over the centuries and neglected.

That Hugo’s sympathies were with the building over the people who lived in and around it is much less surprising to anyone who knows that the original title was “Notre-Dame de Paris” and that he did not approve of the English title change. Perhaps that theme would resonate with misanthropic architecture students, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the crowd pleaser many subsequent adaptations have been  

9. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving’s 1820 story, set in a Dutch community in 1790s New York (loosely based on real events), as we all know is about a schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane, who gets chased by a headless horseman across a bridge. When the horseman can’t catch him, he throws a pumpkin at Crane. Those who read an abridged version in class might remember that it was heavily implied that Brom Bones was pretending to be the Headless Hessian Horseman to scare off Crane so that he could marry Katrina Van Tassel without any competition from superstitious schoolteachers. Considering Ichabod disappears and Bones gets what he wants through pretty underhanded and aggressive means, it seems like this slice of Americana should be a pretty dark, spooky tale where the villain wins in the end, be he ghost or local tough guy in disguise.

Readers have that impression because many of them lost track of how odious a person Irving wrote Ichabod Crane to be. Like many schoolteachers of the time, Crane is described as having romantic interest purely for financial reasons (Irving explicitly describes him as looking at her father’s fortune with “green eyes”). He’s also explicitly a mooch and a glutton, only getting away with it because he knows a lot of local ghost lore. The story also ends with a postscript noting there was talk in Sleepy Hollow that Crane was seen again later, having moved to another community and becoming a judge. However, the locals rejected that because his supposed disappearance made for a better story. If anything, Irving went overboard in assuring audiences not to worry about ol’ Ichabod.  

8. Jabberwocky

Lewis Caroll’s titular monster, which was first introduced to readers in Alice Through the Looking Glass, has been portrayed as a serious beast in such adaptations as the 1985 movie. Even those who know better than to portray such serious versions of the monsters from the poem assume that “slivey toves” and “more raths” from the opening verse mean “unidentifiable beasts,” such as in the version done for The Muppet Show.

Jabberwocky’s origin was in 1855, in a magazine called Misch-Masch, which had a circulation of Lewis Carroll’s immediate family. It was not only meant as a parody of folk poems, but he actually handily explained what all the words meant, so those terms aren’t so much nonsense as coded. For example, “slivy toves” are actually cheese-eating badgers. “Mome Raths” are turtles. Bryllyg is said to be the early afternoon, as it refers to the time of broiling dinner. All things considered, the opening verse is much closer to a slightly offbeat version of Wind in the Willows than it is a surreal menagerie of cryptids.

7. Harrison Bergeron

In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story, equality is perverted so that every exceptional person is limited to be no better than the worst performing person, either by restraints that weigh them down or by zapping them if they think too much. This idea has been embraced by right wing publications like National Review. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia cited it in a ruling requiring tournament golfers to walk between shots.

What they don’t seem to notice is the portrayal of the eponymous character. As critics have more recently pointed out, Bergeron is a ridiculously overpowered human being who not only stands 7-feet tall at age 14, he is also literally capable of flying as he dances (once he removes his restraints that weigh hundreds of pounds). More revealingly, he proclaims himself “emperor,” which probably isn’t something Vonnegut would have a “heroic” character do.

He also makes this declaration and displays his powers on live television, which of course means that the Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers would have no trouble hunting him down and shooting him, as she does seemingly effortlessly in the story. Clearly, Bergeron is a parody of the Howard Roark and John Gault-type supermen that are so perfect and so, so underappreciated in Ayn Rand’s novels. Considering Vonnegut’s left-wing views throughout his writing career, it’s objectivism that’s in his sights at least as much as socialism.

6. The Satanic Verses

When it was published in 1988, author Salman Rushdie struck free publicity gold when his book was interpreted as blasphemous and banned in India while the Ayatollah demanded his head. He surely didn’t celebrate this, as he had to go into hiding from very real threats. Several translators of the book were attacked—one fatally. Considering that the book is a formidable 600 pages long, it’s not so surprising that many people didn’t read the entire story and were content to go off a vague sense of what the novel was about, or a heavily abridged version.

The Satanic Verses tells the intertwined stories of two Southeast Asian Muslims, one born wealthy and the other poor. The pair both survive a plane crash, and the rich one becomes cursed (one way is he smells bad) while the other becomes angelic. Still, the rich one survives the novel while the other commits suicide while wanted for murder (he is unambiguously responsible for several deaths). The offending portions of the book are a secondary narrative of a few dozen pages about the rise of the prophet Mahound, written in an approximation of Koranic verse.

The “Satanic Verses” of the title are an allusion to a claim by the prophet that, for some contradictory statements he made, it must have been Satan pretending to be Allah. In a manner that paralleled a scene that offended many in The Last Temptation of Christ, Rushdie styled his parody of the prophet as a very elaborate dream sequence to give him plausible deniability that he was portraying an in-universe, fictional version. The version many Muslims were given, however, only showed the dream sequence without the larger context, and so inevitably it misled many on the intent of the book.     

5. Valley of the Dolls

These days, this 1966 novel is better known for selling forty million copies than it is for its contents. Its story of three women who try to enter show business but run into such pitfalls as creative compromise, sexual exploitation, and drug addiction (the “dolls” of the title are upper/downer pills) was so salacious for its time that it couldn’t help but become one of, literally, the bestselling books of all-time. No wonder it got a couple film adaptations: a much derided smash hit in 1968, and a TV movie in 1981.

An aspect of the literary juggernaut that, for decades, was held up as the impetus for its success was the titillation of guessing which characters were modeled on which specific real people. For example, was the character that had a pill addiction Judy Garland? Was the over-the-hill singer who stands in the protagonist’s way based on Ethel Merman? According to Jacqueline Susann, the answer to all these guesses was “no” and that all of the characters were invented to fit a theme instead of to reveal the truth behind a real entertainer’s persona. She eventually said of the misconception, “Let them think that, it sells more of my books.”  

4. Dracula

Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic isn’t just one of the two most influential horror novels of the 19th century (alongside Frankenstein). For many outside Central or Eastern Europe, it was the popularity of Dracula that led them to learn of 15th century Romanian ruler Vladislav III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. Deposed early in life, Vlad fought against both the Ottoman Empire and fellow Romanians and eventually died in battle, but not before leaving behind battlefields laden with impaled prisoners of war as an attempt to demoralize his enemies. Such a person seems tailor-made to inspire a monster in human shape.  

Which completely misunderstands Stoker’s real writing process. It’s not so much that he didn’t carefully study Vlad Tepisch’s life for inspiration for his iconic character, as there’s no evidence that he even knew the bygone monarch had existed. In 1890 (the year he began working on it) he noted that he read a book on Westphalia and came across the word Dracula, but he misinterpreted it as being the local word for “evil.” While Vlad is from approximately the same area of Europe as Dracula, Vlad was certainly not much associated with Transylvania, which would have been a key connection to invoking the memory of the historical figure. In short, Stoker seemed to have more lucked into the historical echoes than anything else.  

3. The Great Gatsby

Nearly 80 years after its initial disappointing release in 1925, F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age triumph sells roughly 500,000 copies a year. It’s resonated with readers enough to make its way to the silver screen in 1926, 1949, 1976, and 2013. Each release was greeted with a critical thrashing and to very mixed results at the box office.  

But that’s not to say readers, who generally regard themselves as more astute than movie fans, don’t mistake Fitzgerald’s intention with Gatsby. As explained by Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian, most people misinterpret Gatsby as being a suave charmer. There are a few telling descriptions that undermine this: His pink suits (tacky even in the Roaring ’20s) and his bewilderment in the face of the high society that narrator Nick Carraway takes for granted. That’s why he overcompensates for his parties, doing such things as hire entire orchestras. Gatsby is a dreamer, pining for the fantasy version from his youth of his neighbor Daisy Buchanan, not a man with his feet on the ground in the present. Not that this dissonance is anything new: Fitzgerald wrote back in the day that, “Of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one has the slightest idea what the book was about.”

2. Don Quixote

It’s been just over 400 years since Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece was first published in English. Since then, the image of a nobleman putting a washing basin on his head, taking a nag for a noble steed and his trusty assistant Sancho Panza on a number of delusional, pointless quests in an attempt to restore chivalry to the land has only become more poignant. Don Quixote is both absurd and loveable, and many readers have mixed feelings about the ending where he regains his sanity enough to dictate in his will that his niece be disinherited if she marries a man who reads books of chivalry.  

As recounted in the New York Times, the title character actually comes across as much less sympathetic when you really look at the text. While Quixote means well, Cervantes does not skimp on the details of the pain he causes. Not just to his assistant Sancho Panza (who gets beat up because Quixote doesn’t pay a hotel bill), but even mules that can’t drink from their water trough because Quixote insists the water is holy. It’s an aspect of the story that is understandably omitted from adaptations such as Man of La Mancha, which contributed to those interpretations being dismissed as “kitsch.”

1. Slaughterhouse Five

Well, when an author writes as many famous satirical, morally complex, and whimsical stories as Kurt Vonnegut did, it’s not surprising that he’d have multiple works end up on lists like this. So it is with his 1969 anti-war classic (that he self-deprecatingly called his “famous Dresden novel”) about a WWII veteran named Billy Pilgrim, whose subjective experience of his life jumps back and forward through time. Within the intro of the book, Vonnegut quotes an associate who asked authors writing anti-war books why they didn’t instead write an “anti-glacier book.” Meaning, of course, that the human tendency towards war is as implacable as glaciers.

A similar sentiment is expressed by the alien race called the Tralfamadorians, who consider their own atrocities and eventual destruction of the universe as utterly inevitable, because they can see the entirety of all the time they live, all at once. Hence many have viewed it as a pro-fatalism book as they wonder whether the events of the book are real or not.

The text makes explicit that the aliens don’t exist. Within the book, the aliens Billy Pilgrim meets, and the environment they place him in (specifically a zoo), are described as something he read in a novel by hack sci-fi author Kilgore Trout. Further, Pilgrim does not express anything to anyone else about the aliens until after a plane crash that leaves him unconscious (i.e., likely with brain damage and trauma). As Michael Carson of Wrath-BearingTree.com points out, when Pilgrim first discusses the lessons he supposedly learned about the inevitability of war and the atrocities that come from it, it’s with a war hawk named Rumfoord, who Vonnegut mocks. Pilgrim merely echoes Rumfoord and then says he learned all of what Rumfoord told him on Tralfamadore.

On the other hand, Vonnegut also makes it explicit that the Tralfamadorians believe they will eventually destroy the universe. Vonnegut’s message isn’t that war and atrocities are inevitable, but that to follow this fatalist philosophy (that could come from absurd aliens that are the result of head trauma) makes its adherents into puppets, and leads to disaster for everyone.     

Adam & Dustin Koski also wrote the occult horror novel Not Meant to Know. Feel free to read and misinterpret it.

It’s often been said that songs are largely driven by emotion rather than meaning or complexity of the music. This certainly would explain why a scant three chords and a groovy haircut goes a long way and can help to sell a ton of records. Conversely, sometimes the lyrics can evoke equally powerful feelings — even when a song’s meaning is completely misunderstood.

From The Clash to The Kingsmen, here’s just a fraction of classic tunes that people continue to love, despite completely missing the point of what the songwriters were trying to say.

10. “Train In Vain” (The Clash)

Ever since its release from the seminal London Calling double album, “Train In Vain” arrived at the station shrouded in mystery — largely in part to the track not being listed on the sleeve or back cover. The song name would also become muddled after fans began calling it by its chorus, “Stand By Me,” as well as the actual title never being mentioned in the lyrics; furthermore, the toe-tapping tune has absolutely nothing to do with transportation or working out. Now 40 years later, the heart of the controversy lies in a simple printing snafu and a stubborn girlfriend.  

Written by Mick Jones, “Train In Vain” was originally intended to be used as a flexi-disk promotion for the British music magazine, NME. But when the deal fell through at the last minute, the band decided to tack it onto the master of their recently completed album. This, however, resulted in one small problem: the artwork, lyrics, liner notes, etc. had already gone to the printer. As a result, it landed on Side Four as Track 5 with the title crudely scratched on the original vinyl in the needle run-off area. Subsequent pressings would later include the proper title on the album — although in the U.S., it contained the variation, “Train In Vain (Stand By Me).”

The story behind the meaning is rooted in Jones’ ex-girlfriend, Slits guitarist Viv Albertine. Although Jones has remained somewhat tight-lipped about the doomed relationship, the feminist rock icon has been more candid: “I’m really proud to have inspired that but often he won’t admit to it. He used to get the train to my place in Shepherds Bush and I would not let him in. He was bleating on the doorstep. That was cruel.”  

The all-female Slits supported The Clash on their White Riot tour — and the alluring Albertine enjoyed a well-earned reputation of breaking many punk hearts, including Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders, and Joe Strummer.

9. “There She Goes” (The La’s)

An undeniably catchy, jangly ballad, “There She Goes” appears to be a simple tale of unrequited love. However, the lyrics ”Racing through my brain… pulsing through my vein” reveal a not-so-innocent side. Additionally, frontman Lee Mavers’ eccentric and reclusive behavior only furthered drug-fueled speculation that the popular track drew inspiration from poppies. Yep, it’s about heroin.

Released as a single in 1988, the track earned the proto Britpop band from Liverpool earned critical praise before typical band infighting and chaos ensued. Although the song would be re-released two years later on their debut album under the Go! Disc label, The La’s had already been relegated to one-hit wonder status.

Later, the alt Christian-rock outfit Sixpence None The Richer covered the tune and enjoyed a major hit stateside — proving Jesus has a place in his heart for all saints and sinners.  

8. “Fire and Rain” (James Taylor)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY

This one’s also about smack. Sorry. Taylor wrote “Fire and Rain” as a deeply personal reflection of life’s bumpy road, capturing all of its twists and turns and pains and joys. A remarkable feat considering he was only 20 years old at the time. From his second album, Sweet Baby James, the song’s structure unfolds like a three-act play with a beginning, middle, and end. Taylor explains in a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone:

“‘Fire and Rain’ has three verses. The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend. The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it… And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs (psychiatric facility) which lasted about five months.”

The end result earned the young singer/songwriter a multi-platinum record and a career that remains strong today over five decades later. But the “monkey on his back” would become a recurring affliction. Taylor first began using heroin after arriving in New York City in 1966 — a habit that escalated in London while briefly signed to The Beatles’ Apple Records label. Despite his personal and professional setbacks, Taylor has sold over 100 million records, and in 2000 became enshrined in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

7. “Dancing With Myself” (Billy Idol)

In his tell-all memoir, Dancing With Myself, the title is both metaphor and the name of one of his biggest hits. It’s also a cheeky double entendre for spanking the monkey. You know, the five knuckle shuffle. Jackin’ the beanstalk. Badgering the witness. Jerkin’ the gherkin. Okay, enough already — it’s about masturbation.

The song was first recorded in 1979 by Idol’s previous band, Gen X, and then re-released as a single in 1981 for the singer’s solo launch. Written by Idol and Gen X bassist, Tony James, the song was inspired in part during a Gen X tour of Japan in 1979. According to Idol, he and James visited a Tokyo disco, where they were surprised to find most of the crowd there dancing alone in front of a wall of mirrors instead of with each other.

However, when pressed on the subject, Idol later conceded there’s more than one layer: “There’s a masturbatory element to it, too. There’s a masturbatory element in those kids dancing with their own reflections. It’s not too much further to sexual masturbation. The song really is about these people being in a disenfranchised world where they’re left bereft dancing with their own reflections.”

Umm, sure, Billy, whatever you say. The song’s music video (which saw heavy rotation in MTV’s halcyon days) features a half-naked Idol thrusting and grinding with post-apocalyptic zombies. Oddly, there’s no mention of social anxiety, disillusionment or the despair of ennui. But then what do you expect from someone who kicks off his autobiography prologue with sordid tales of “never-ending booze, broads, and bikes, plus a steady diet of pot, cocaine, ecstasy, smack, opium, quaaludes, and reds.”

Long live rock & roll!

6. “Imagine” (John Lennon)

On the surface, this simple piano-driven ballad is a dreamy elixir for the soul, calling for an end to war, borders, religion, greed and hunger. The song would not only become a modern hymn of sorts for world peace and unity, but also helped solidify Lennon’s enduring legacy as a stand-alone rock and roll deity. But the ex-Beatle, who clearly understood the power of celebrity, was also a bit cryptic with the hidden message — one which he later characterized as his way of delivering a “sugarcoated” communist manifesto.

Masterfully arranged and co-produced by pre-felon, Phil Spector, in 1971, “Imagine” remains as relevant today as ever and ranks #3 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs Of All-Time. But the main takeaway that’s often overlooked isn’t just some hippie ode to all love one another — but rather encourages people to use revolutionary methods and ideas to make the world a better place. Does this mean John Lennon spent his free time puffing on cigars with Fidel Castro in Havana or riding on the back of Che Guevara’s motorcycle through Bolivian jungles? Hardly.

Lennon much preferred the company of his wife and co-collaborator, Yoko Ono, at their spectacular estate in Ascot (and location for the song’s music video). Furthermore, Lennon set the record straight regarding party affiliations, stating “I am not particularly a communist and I do not belong to any movement.”

5. “Poker Face” (Lady Gaga)

Anyone who saw Gaga on Season 5 of American Horror Story knows this lady can get down. In fact, her convincing performance even won her a Golden Globe — which shouldn’t have been terribly surprising given her impressive real-life talent for switch-hitting. And no, we’re not talking baseball. As for that little ditty that launched Gaga’s career into another galaxy, “Poker Face” has little to do with playing cards. It’s all about bi-sexuality.

Co-written by Gaga with her longtime collaborator, Red One, the track is said to be a tribute to past conquests in Gaga’s wild ride to fame and fortune. It was first released in 2008 off her debut album (and prophetically named), Fame, and went on to become one of the best selling singles of all time. Featuring more hooks than a Bass Pro Shop, the song also benefits from that over-the-top accompanying music video, a wildly sexy romp that has since been viewed more times than every Kardashian sex tape combined. Well, maybe.

Unlike other songs on this list, the lyrics are fairly transparent and only get lost in the blinding glare cast by the singer’s hyper-radiant star. Nonetheless, it’s doesn’t take much imagination to decipher what she means when she playfully teases, “I’m just bluffin’ with my muffin.” Got it, Gaga. Message received, no distortion.

4. “Every Breath You Take” (The Police)

Ironically, the cops should’ve locked up these guys a long time ago for allowing this unofficial Stalker Anthem to become such a massive hit. Actually, it’s not their fault — but you’d think that someone as smart as Sting (only his name is stupid) would have anticipated that his lyrics would become so widely misinterpreted as both a sappy love song and a license to creep. Unfortunately, the subtext about a possessive lover with an Orwellian zeal for spying never quite registered with fans. Perhaps the band should’ve named the album something other than Synchronicity.

Sting wrote “Every Breath You Take” during a critical juncture in his life — both personally and professionally. Although The Police had enjoyed a mercurial run with sold-out arenas and multiple-platinum records, Sting felt cornered and wanted out. He had also become embroiled in an affair with his future wife,Trudie Styler, while inconveniently still married to her best friend, Frances Tomelty. Awkward. So, like any rock star with lots of money and access to private jets, he took off for the Caribbean, where he found refuge on Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye estate. There, he penned the song that became the band’s biggest hit and won the 1983 Grammy for Song Of The Year.

In a 1993 interview, Sting explains the inspiration: “I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn’t realize at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control.”

3. “Death Or Glory” (The Clash)

The London-based rockers return with another entry on the list, which shouldn’t be a surprise from the group simply known as “the only band that matters.” Also from their London Calling album, “Death or Glory” is a parody about those who talk a big game but fail to back it up or wind up selling out to the man.

An upbeat tempo and satisfying melody accompanies possibly the greatest lyric in rock & roll history: “He who f**** nuns, will later join the church.” The amusing metaphor hammers home the point that those who fight hardest against conformity will eventually become what they vowed to avoid. It was apparently one of the band’s favorite songs on the album, recorded at Wessex Studios in Highbury, London for CBS records. According to legend, their eccentric producer, Guy Stevens, ran around the studio like a madman, throwing chairs and ladders during the session and even dumped a bottle of wine on Joe Strummer’s piano.

Interestingly, the song also reflects the band’s acceptance of change in terms of dealing with their own success while trying to stay loyal to their working class roots. Sadly, Strummer passed away in 2002, but unlike previous generations of rockers who pledged to die before they got old, this frontman actually did it.

2. “Born In The U.S.A.” (Bruce Springsteen)

Although many still believe this 1984 mega-hit reflects America’s ass-kicking greatness, the true meaning tells a much different story. But the confusion is understandable. The easy-to-remember chorus coupled with Springsteen’s trademark gravelly, blue-collar vocals practically screams baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. The Boss, however, wrote it as a scathing indictment of the U.S. military-industrial complex and the debacle of the Vietnam War.

Nonetheless, beginning with Ronald Reagan, politicians continue to misuse the song as a propaganda tool on the campaign trail. Perhaps taking time to actually listen to the lyrics, or better yet, having the words explained to them by the man himself would help to clarify the matter: “when you think about all the young men and women that died in Vietnam, and how many died since they’ve been back — surviving the war and coming back and not surviving — you have to think that, at the time, the country took advantage of their selflessness. There was a moment when they were just really generous with their lives.”

In “Born in the USA,” Springsteen pays a specific homage to the Hell experienced at Khe Sanh, where in 1968, a U.S. Marine garrison bravely withstood 77 days of relentless bombing in one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war.

Fittingly for our purpose, Springsteen once called “Born in the USA” the “most misunderstood song since ‘Louie, Louie.’”

1. “Louie Louie” (The Kingsmen)

No list about misunderstood songs would be complete without including that 1963 golden oldie, “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen. Featuring mostly indecipherable lyrics, it would eventually become the most recorded song in history with well over 1,000 versions, ranging from Barry White to Motorhead. But the bizarre, serpentine path that led to the rock n roll pantheon is as murky as the garbled vocals laid down in one take by an obscure, teen-aged garage band from Portland, Oregon.

In an equally strange, ironic twist, golden-voiced Harry Belafonte deserves some credit for the song’s wild odyssey. After all, his 1956 chart-topping album “Calypso” would inspire a doo-wop singer in L.A. named Richard Berry to hastily write down the original “Louie Louie” lyrics on a roll of toilet paper (yes, really) in hopes of cashing in on the popular island sound craze. In 1957, Berry and his band, The Pharaohs, recorded the track about a Jamaican sailor yearning for a girl as he laments to a bartender named Louie.  

Although the song enjoyed decent regional airplay, Berry sold the rights a few years later for $750 to help pay for his wedding (he would be justly compensated years later). Then in 1961, a singer in the Pacific Northwest named Rockin’ Robin Roberts covered the tune with his band, The Wailers — and that’s when The Kingsmen finally enter the picture.

Childhood school friends and bandmates Lynn Easton and Jack Fry had heard Roberts’ version playing on local jukeboxes around town and decided to try a recording of their own. And so on April 6, 1963, after coughing up 50 bucks to pay for a quickie studio session, the boys walked into Northwest Inc. Recording and a date with infamy.

The small studio had been set up for an instrumental arrangement only, forcing Ely to get up on his toes to be heard on a microphone dangling from the ceiling. Adding to the difficulty, he also wore braces at the time, producing his soon-to-be-legendary mumbled words. By October that year, the single had raced up the charts, fueled largely by the raw sound and its perceived obscene message.

The single was banned by several radio stations and declared indecent by the Governor of Indiana — and later investigated by the FBI. Eventually, the boys from Bridgetown would only be found guilty of poor enunciation (as well as Fry botching the third verse two bars too soon) but no charges were ever filed. It should be noted, however, Easton can be heard yelling “f***” at the fifty-four second mark after dropping his drumstick.