You've Been Singing These Songs Wrong For 40 Years

Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born in the USA" as a protest song about how America abandoned its Vietnam veterans, but Ronald Reagan's campaign turned it into a patriotic anthem. Sting has spent forty years calling "Every Breath You Take" a sinister song about surveillance and obsession, while couples keep using it as their wedding song. John Lennon denied for the rest of his life that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was about LSD, insisting it came from a drawing his four-year-old son brought home from nursery school. And John Fogerty wrote "Fortunate Son" as a direct attack on the rich, well-connected politicians who keep playing it at their own rallies. This is the story of four of the most misunderstood songs in rock history, the artists who tried to set the record straight, and why the wrong meaning always seems to win. From Bruce Springsteen and The Police to The Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, these are the tracks where the melody traveled faster than the meaning. The moments the music changed forever. Welcome to Battle of Melody.