I suppose the reason I have never spent a great deal of time thinking  about song meanings is that I like to think I have at least a vague understanding of what goes on in the songwriting process.  Some songs are so direct and subject driven that the meaning is universally understood or at least identified.  Who has to question the meaning of  “You Are So Beautiful” or “Happy Birthday”.   Still some listeners may tend to wonder who the song was written about or what particular event it is describing.  We tend to ask that question particularly if the writer is also the performer and so we imagine he or she is singing about his own experience.  I recall many years ago reading an interview with Dan Fogelberg (and I am paraphrasing here, drawing from the deep recesses of my memory) in which he said he was amazed at the tendency of his audience to assume that his songs undoubtedly were kind of a recorded diary.  Fogelberg’s songs were often inspired or colored by the observed lives of others or completely imagined out of thin air.  That’s not to say that he didn’t have his autobiographical moments.  “Leader of the Band” was of course about his father and their relationship.  But overall , he was making the point that he , as well as most songwriters I imagine, create most of their work from bits and pieces of a known reality at best.   There have always been those songwriters who worked only from their own experience.  Some view it as a sort of cathartic therapy and will only write when a particular experience has moved them to do so.  They await their muse.  Others sit down on a regular basis and muse-be-damned they are wrestling with words and combining them with a melody whether the song is written from their own view or completely imagined.  I would venture to say that three-quarters of my own songs are pulled entirely out of thin air and have no identifiable inspiration or personal connection whatsoever. 

In the end I don’t think it matters much what the songwriter was trying to say. More important is what the listener hears.  Michael Stipe of REM said: “The songwriters interpretation of his own words is the least important.  The listeners is the most important.  ….To me the strength of a good song is the images it creates in your own mind, in the listeners mind.  When you start locking images into a song you start reducing the imagination of the listener.”

People are always wondering what Michael Stipe was singing about  in “Losing My Religion”.  Although the video contains religious imagery and there was a lot of talk about it being about turning away from religion, etc.  Stipe says the song, written without the notion of a video, was really about obsession and unrequited love.  “Losing my religion” is an old southern phrase referring how someone feels when something is going so bad that they are losing control.   I think it’s interesting how Stipe’s original intent escaped most listeners who assumed that he was saying something about religious belief that just had to be deep and meaningful.