5 Meaningless Songs Everyone Thinks Are Deep (Part 3)

5 "Fake Plastic Trees" By Radiohead

Here's a perfect example to start us off. "Fake Plastic Trees" is one of my favorite Radiohead songs. Hell, it's one of my favorite songs ever. The first time I heard it, I turned up the radio, shut out all distractions, and listened intently until the DJ came on to tell me who wrote the song. Does any of that make sense now? Y'see, to understand that story, you need to know that people used to listen to non-satellite radio that didn't just display the name of song, and that I was a huge loser hanging out alone in my room listening for DJs to tell me things.

Anyway, to me, the lyrics were perfectly clear. Thom Yorke was singing a song about beautiful false things, about relationships built on artificial attractions, and the inevitable failure of those relationships. A song lamenting the absence of true love and beauty.

I can support that interpretation: The first verse is about a "fake Chinese rubber plant." OK, so that is something beautiful and artificial. The song then goes on about "a broken man" who "used to do surgery for the girls in the '80s." It doesn't seem too much of a leap to believe that's plastic surgery. Another false form of beauty. The next verse addresses the singer's frustration and desire to "turn and run," and, ultimately, he laments his inability to be what his lover wants. To me, the singer's beloved wanted a false thing he couldn't be, which would give context to everything that preceded those lyrics. I like my interpretation. It still seems internally consistent and valid to me, and I love the song. But here's the thing: Much like going through life not looking like a villain in a Charles Dickens story, Thom Yorke would never agree to such a thing.

Yorke has described the lyrics as "drunken," "a breakdown of sorts," and "a joke that isn't a joke." Unlike his usual method of keeping note of what he was singing or crafting deliberate phrases, he was just singing whatever was in his head to a previously-constructed melody. Does that mean that I shouldn't like the song anymore? Does that mean that my interpretation doesn't work? No, but it does mean that if I go on and on like a pontificating douchebag, swearing I know what the song "really" means, I'd be wrong.

4 "White Room" By Cream

"White Room" by Cream is a seminal songs of the '60s. It's a stark rocker with a simple, strong image: a white room with black curtains.

Powerful, but what could it mean? Well, if you ask the Internet, you will get people telling you it's about Vietnam, no I mean Stalin, no wait, it's about heroin addiction. In fact, you can see all those interpretations right here. And what's so interesting about these interpretations is that no one on this comment page is saying, "Hey, I think it means ..." or "I interpret this as ..." They're all just laying truth bombs, man, because something about interpreting lyrics brings out the pretentious douchebag more than when someone wrongly calls Frankenstein's monster "Frankenstein."

Well, according to lyricist Pete Brown, Jack Bruce threw out his original lyrics, called "Cinderella's Last Goodnight," and Brown scrambled to find some lyrics from an eight-page poem he wrote, ultimately cobbling together a "monologue about a new flat." But hey, maybe it's time-travelin' Stalin's flat after he comes home from 'Nam addicted to heroin!

3 "Mr. Tambourine Man" By Bob Dylan

I've wanted to include Bob Dylan since the first of these articles (as has my editor, Adam Tod Brown) because he's written, arguably, the most disputed and analyzed song lyrics of the last 50 years. Adding to that mystique is how Dylan rarely commented or explained his lyrics. Fans were desperate to fill that void, turning his songs into tests or shrouded insights that only they, with their powers of perception, were deep enough to perceive.

The trouble is, which Dylan song do you include, when so many of his songs have been so intensely analyzed and he's been so reticent to speak of meaning? Indeed, some have criticized Dylan (like John Lennon, as expressed in the following entry) for being deliberately ambiguous to get credit for metaphors, symbolism, and insights he never intended. But ultimately, I went with "Mr. Tambourine Man," because it's one of the few times Dylan as been insistent about a meaning and still no one listened.

Critics and fans have love to speculate: Who is Mr. Tambourine Man? There have been differing interpretation that he's Dylan's muse, or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, or even better, Jesus Christ, because why not? (Presumably, Jesus laid down his best beats while not being crucified.)

But of course, the most persistent interpretation is that Dylan's singing about drugs. Dylan has repeatedly denied this interpretation, even 20 years after it was written, when no one would have cared if the song was about getting high. In 1985, Dylan explicitly stated in a rare moment of candor and specificity that the song was about ... a tambourine man. Specifically, Bruce Langhorne, a folk musician with whom Dylan had recorded. Dylan said, "He had this gigantic tambourine. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind."

So hey, go ahead and continue to put forth metaphorical interpretations of this song. It's fun to do that. No one is stopping you, and yes, a listener can always interpret a song in their own way for themselves. But what you probably shouldn't do is tell people their interpretation is wrong and you know what the song is really about because it's totally about drugs, man. Even worse, don't do that on the Internet where everyone can see it.

2 "I Am The Walrus" By The Beatles

This next entry dovetails perfectly from fans making too much of Dylan's intent -- not only for the reasons expressed below, but because when it comes to artists who are most overanalyzed by superfans, John Lennon is probably side by side with Dylan and Cobain. (When it comes to domestic violence, he's unfortunately sandwiched between the likes of Ike Turner and James Taylor.) In any event, "I Am The Walrus" is arguably The Beatles' most celebrated psychedelic song, and the lyrics are, in a word, trippy.

People have stumbled over themselves trying to impart meaning to these inscrutable words about walruses, eggmen, and yellow matter custard. Some have found this to be a song about Paul McCartney's alleged death, claiming "walrus" is a Greek translation for "corpse." Others pick apart specific lyrics. Eric Burden of The Animals claims to be the eggman, as he apparently had a fondness for cracking eggs on naked groupies, and had done so in the presence of Lennon. Whether or not that's true, I think we can all agree it's disgusting. (Unless salmonella somehow nullifies the effects of chlamydia.) But regardless of the sporadic references, no one really has one cohesive interpretation.

And there's good reason for that. John Lennon was trolling you. By his own admission, "I Am The Walrus" means nothing and was written, in part, to frustrate academics trying to divine his intentions. Even more provocatively, Lennon was pulling a Dylan. Lennon had said that Dylan had been "getting away with murder" by having fans impart profundity onto merely ambiguous lyrics. Ultimately, Lennon admitted "The words didn't mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions, and it's ridiculous."

1 "Nothing Else Matters" By Metallica

A long time ago, Metallica was a simple bunch of drunken badasses who played take-no-prisoners heavy metal. More recently, they've been concentrating on being a bunch of whiny millionaires who like to make documentaries about their feelings. But somewhere between those two extremes, Metallica was one of the biggest bands around, and it all happened with their breakthrough 1991 self-titled album. Although "Enter Sandman" and "The Unforgiven" were both hits, it seems the somber, stolid "Nothing Else Matters" is the song that bore itself deepest in the public's minds. (It was '91. We had no Internet. There was room for such things in there.)

This entry's a little different, as the meaning of the song has changed even in the artist's own mind. I know it's a little weird to use the word "artist" and Metallica lead singer James Hetfield in the same sentence, but really, who else could sculpt such an immaculate mullet?

Hetfield used to say he wrote the song about his girlfriend while he was away. He was apparently on the phone with her while writing the song on guitar with one hand. (So much more productive than most of us when talking to our girlfriends with one hand. Well, productive in a way that requires less cleanup.) Anyway, it seems pretty intuitive that it's a song about his girlfriend written from the road, as the "so close, no matter how far" lyrics play to that.

Hetfield later said, however, that he can't remember why he wrote the song, and the band now says it's about their fans, because "nothing else matters." Isn't that cute? That's like Paul McCartney going, "Oh, 'Hey Jude?' No no. It was meant to be called 'Hey Dude.' It's about all our fans, because they're all cool dudes!" Hetfield also tells a story about how he saw the song used during a film montage at a Hell's Angel's funeral, commenting, "Wow. This means a lot more than me missing my chick, right? This is brotherhood. The army could use this song. It's pretty powerful." So yeah, in this case, the song's actual creator will not only endorse your right to interpret the song as you see fit, but will even adopt your interpretation, provided it's cooler than those girlfriend lyrics he can't remember.

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For more from Gladstone on Cracked, check out 4 Famous Artists Who Stole Big Ideas From Newcomers and 5 Songs People Think Are Deep (Until They Think About Them).

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