Songs you completely misunderstood for years.

[Carl's Son]

Say Hello and Wave Goodbye

I always imagined this song was about bumping into a recent ex that you were really in love with. There's a mutual friend who introduces you and you say hello, pretending like you never met, because it's easier than explaining the situation or having a, 'so, how have you been?' Type conversation.
But as you're introduced, and say hello, you already know that you'll probably never see them again after this chance encounter. So you're saying hello but also waving goodbye. Aching with sadness.

I had this whole scenario in my head that I thought was the song. I thought it was beautiful, real lump in the throat stuff.

Then I hear it again last year and I realise it's a guy breaking up with a girl and kind've tearing her off a strip...I've got no idea where I got that other story from...

[Quaco]

I like your interpretation a lot. Maybe you should change the title a bit, to "Say Hello and Goodbye" or something, and write YOUR song.

[Bent Fabric]

Yeah, I find your premise quite a bit more moving.

[take5_d_shorterer]

I kept saying to myself that I had been lucky all my life. The point, as I saw it, was that this gave me no right to
think of myself as unlucky now.

This was what passed for staying on top of the self-pity question.

I even believed it.

Only at a later point did I begin to wonder: what exactly did ``luck'' have to do with it? I could not on examination
locate any actual instances of ``luck'' in my history. (``That was lucky,'' I once said to a doctor after a test
revealed a soluble problem that would have been, untreated, less soluble. ``I wouldn't call it lucky,'' she said,
``I'd call it the game plan.'') Nor did I believe that ``bad luck'' had killed John and struck Quintana. Once when she
was still at the Westlake School for Girls, Quintana mentioned what she seemed to consider the inequable distribution
of bad news. In the ninth grade she had come home from a retreat at Yosemite to learn that her uncle Stephen had
committed suicide. In the eleventh grade she had been woken at Susan's at six-thirty in the morning to learn that
Dominique had been murdered. ``Most people I know at Westlake don't even know anyone who died,'' she said, ``and just
since I've been there I've had a murder and a suicide in my family.''

``It all evens out in the end,'' John said, an answer that bewildered me (what did it mean, couldn't he do better than
that?) but one that seemed to satisfy her.

Several years later, after Susan's mother and father died within a year or two of each other, Susan asked if I
remembered John telling Quintana that it all evened out in the end. I said that I remembered.

``He was right,'' Susan said. ``It did.''

I recall being shocked. It had never occurred to me that John meant that bad news will come to each of us. Either
Susan or Quintana had surely misunderstood. I explained to Susan that John had meant something entirely different: he
had meant that people who get bad news will eventually get their share of good news.

``That's not what I meant at all.'' John said.

``I knew what he meant,'' Susan said.

Had I understood nothing?

--Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, chapter 14,

[Charlie O.]

I initially thought The Byrds' "Set You Free This Time" had the guy regretfully but stoically letting go of his girl even though he still loves her - It isn't how it was set up to be, but I'll set you free this time.

It was quite some time before I realized that it was actually I've set you free this time and that it's a kiss-off - a "you've always had your way before, but this time I'm in control" scenario.

So, a little different.

[pcqgod]

I thought "Slow Ride" by Foghat was about driving.

[sloopjohnc]

I thought "Slow Ride" by Foghat was about driving.

I was behind that guy on the way to work today.