Yeah, it turns out you can learn all sorts of interesting shit about the true meaning of songs, books, and movies if instead of debating it you just listen to the damned people who created them. That's how you find out that ...

They say that art is open to interpretation, but try arguing that, say, The Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is a song about a girl named Lucy, in the sky, while in the company of diamonds, and people will laugh themselves into a coma over your naivety. Everybody knows that it's really a song about LSD. Everybody except the guys who wrote it , that is.

7 Pearl Jam's "Alive" Is About A Future Serial Killer Fucking His Mother

Peter Still/Redferns/Getty Images

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

What You Think It's About:

Figuring out what a song is "about" can be a tricky game. Sometimes it's very straightforward (see: "Baby Got Back") and other times fans will spend decades just making shit up (see: "Hotel California" is not about Satanism, you guys).

Pearl Jam's first hit, the early '90s anthem "Alive," seems to be somewhere in the middle. It's soulful if not sad, but the chorus is a straightforward and life-affirming "I'm still alive." The first verse seems to involve a mother saying something to her son about his dad; the second involves that same son about to have sex with a lady. So maybe it's a song about overcoming the struggles of growing up, only to embrace life in the end? Either way, it's surely something fairly positive and not, say, the freakiest goddamned shit we've ever heard.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

What It's Really About:

In a Rolling Stone interview, Vedder explained that "Alive" was meant to tell the origin story of a molested serial killer. In the song, a mother notices that her son has started to resemble his father, who died some time ago. Feeling lonely and wanting to reconnect with her past lover, the mom goes all The Graduate meets Boardwalk Empire on her kid, and they end up having some nice mother-son naked time. Thus the lines:

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Oh, she walks slowly, across a young man's room

She said I'm ready ... for you

I can't remember anything to this very day

'Cept the look, the look ...