You Know Those People.

Oh, you know. The sort who constantly read meaning into lyrics that clearly doesn’t fit. Famous pop songs and children’s rhymes can’t be just that; they have to have some secret depth that needs to be decoded. Sometimes it’s about some love affair that people speculate about, other times there’s a hidden message about race or homosexuality. Even if there is a message in the song, I don’t see how that makes it better. Such songs usually attract praise for their apparent depth, yet all the songwriter has done is deliberately obscure something that could be expressed more explicitly, and I’m pretty sure most people don’t value obscurantism.

Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul, and Mary is a classic example of this pretentious malarkey. Some idiot, who was obsessed with drugs, decided that the song was about taking narcotics. After all, it was released in the 1960s, which were solely characterised by drug taking and subversive song writing. Words like ‘Puff’ and ‘paper’ pretty much explain their secret context by themselves, and the dragon represents opium or, perhaps, a hookah. The fantastical story of a magical dragon could only come from the mind of someone on shrooms or acid.

Leaving aside the ungainsayable argument that the songwriters have consistently denied that they were alluding to drugs, the drug interpretation only accounts for about 10% of the lyrics. With such flimsy requirements for interpretation, you could warp any song into any meaning. “But the author is no longer the generator of context and meaning,” says the post-structuralist, literary snot in you.

“Meaning lies with the reader or listener, and the text’s meaning shouldn’t be regulated by the songwriter.”

I see, but having read that Wikipedia link, can you really say you are still interpreting the song as a drug reference.

“What? What do you mean? Of course I do.”

No, I think your interpretation runs like this: The song was written without allusions to drugs, but I have chosen to read drug references into it.

“No, you’re just being polemical! You should give up your racket. Nobody’s impressed.”

I think we can safely say that interpretation isn’t willed, but passively received.

“Stop!”

The mechanisms of interpretation are antecedent to the will, surely. Mendacity will get you nowhere; you know you don’t believe that drug interpretation. I’m sorry friend, but you are not some master in your literary universe.

“Fuck you, Nigel! Boo hoo hoo!”

Okay. Leave the room then. I’ll entertain your girlfriend. Hey, you! – good-looking female – c’mere…

If you’re not convinced by my manly arguments, then I guess I’ll have to take advantage of the mass ignorance and start planting meaning into songs. Listen to this other ditty by Peter, Paul, and Mary:

That’s right, you’ve guessed it – it’s about a man who's disgusted by cunnilingus.