Music is an essential part of our beings. Having a soundtrack to our lives helps us mark turning points and eras that changed us forever. And its always fascinating to know the "behind the scenes" to every piece of musical inspiration. Some artists are not shy about the backstory--just look up the love lives of Fleetwood Mac--and some are more evasive. And once we all get into the truth the music tends to resonate even deeper.
Redditor u/blueberriebelle wanted to discuss all the truth that has been revealed for the inspiration behind some the world's best music by asking.... What songs have a really crazy backstory that changed your perception of the song when you found out?Sara.
baking sara bareilles GIF by Waitress The MusicalGiphySara Bareilles "Love Song" was actually written for her record company when they told her she wouldn't be successful without a hit love song on her album.
Came her hoping to see this one. Another in a similar vein is George Michael's Freedom '90 -a giant Mess You to Sony.
Trumbo.
One by Metallica is based on a novel written by Dalton Trumbo. The novel is about a soldier who loses his sight, hearing, language, arms and legs on the battlefield through a landmine. He wishes to die but cannot express this because of his injuries. He asks for help but no one can hear him.
Johnny.
Based off the movie/book "Johnny Get Your Gun". Even showed in the original video. I think the movie should be watched by everyone just to know the importance of a "living will". (even though I'm pretty sure, in the book, they didn't know who he was anyway, so it may not have mattered?)
Edit: Thank you /u/trudenter... it's "Jonny Got His Gun". My bad, all >.<
Not a Good Time.
Rob Thomas Push GIF by Matchbox TwentyGiphyMatchbox20 3AM is about his relationship with his mom. I thought it was this song about a girl friend who was endearing in her dark view of the world. Its worse since its his mom.
The VH1 Storytellers clip of this song includes an explanation and the performance brings the crowd to tears. Like many hit 90s singles, the upbeat nature of the recorded arrangement really veil the lyrics. Counting Crows "Mr. Jones" is similar. It's on YouTube, check it out!
"where do we go now"
Sweet Child O' Mine was thrown together in a few minutes and the "where do we go now" part was improvised because they literally had no ideas where the song went. The song main riff was Slash's hand warmer and the lyrics were a poem Axl had lying around.
The iconic riff in Sweet Child O' Mine was written because Slash wanted to create something that kinda sounded like an ice cream truck.
The Last
"Save the Last Dance For Me" The songwriter, Doc Pomus, had polio and he married a woman who was a professional actress and dancer. Supposedly he wrote it after watching her dance with other people on their wedding day because he couldn't dance with her properly. Learning that took was was just a sweet song and made it nearly heart wrenching.
papa?
Also Alive, is semi-autobiographical by Eddie Vedder. He was raised to believe his step-father was his biological father and had actually met his biological father several times throughout his life, introduced to him as his mother's "friend," but Eddie didn't learn the truth until his biological father died which messed up his worldview.
I assume (hope) the verse about his mother coming onto him is fiction.
Who?
American Woman was accidentally created by The Guess Who. The singer was trading records with a collector in a parking lot and he heard the band tuning up and panicked thinking they started without him. He ran up, realized the mistake and started improvising. The band joined in. They found a bootleg later on and decided that their mistake sounded pretty cool.
So Deep
Not that it's crazy, and the song is clearly about someone facing depression, but Rise Above this by Seether was written by Shaun Morgan for his then depressed brother. Before the song was released, his brother took his life. When the band recorded the music video, it took several attempts because Shaun Morgan kept sobbing. I enjoyed the song before learning that, but now it's difficult to not get sad every time I think about it.
Smile in the face of adversity
music video 90s GIFGiphyR.E.M. - Shiny Happy People
The title of the track actually comes from the translation of a Chinese propaganda poster from the era of Chairman Mao which read, "Shiny happy people holding hands."
Less than a year before the band wrote the song, in 1989, the Tiananmen Square protests occurred, and it is estimated that around 2,600 pro-democracy protesters were killed by government troops. This event had a huge impact on the band and inspired the song, which was finally released in 1991.
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Redditor Personthing23 asked everyone to share stories about times at work we still see in nightmares.
"What is your most disgusting work story?"
I have stories about blood, bile, and poop. Let's see what Reddit had to share!
At OfficeMax
Work Office GIF by BayWa AGGiphy"Probably gonna pale in comparison to some peoples stories, but one time when I was working at OfficeMax we checked the bathroom at the end of the day and there was just this absolutely gigantic poop clogging the toilet."
"No toilet paper, nothing else. Just this almost football sized poop vastly bigger than the hole for it to go down."
"All of us were just in absolute awe and disgust trying to figure out how someone could leave a crap that large. Also… who was gonna take care of it?"
"We all kept saying we didn’t want to deal with it, then this German guy who recently moved to America just came in with gloves and a plastic stick and just started grinding that crap up. I forget his name, but he had more balls than the rest of us. Very nice dude on top of that."
porridge_in_my_bum
The 3...
"I found 3 dead bodies at the job I worked after college. The first two were shocking but not surprising. They were old and as they were in a halfway home situation they had had rough lives. One died of heart failure and the other of respiratory arrest. Both messed me up for a couple days. The 3rd one still gives me nightmares. She had been dead in an unairconditioned room for three days."
"The post mortem contractions curled her into a ball (with her face pointed at the door so when I opened it she was staring at me with no eyes in her sockets) and she had begun to digest herself causing a black goo that went through the bed, box spring, and bed frame to make a puddle that ran up to the door. I quit that job about 6 weeks later. That was 20 years ago. Still see her in my nightmares sometimes."
"Edit: A lot of people have asked how she went three days without being checked on. So the facility I worked for was more like an apartment complex with mental health amenities. Like a halfway house. We made sure the grounds were clean and safe and the gates were locked and there were no drugs etc."
"There were also case managers on site at all times during the day. They provided the mental support. But there were some people who were taking their meds, and just living their lives. There were a few people I never had much interaction with because their work schedules were the same as mine."
Spodson
My heart dropped...
"I worked at a liquor store/gas station/deli combined. One night, the store was empty and a woman came in to just use the restroom - totally fine. 20 mins goes by and my co workers says, hey she hasn’t come out of there yet. 5 more minutes go by and she does emerge from the bathroom, but she’s walking out of the store smelling her hands like just double fisties to face and deep whiffing those bad boys and LOVING IT... my heart dropped."
"That woman went in and closed the toilet lid and sat on the upper deck (not open as well) and blasted diarrhea down the whole toilet. It looked like she clawed through her feces and then flung it into the sink, and didn’t wash her hands. Then she flushed her flag-sized undies down the toilet (or tried) and broke the pipes. I drew a freaking picture of her and hung it up that said ‘wanted: the serial pooper."
S**tstompd
Not just pee...
"Tattooed a lady. Small hummingbird on the shoulder. Finish up. 'Go check it out, let me know if you want to keep it!' (Haw haw) 'Oh thank you it looks gr-' (passes out, I catch her and lower her gently to the floor while I begin ensuring she isn’t seizing, asking coworker to grab a popsicle, etc) She pees herself in the few seconds this is occurring in. Husband comes into booth to check on her, slips in pee, falls down."
"I’m struggling to keep it together so nobody feels embarrassed. She comes to after a second. Stands up. Not just pee. S**t up her back and smeared into floor/bottom trim on the walls. Nobody says anything, they wrap her in husbands flannel, they pay and leave, I clean it up."
"Another possible candidate is the time I went to adjust an older style fan with a basically decorate shield, my hand slipped into the blades and splattered blood all over an older woman getting her first tattoo after like three lines were in. I had to go get stitches, she left. Never finished that tattoo."
Tsundoku_tt
MOOO AWAY!
Best Friends Dancing GIF by Art UKGiphy"I bent over to pick up a tool I dropped and a cow pooped in my but crack."
Bonhomme7h
Why is poop everywhere?!
wash/bleach
Keeping Up With The Kardashians Fight GIF by E!Giphy"I worked as a corrections officer in a maximum security prison. The first week I worked there an inmate collected and spread his poop all over the walls. It was in the air vent and everything. It is a health hazard so we had to clean it up. Me, being the new guy, was volunteered I would have to do it. I had to pressure wash/bleach and scrub the do-do."
Evilknarvel
'What? There? I don't see anything.'
"If I ever see that my old chef is working at a restaurant I'm eating at, I will walk out. I once told him that a big pot of stew that had been left in the fridge had some mould floating on the top. He got a spoon, started stirring it up saying, 'I can't see any mould.' No, because you just stirred it into the mix you a**ehole."
"Another time, I noticed a maggot crawling on a large chunk of chocolate. I pointed it out to him and he, I kid you not, squashed it with his finger under the guise of pointing to the area, and said, 'What? There? I don't see anything.' Then wiped off the remains as he removed his finger."
"Another time, he sliced cooked ham on the opposite side to a board that also contained raw chicken. Another time, a customer complained the fish was off. He actually tried to justify it by saying that fish was better if it had been hanging around for a while."
j-c-s-roberts
Haunted
"My first cockroach job as a pest control technician (exterminator) was one of the worse I’ve ever seen. My seasoned coworker pointed out that when people have severe roach problems, they tend to not have any hair on their face (no eyebrows/eyelashes/etc). When I went back, I noticed not a single family member had any kind of facial hair. Even the toddler had no eyelashes. Definitely still haunts me."
picklepotty121
In the Fire
"My grandfather was a fireman and they, along with police, and paramedics were called to a home of a lady who was severely obese, who couldn't fit through the door. The roof of the house had to be cut out and a crane had to lower a chain and whatever they managed to use as a stretcher to get her out."
"She couldn't even fit in the ambulance. She had mice living in her rolls of fat, with holes and infection all over her body from the mice. That doesn't include her other health problems."
theequeenbee3
Bad Rice
michel gondry lunch GIFGiphy"I used to be the front-end manager at a supermarket. One night I had to head back to the deli for some reason."
"As I made my way through the kitchen there was a bucket of rice on the floor that they used to make the rice dishes we served at the deli counter. To my surprise, two rats about the size of my hand jumped out of the rice and scurried under the oven."
"I told the deli manager the next day and he just brushed it off. Said he was aware of the issue. I'm 99 percent sure they still used that rice."
BearJewKnowsBest
I need to lie down. Thank God I work from home now.
Redditor Desperate_Bluejay330 asked about all the about the students who scored all those A's.
"What happened to the smartest kid at your high school?"
I'm not sure about my smarty pants people. Now I have to go look them up.
Physical
Get Out Love GIF by T-SeriesGiphy"He was actually quite overweight. When he left for college, he was studying physics. Couple of years later, I learned that he lost 175 pounds, became super into fitness, dropped out of college and became a gym trainer."
Apprehensive_Bet_438
Into the Sky...
"He's a NASA scientist, while I just come on Reddit."
superdupernumnuts
"I heard that the smartest guy in my class worked at NASA. I just looked up his LinkedIn and he's a mechanical engineer who works in manufacturing. Nothing aerospace related. Still much more impressive than anything I've ever done."
NativeMasshole
A Good Life
"He lives in the same small village he was living in when we were in school, is married with kids and apparently works in an office in the nearest town. He had aspirations of becoming a surgeon when we were in school, it didn't happen, but it sounds like he's living a good life regardless."
zerbey
"Similar. Top in our class went and got a masters in math, then moved back home and became the local librarian, but they have a wonderful family. Didn't change the world but they're happy. That's the real dream."
Futurenazgul
Who Knows?
"I couldn’t tell you what 99% of people from my high school are doing now."
okay11654
"Lol... I got ya beat. I can honestly say that I have zero idea what 100% of the people I went to HS with are up to now. I graduated 22 years ago, the moment I was done… I was done lol."
Regular_Sample_5197
"I guess that shows that my high school friends were truly good friends and we got along because we have a Christmas gathering beer exchange each year since like 2011 or so. There’s like 30 of us."
LordNoodles1
Career Changes
Season 2 Lawyer GIF by MartinGiphy"Became a doctor, decided it wasn't for her and went to law school. Is currently a barrister as far as I know."
Barnaby_Cuckoldsniff
"Sounds like my paternal uncle! He became an electrical engineer, decided it wasn't his thing, then became a patent attorney."
PM_ME_YOUR_WEIRD_PET
Doctor and lawyer? I type. Lord I'm lazy.
Nefarious
Season 9 Phoebe GIF by FriendsGiphy"Completely fell off the radar. I assume he's running some sort of nefarious think-tank for a huge tech company or something."
ckuiper
Friends
"I still talk to him. He's a good friend of mine, still. He's an engineer at Google now. I am not."
Endymian
"Smartest guy in our class (finished Calc BC in 10th grade, ended up going to a local college to take discrete mathematics and linear Algebra, graduated from CalTech, etc.) ended up working at Google and Facebook as a data scientist. I would be shocked if his net worth wasn't in the mid 7 figures at this point just off of equity."
Amyndris
The 3
"There were 3 I would argue were the smartest. They were all neck and neck for the valedictorian and salutatorian title. 2 of them I was never really close to so I have no idea what they're doing exactly. One of them moved out half way across the country and had a child and the other was a Jehovah's witness and there was something about them not being allowed to go to university for what they wanted to do. Other than that I don't know what they're doing."
"The other was actually a good friend I knew since the 3rd grade but we fell in and out of each other's lives. Life changed directions for them as far as aspirations go. Originally he was part way through a master's program for human kinetics but he realized it wasn't going to pan out as expected so he went into teaching. Now he's married, has a kid and overall happy I believe."
wert989
Still call him...
"Valedictorian of my high school is still one of my best friends, I was even the best man at his wedding. He went to the Army after graduating from Yale, became a Ranger then went into JSOC or something. Now he has a wife and two kids and works at the Pentagon. I stayed the nerd route and became a chemical and petroleum engineer."
NinjaGrizzlyBear
Fit as a Fiddle
Working Out GIFGiphy"He's a scientist (something related to nutrition) and a big fitness Youtuber."
"As an interesting anecdote, he might have started go to the gym during the last couple years of grade school but was still unassuming and tiny. I removed him from Facebook shortly after and was pretty dumbfounded when I stumbled upon his channel years later."
"It's not hard to believe he was that successful but didn't expect to see him jacked or on Youtube."
"Also we lived in a relatively small and pretty redneck town. There were social groups and cliques like an 80's movie - Of the popular kids or jocks he was the only one to actively oppose his friends bullying people."
Digrug
Well it's nice to see that studying pays off... sometimes.
"What was your 'This person is on another level of stupid" moment?'"
Never Leave A Paper Trail...
"Dude burned down his convenience store for an insurance claim, and stopped the milk and bread deliveries the day before."- parsons525
Zero Grasp Of Human Biology
"Demolished my right foot, and a bunch of other sh*t in a motorcycle crash and had to have the top of my foot removed."
"Guy I worked with asked me when it would grow back."
"I explained that the skin and stuff was going to have to be grafted, but the tendons and bones that had been removed were gone forever."
"He looked me dead in the eye and asked 'why don't they just cut the whole f*cking thing off and let it grow back?'"- rugernut13
Oops...
"Going through security and the person says I need to show a different form of ID."
"I ask why because I gave them my driver’s license."
"They say I need a US document like a green card or something."
"I’m a US citizen, then I realized, I explained how District of Columbia is long for DC. Like Washington DC."
"As in the capital of our country."- agangofoldwomen
flying den haag GIF by Rotterdam The Hague AirportGiphyUh, Mom...
"I got a bad grade in geography in high school, my teacher kept trying to push me and suggested I talk to my parents about it."
"I told my mom I was failing geography and she said 'how f*cking stupid can you really be Justin, how do you fail geography it's just shapes'."
" I'll never forget that one."- I_Am_Justin_Tyler
Irony Doesn't Even Describe It...
"Coworker bought a low-flow shower head."
"He filled the BATHTUB using the new low-flow shower head BECAUSE IT WOULD USE LESS WATER!"- pdfrg
Lightbulb!
"While driving from one big city to another, I stopped in a small town to eat at a fast food chain in Texas."
"I order my food, get my orange number tent and sit down to wait for my order."
"The lady who's bringing out orders has this 'I give up' demeanor as she's calling out numbers that guests aren't claiming."
"Each time this happens, she speaks to a couple tables to seemingly figure out who food is for."
"Then I hear her call for number 55 while holding a tray of food for one person."
"I was number 54 and noticed I was the only single-party guest there."
"We make eye contact and she heads towards me."
"She confirms my order with me and says 'sorry, for some reason the computer prints 1 number higher'."
"I immediately ask 'well then why don't you just call out one number lower than what's printed?'"
"She freezes and I can see the 'gears turning" in her head'."
"I tell her 'thank you' and she goes on her way."- SergioFromTX
lightbulb GIFGiphyDouble Trouble...
"I’m an identical twin, and have been asked all manner of utterly ridiculous questions about it throughout my life."
"But I think the stupidest was when a girl once asked me 'do you ever get yourselves mixed up with each other?'"
"I responded 'are you asking me if I ever sometimes think I’m my brother?'"
"She replied, 'yeah'.”
"No. I don’t."- Rottenox
Were You Even Listening?
"When I was in middle school I was in art class with a boy named Devon."
"I told him my sister has the same name as him and he asked me what her name was."- ihambrecht
Reckless Much?!?
"The time I watched someone who had missed their exit on the highway stop on the shoulder, back up, turn around, and go up the entrance ramp."
"I could not f*cking believe it."
{A couple of fun details about this incident to really highlight its stupidity."
"The next exit was a few miles up the road."
"Going to that exit and then turning around might have delayed their drive by 15 minutes tops."
"There was no traffic ahead."
"I watched this person do this as I was coming down that same entrance ramp to get onto the highway."- snickerdoodle--
tsunami no GIFGiphyThe things some people actually say.
Though, we shouldn't be too hard on them.
After all, let us not forget a former president of the United States actually thought "stratgery" was a word.
Likely connected to "nucular" weapons...