Have you ever sung a song, one you know very well, one pretty much everybody knows, and stopped to consider the lyrics. There are some very strange traditional songs out there – Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses with its supposed allusions to the plague or the last line in the first verse of the Dutch national anthem which makes every patriotic lowlander pledge allegiance to, um, the King of Spain… whilst singing as William of Orange. Wait, what?

Here we have a list of lyrics in popular songs, rather than traditional ones. From the intentionally offensive to the bizarrely philosophical, these songs show that popular music doesn’t need to be all about love, money and fast cars. Sometimes they can confuse the hell out of you.

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10 ‘Plush’ by The Stone Temple Pilots

Ah, Grunge. Not exactly the most upbeat musical genre ever, but it does get the blood pumping. This song, however, with its slow-build-to-soaring lyrics and guitars that don’t sound like their being dragged through a sack of pennies like in other grunge tracks, sounds kind of upbeat… until you read the lyrics.

It seems to be about a guy who has kidnapped and murdered a little girl. Unfortunately for lovers of this smile-making bit of 90s nostalgia, that is indeed what the song is about. Or is it? Lead singer Scott Weiland told VH1: “A girl was kidnapped and then later found tragically murdered back in the early part of the Nineties. So it gave me fuel to write the words to this song. However, this song is not about that, really; it’s sort of a metaphor for a lost, obsessive relationship.”

So the lines ‘And I feel, and I feel/When the dogs begin to smell her/Will she smell alone’ is a metaphor? Whatever you say, Scott.^[1]

9 ‘Cola’ by Lana Del Rey

How offensive could a song about a fizzy brown beverage be? Turns out, pretty damned offensive. Based on a quote about American women by her Scottish boyfriend, the Californian songstress released this single from her 2012 album ‘Born to Die’. Her boyfriend had told her that he believed that American women “walk around as if your pussies tasted like Pepsi-Cola, as if you’d wrap yourself into an American flag to sleep”. Fair enough.

Another inspiration for the lyrics was, more worryingly perhaps, the now-infamous Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The lines “I got sweet taste for men who’re older/ It’s always been so it’s no surprise/ Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds/ And it’s making me crazy/ All he wants to do is party with his pretty baby” don’t quite sit right in the wake of Weinstein’s crimes coming to light. Lana Del Rey has since retired the song from public performances. Probably a wise move.^[2]

8 ‘He Liked to Feel It’ by The Crash Test Dummies

This alt-rock band from Winnipeg, Canada are used to recording some pretty weird songs. Their big hit released in 1993, ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ (catchy title!), included lyrics about children with various physical deformities and ailments and one kid whose parents drag him along to a Pentecostal church. Pretty odd. But their 1996 single ‘He Liked To Feel It’ is even stranger because it is more vague.

The song tells the story of a kid who enjoys taking his teeth out. He first pulls out a tooth by tying some string around it and attaching it to a doorknob. The kid also likes to show his friend and tells them that he: ‘liked to feel it when it came out’. He then moves on to a more creative means of dental extraction by tying it to his dog and throwing a stick for the pooch to chase. But before he can enact this plan, his dad shows up with some pliers and angrily yanks his son’s tooth out himself. ‘That wasn’t how he liked to have his teeth pulled out/He wouldn’t tell us how it felt when it came out’. Compulsive, exhibitionist self-mutilation from a child, coupled with some parental abuse? The video is weird too. So is Brad Roberts’ deep baritone vocals in an indie folk/rock group. That was pop music in the 90s, kids.^[3]

7 ‘The Macarena’ by Los Del Rio

Every wedding staged between 1993 and around 2005 included a dance floor full of drunken guests, mainly over the age of 50, fumbling around in an attempt to recreate the famous dance in the music video for this Spanish novelty track. This tradition was probably more prevalent than cake and white dresses during this era. But what are the two old Spaniards singing about in the annoyingly catchy chorus? If you don’t speak Spanish, you probably don’t know. Brace yourselves:

‘Macarena has a boyfriend who’s called…
who’s called the last name Vitorino,
and while he was taking his oath as a conscript
she was giving it to two friends …Aaay!’

Soooooo… Macarena isn’t just the name of a dance, it’s the name of a girl whose boyfriend is off in the army. And she cheats on him with two of his pals.

Why?^[4]

6 ‘Angel of Death’ by Slayer

Yes, metal bands are no strangers to controversial, gory and explicit lyrics. It would be really rebellious if some Norwegian black metal band released a song about buttercups, but hey, conformists will conform! The weird thing about this song is, given the title and the era, you’d expect it to be about the devil, maybe even devil-worship, or the battle in Heaven.

No, it’s about the Holocaust.

Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman is a real history buff. His very particular (and as far as I can tell, sole) area of interest is Germany from the years 1938ish to 1945. So, Nazi stuff. He collects artefacts and antiques that can be described as a bit right-wing, and has penned a couple of songs inspired by leading Nazi figures – this particular thrash metal classic was about Josef Mengele, the evil doctor of Auschwitz. Jewish groups were outraged, the album, ‘Reign in Blood’, was dropped by DefJam before release and all because of a misunderstanding regarding the song’s intent. The suggestion was that Slayer were condoning and even supporting Nazi-style anti-Semitism:

‘feeding on the screams of the mutants he’s creating/pathetic harmless victims left to die/rancid Angel of Death flying free’.

Hm. Not exactly glowing praise of the Nazi. Slayer’s legend of an axe-man Kerry King commented: “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it. Can you see it as a documentary, or do you think Slayer’s preaching fucking World War II?”^[5]

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5 ‘Aserejé’ by Las Ketchup

Now we can get to the Satanism. Or, at least, supposed Satanism. Even without the touted suggestion of occult lyrics, this very Macarena-esque earworm’s lyrics are pretty out there anyway.

So it seems that a guy called Diego walks into a club and : “With the moon in his pupils/and his turquoise suit/it seems smuggled/And there, where not even a soul can be squeezed in/He gets in whatever it takes/possessed by the ragatanga rhythm”.

This player comes into a club, knows the DJ who then plays his request; a ‘Midnight Hymn’… Satan, is that you?

The satanic imagery may be in there to highlight the sexy danger this Diego guy possesses, as opposed to being some nefarious call-out to devil-worshippers everywhere. Where the song does skirt closer to controversy is that Diego is referred to as a ‘Rastafarian Afro-Gypsy’, whatever that may be.^[6]

4 ‘Star Star’ by The Rolling Stones

Nothing is hidden or subliminal in this one, The Stones put it all out there with this song. When you hear the lyrics, you may wonder if there is a saltier person on earth than Mick Jagger. Maybe that’s why he is so wrinkly.

Despite the song seemingly being about a star-crazed groupie who went from guy to guy simply to bed famous people, legend has it that it’s actually about pop icon Carly Simon. Jagger had provided backing vocals to Carly Simon’s era-defining pop song ‘You’re So Vain’. Rumour has it that she and Jagger had hit it off in more than just a “You like playing Uno? Get out, I like playing Uno too!” kind of way. But it wasn’t meant to be for these rock icons, Simon instead deciding to marry soft-voiced folk singer James Taylor. Feeling a little put out by this (I mean, who turns down Mick Jagger?), the rubber-lipped singer penned a song so crude, so on-the-nose about Simon that it beggars belief. Questions remain – what trick did she do with fruit? And did she ever get to ‘meet’ John Wayne?

Despite the tasteless, mean lyrics, and despite not knowing who it’s truly about, (it’s obviously Carly Simon), it really is one hell of a jam.^[7]

3 ‘The Electrician’ by Scott Walker

Another act that includes a guy with a beautiful but unbelievably strange deep voice. The Walker Brothers, whether together or Scott Walker by himself, are no strangers to strangeness. I mean, they aren’t even brothers – ‘Walker’ is a stage surname for both Scott (Noel Scott Engel) and John Walker (John Joseph Maus… why change that?). After success in the 60s and early 70s, Scott decided to go solo. And very, very avante-garde.

This 1978 single from the Walker Brothers’ final album ‘Night Flights’ feels like a bad dream. And when you delve into The Electrician’s lyrics, you’ll know why. It’s about torture. And not any old torture, the song is from the perspective of a CIA agent/torturer in Latin America (or as some suggest, a torturer in Augustin Pinochet’s Chile). Let’s allow the lyrics speak for themselves:

‘He’s drilling through the Spiritus Sanctus tonight/Through the dark hip falls/Screaming, “Oh, you mambos/ Kill me and kill me and kill me”/If I jerk the handle/You’ll die in your dreams/If I jerk the handle, jerk the handle/ You’ll thrill me and thrill me and thrill me.’^[8]

2 ‘Australia’ by The Manic Street Preachers

When the ‘Manics’ played this song down under during the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour (A select squad of the best rugby union players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales that tour a southern hemisphere nation every 4 years), it couldn’t have been more fitting – it’s called ‘Australia’, they were in Australia, the crowd was mainly from Britain and Ireland, so really far from home, and the song is about Australia being really for away from Britain. Nice! Done and done.

But if you know the real inspiration for bassist Nicky Wire’s lyrics, it’s not exactly the advert for visiting Oz it seems to be. Wire envisioned the furthest place from the band’s native Wales he could imagine because he was really depressed and frustrated after fellow band member Richey Edwards went missing, rumoured to have taken his life by jumping off the Severn Bridge –

‘Praying for the wave to come now/It must be for the very last time/It’s twelve o’clock till midnight/There must be someone to blame/I want to fly and run till it hurts/Sleep for a while and speak no words/In Australia’.

Sad.^[9]

1 ‘Witchita Lineman’ by Glenn Campbell

Don’t you think that every great song includes a healthy dose of existentialism? Correct, nobody does. This classic does, though.

The song gives us two fragmented stories – an American telephone lineman dutifully working up and down the nation – so far so Americana. The second story shows his longing for his family, imagining that he can hear his wife in the hum of the lines he’s working on. Or it may be that he’s simply listening in on fragmented conversations random people are having through the phone lines. Some think it’s an anthem to the joys of hard work in quiet solitude, others hear the melancholia of a lone man in the wide open backcountry of the US, a speck in an ocean of grass and gas stations and ghost towns. Either way, this song, seemingly unfinished, leaves the listener enchanted but also thinking ‘wait…what’s going on here?’^[10]

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Some folks say that patience is a virtue or that good things come to those who wait. Instant gratification isn’t something you should expect and may not even be a good thing. But all things in moderation is another idiom worth keeping in mind. You don’t want to wait too long for something or else it can be a little out of hand. Despite that, people will wait for a long, long time for certain things. Here are 10…

10. There’s a Nearly 40 Year Waitlist For Japanese Beef Croquettes 

Have you ever gone into a business like a hair salon or a butcher and been forced to wait in line, maybe even take a number? It can be frustrating if the place is busy while you just stand there and hope you’re next to be served. Now imagine if your number hadn’t been called for 38 years.

In Japan, there’s a family-owned butcher called Asahiya, and they are known for their Kobe beef croquettes. They are potato and beef dumplings that are covered in a crispy coating and deep-fried. That sounds tasty enough and you have to assume they are since the waiting list to buy a box in 2022 was 38 years long. 

Other croquettes only have a four-year wait which you can probably just nap your way through, but their “extreme croquettes” come in at nearly four decades. What makes them extreme? Marketing.

The owner of the shop realized when he started online sales that people didn’t like to pay premium prices for beef online. So he sold croquettes for $1.80 when they had $2.70 worth of beef in them. It’s a proof-of-concept product that they sell at a loss to prove how good they are in the hopes you’ll come and buy something else at a normal price. 

The limited supply comes from the fact that not only are they sold at a loss, but they are handmade fresh every day with local ingredients. It’s impossible to keep up with the demand, especially when word got out about how good they are, so the wait list keeps growing. In 2024, it hit 43 years. 

9. The Waitlist for Packers Season Tickets is 30 to 50 Years

Americans love football, just look at the hype over the Superbowl every year even among people who ironically don’t like football at all. People will watch it just for the commercials or the halftime show. That’s solid marketing by the NFL. But for diehard fans, being at a game in person is the real treat and few fans love the game more than Green Bay Packers fans.

If you’re a true Cheesehead you want to get season tickets. Just imagine seeing every Packers game for the entire season. Except, for most fans, that’s exactly what’s going to happen – you’re going to imagine it. The waitlist for season tickets is decades long. Michelle Hensel’s parents put her name on the list when she was two years old. She got her tickets when she was 49. 

The decades-long list has 147,000 names on it. Every year those people get a postcard telling them where they are on the list. Every year they move up a few places as the glacier slowly but surely moves you towards getting your shot.  

When the time comes, you get warned it’s approaching, then a letter tells you when the tickets are available, and then you have a window in which to pay for the tickets. If you miss your window, you get dumped and the next person on the list has a chance. Numbers only move by about 100 to 200 every year.

8. The Wait for a Free Flag from the Canadian Government is a Century

If you’re a patriotic sort of person, then you probably fly your country’s flag somewhere around your home. In Canada, you can even get a flag that has flown over the Canadian Parliament on what is known as the Peace Tower, one of Canada’s most recognizable landmarks. Every day they raise a new flag above the tower. Old flags are given out, free of charge, to any Canadian who requests one. 

While it sounds very cool that you can just ask for such a flag, you need to remember there can only be 365 available in any given year and there are over 30 million Canadians, not to mention institutions that may ask for one or people who just want a second, third, or fourth one. That means you’re getting put on a waitlist if you’re interested, which is currently over 100 years long. 

About 20 years ago if you requested one you’d probably have it by now. Some people got theirs ahead of schedule, a mere 14 years into an anticipated 17-year wait. But the list only grows longer as more people learn about it and that puts the newest people basically requesting flags for their children or grandchildren. 

7. There’s a 5-Year Wait For Service Dogs That Didn’t Graduate

You’ve probably seen service dogs out in the world before. These dogs have to go through some rigorous training to meet the demands of aiding a person who can’t see, or whatever other service they provide. So what happens when a dog can’t actually do the job? Like any school, service dog school has failures. 

Turns out you can adopt a failed service dog, as depressing as that title makes them sound, and they are in high demand. Just because they didn’t make it as a service dog doesn’t mean they’re not well-trained. If you want one, depending on which service you’re trying to adopt from, the wait can be as little as a few months but up to a few years in some cases. 

Guide Dogs of America doesn’t call them failed service dogs, they call them Career Change Dogs because isn’t that adorable? It’s a five-year wait and they also don’t accept new names on the list, either. 

6. There’s a New York Restaurant That Is Working Through a 10-Year Waitlist

You knew restaurants had to be on this list somewhere, right? They may be the most common thing most of us have heard of that sometimes requires a substantial wait period. If there’s an exclusive, high-brow restaurant in town with a fancy chef, you could wait months to get into some places. And that’s if you’re lucky. 

There’s a New York restaurant that stopped taking reservations in 2014 and is still filling old ones in 2024. Damon Baehrel only seats 20 people which is part of the reason the waitlist got so out of hand. It’s also in the basement of the chef’s house and he works alone, with no sous chefs or other staff, so he’s arguably limiting his workload by keeping things kind of tight with bookings. 

The restaurant has no menu, it’s literally just whatever the chef cooked that day. He’s the sort of guy who forages local ingredients and then makes your meal for you. Something like a 20-item tasting menu. Reviews say the wait is worth it. 

5. It Can Take 12 to 14 Years to Get Subsidized Housing in the US and Canada

Both Canada and the US offer subsidized housing for people unable to afford the cost of rent. However, the demand for housing has always far exceeded availability in both countries. In parts of the US, waiting lists for affordable housing are about seven years long. That’s when the lists are still open and accepting new applicants. In 2021, the people in San Diego who received housing vouchers had waited an average of 12 years.

Canada follows the American trend. Those hoping for an affordable, one-bedroom home in Toronto, one of Canada’s most expensive cities, could wait 14 years. In Montreal, the wait time was 6 years. In all of these cases, you can see the issue. Where exactly do you live for years before you can get a place you can afford?

In Canada, community housing used to be a government responsibility but in the early 90s the federal government made it a provincial matter. Provinces then made it a municipal matter and that meant only cities with a surplus of money could even think of affording such things. The result was that barely any construction happened thereafter. Thus, the wait lists continued to grow.

4. It Takes 3 to 5 Years to Get a Kidney Transplant 

Your kidneys are doing some good work in your body and it’s always a good idea to have at least one that works properly. But sometimes things happen and your kidneys fail. What then? Luckily for most people, kidney transplants are often very successful and you can continue to live a good life after getting a new one. But we did skip a step in the middle there and that’s waiting for one to turn up.

While people who need new hearts are often on the list for a shorter period, what could even be a few days but also up to several months, kidneys are a little different. If you’re on the transplant waiting list, you can expect to wait three to five years. 

That wait time is the average. Some parts of the US will see you wait even longer. Of course, the opposite can be true as well. Your circumstances could get you bumped up the list to a much sooner operation but, again, that’s your average. 

3. You’ll Wait 13 Years For Vienna Philharmonic Tix

If you’re a fan of orchestral music, then you are familiar with the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the most famous orchestras in the world. The orchestra has existed since 1842 and is famously run by the musicians themselves, not some director. They have only used guest conductors for the better part of a century now. 

The orchestra is so famous that every show is sold out and has been so pretty much forever. If you wish to subscribe to their concert series, you can do so by putting your name on the waitlist for tickets. It’s about 13 years long right now. 

2. You Can Wait 5 Years for a Rolex Daytona

Most of us have a few brand names in mind when we think of things that signify wealth. Things that rich people buy. Like Cristal champagne. Or a Ferrari. Or a Rolex. But just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you get faster service. If you want a Rolex Daytona watch, be prepared to wait up to 5 years for one.

According to jewelers who sell the watches, there are actually a few reasons for a longer wait. First, Rolex isn’t rushing these things out. If they have precious metal parts included, they might take longer to manufacture. But there’s also the discretion of your seller. Jewelers don’t really do the “first come first serve” thing. Instead, they give preferential service to favored customers. 

If your watch seller likes you, or you have already spent a lot of money there and they know you’ll spend more, they’ll bump you up the list. If you’re just some stranger looking for a watch, expect a much longer wait. 

1. Nursing Home Spots in Beijing Have a 100-Year Wait List

Here’s a concept that’s hard to wrap your head around. If you or a loved one gets to be a certain age and they can no longer adequately care for themselves, where do they go? A nursing home is the typical response here. But how much time do you have, if you’re already a person who needs to be in a nursing home, to wait to get into a nursing home? 

In China, the wait for some spots in Beijing nursing homes has hit 100 years. That means, to safely secure one, you’re going to want to reserve a spot for your unborn child and hope for the best. 

To be fair, this was not all nursing homes, it was the most popular nursing home. And, no doubt, this place must have been the Ritz of nursing homes to develop a wait list that long. Ironically, the deputy director of the facility was quick to point out they don’t even have the best facilities, but they do pride themselves on their service. 

The turnover rate is very low with a few dozen to maybe 100 openings per year with 1,100 beds total and with such a massive population that China has, there are far more people who want to get in than there are spots available.