Lewd Lyrics Hidden in Hit Songs
For Decades, Songwriters Have Been Sneaking Hidden, Sometimes Dirty, Lyrics Into Songs
By JOHN BERMAN, SARAH AMOS, ERIN KEOHANE and LEE FERRAN
ABCNews.com
March 24, 2009
Just in case no one has let you in on the secret, "Puff the Magic Dragon" may not be just about a mythical creature in the fanciful land of imagination.
As Ben Stiller's character from "Meet the Parents," Greg Focker points out, "some people think that to 'Puff the Magic Dragon' means to puff ... smoke ... a marijuana cigarette."
"Puff" was not the first case of a songwriter's attempt to sneak in what some people think is a hidden, sometimes illicit message in an otherwise harmless song, and it has hardly been the last.
Most recently, Britney Spears' single "If You Seek Amy" has been enraging just about as many parents as it has been confusing.
The problem, some say, is in the song's title and, if said quickly, how much it sounds like the spelling of a certain four-letter expletive.
"It's more than a little dirty," Caryn Ganz, deputy editor of RollingStone.com told "Good Morning America." "I'm not sure how much I can say on TV.
"I think she kind of snuck it in secretly in the song, and if you get it you get it, and if you don't, you don't," Ganz said.
Among those who "get it" is one group of mostly 11-year-olds in New Jersey.
"It says it so fast that you almost can't hear it," one of the girls, 11-year-old Kara Grifonetti, said. "It tries to, like, sneak things in."
But nothing got by Lesley Mufson, mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.
"I watched her video for one second and I was like, 'Get that off,'" Mufson said.
The battle of lyrics has been going on for decades -- the Rolling Stones famously had to change the song "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" to perform on the "Ed Sullivan Show" -- but lyrics today are more explicit.
When the group of 11-year-olds from New Jersey broke out in a new song by Flo Rider, they didn't realize exactly what they might be singing about.
Harmless? Song Could Be About Oral Sex
The song borrows from the band Dead or Alive's song "You Spin Me Right Round," which has these lyrics:
"You spend me right round, baby,
right round
like a record, baby
right, round, round, round"
But Flo Rida slightly alters the lyrics to say "you spin my head right round...," greatly changing the meaning of the song, some claim.
