'70s Song Lyrics That Left Everyone Scratching Their Heads

The '70s may have been an era of chemical experimentation, but that's no excuse for releasing songs with lyrics that nobody can understand. Listeners might make excuses and give grace to the more creative writers who take liberties with the English language. But sometimes, the music is so captivating that we forgive the lyrics a little too much and just sing along with whatever interpretation our ears have made. It's only after we ask around that we realize we're not the only ones who don't know what these people are singing about.

Our version of confusing lyrics cover an array of scenarios. There are songs the come together in a way that just can't be correct. There are others in which the writer takes poetic license that doesn't belong in the world of popular music. And there are some that sound like the songwriter couldn't read their own writing on the crumpled-up napkin that caught their original inspiration and just rolled with it when they hit the studio.

All of these situations create a perfect storm of lyrics that leave you wondering what you just listened to, even though you belted it out at the top of your lungs. It doesn't matter if it was rock, pop, or disco; these '70s songs offered some of the most incomprehensible lyrics of the era.

Written by the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, and made famous by Manfred Mann's Earth Band in 1976, "Blinded by the Light" is the reigning monarch of confusing lyrics for the decade. Even when you find out what the words are, you still have no idea what they mean. It's like a puzzle wrapped in a conundrum, twisted up in a series of rapid-fire rhymes that pass by in an audio blur. And not even an isolated line gives a hint at what's going on with these characters. Good times!

The confusion gets off to a rollicking start with the chorus, "Blinded by the light/revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night." If you've been singing "wrapped up like d**che" all these years, welcome to the club, which includes everyone who's ever heard the song. Then comes random image after random image, including a broken calliope, a "go-kart Mozart," a "silicone sister with her manager mister", and someone named "Early Pearly." Um ... what?

Don't bother trying to decipher any of it; by the time you even make out with the words actually are, your brain hurts so much you'll wish you'd listened to "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" instead. At least that Manfred Mann song made a little sense (other than the chorus, but still). You should look elsewhere if classic rock lyrics that give you chills are your preference. These lyrics just leave you out in the cold.

Even the freewheeling drug culture of the '70s couldn't help Led Zeppelin fans make sense of the obtuse, if highly poetic, lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven." It sounds a little like Robert Plant eavesdropped on a sleep-talking J.R.R. Tolkien and turned his otherworldly babbling into a psychedelic head trip masterpiece no one can understand. Plant's testimonial that he and Jimmy Page wrote it while sitting by the fire sounds like a lame cover story for an unsanctioned Hobbit spinoff if we've ever heard one. Songwriters can be sneaky like that.

Who is this woman "buying the stairway to heaven"? Where is this total Karen going, that she can get what she's after even if all the shops are closed? Most importantly, how does she fit something like that in her car to get it home? Will she pay for shipping or rent a U-Haul and schlep it back to her house herself? And the most Tolkien part of all: "When all are one, and one is all, yeah/To be a rock and not a roll." It sounds less like classic rock and more like someone's D&D campaign spilled over into his songwriting.

Even the song itself has warnings that we're probably not going to pick up what Plant is putting down, specifically the line that says, "sometimes words have two meanings." Yes, Robert ... we get it. You're clever and cryptic and poetic, like a wizard in skinny jeans. Congratulations on mystifying us all.

Don McLean may have set out to write a tribute to youth in the '60s with his meandering "American Pie," but unless you have a secret decoder ring and a few decades to work out the layers of meaning in the lyrics, you may not pick up on the intended themes. That's okay; nobody will fight you if you just mumble along until the "bye bye, Miss American Pie" part arrives. That's how the rest of us do it, too.

By now, we've all come to understand that the underlying story is about the untimely and tragic death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens in a 1959 plane crash. The shock brought innocence to an end for the youth of the era, inspiring McLean to pen a whole spiraling story with references to paperboys and quarterbacks and court jesters and high school dances.

The verses wrap the plot line in so much head-spinning symbolism, but every few words you catch onto the sadness being portrayed. The line, "And we sang dirges in the dark/the day the music died," provides a perfect ending for the story, since we all know that dirges are funeral songs and this entire tale is a tragedy. But McClean isn't finished yet. But we are. Seriously ... buh-bye, Miss American Pie.

It's easy to believe there's some sort of hypnosis happening with the Wings song "Jet." How else could Paul McCartney and his post-Beatles rock unit get fans singing that fun call and response "Jet – Jet!" after trying to work their way through a scattering of silly verses that reach for rhymes rather than logic. It's a devious ruse to plant such a catchy hook in the middle of a verbal snarl. Kudos to McCartney for another round of nonsense turned into an undeniably catchy tune.

This isn't one of the forgotten No. 1 songs by Wings that set the world on fire, though it did break into the top 10 in 1974. No, this is one of those super-catchy melodies packed with infectious energy that can make you forget it even has lyrics if you listen long enough. Case in point: "And Jet, I thought the Major was a Lady Suffragette" is as bewildering a line as McCartney has ever come up with. All suffragettes were ladies, so that's redundant. And who's this Major he keeps referring to? The rest of the song seems to be addressing someone named Jet who's getting married, but it's all so disjointed,  you could be easily forgiven for making other assumptions about what any of it means.

Luckily, just as you start to question your own sanity, the chorus comes back. Thank goodness McCartney had the sense to add the nonverbal "ooo-ooo-ooo" sing-along hook to cleanse your mental palate.

The overriding opinion from anyone who's heard the Donna Summer version of "MacArthur's Park" is that the park in the title is a cake. The lyrics even say explicitly, "someone left the cake out in the rain," so there's not a whole lot of guesswork to be done about that. But why would someone name a cake MacArthur's Park? And any yahoo who's ever come into contact with the cake knows you don't leave it out in the rain, because of course it's going to melt, and all that "sweet green icing flowing down" is just how cakes and rain work. What kind of numpty are we talking about in this song?

Call it poetry if you must. The imagery is definitely there; a line like "I recall the yellow cotton dress/Foaming like a wave/On the ground beneath your knees" is more English Lit 101 than pop music lyricism. And the fact that the song depends on the whole melting of MacArthur Park concept more than anything else brings the drama with a capital "Aaaaaah."

The best thing that happened to this cover of a 1968 Jimmy Webb song performed by Richard Harris (the original Dumbledore) was that Summer disco-fied it and added musical spark to the syrupy storytelling. But beyond recognizing it as a failed romance (maybe), those who hear it remain confused about the rain-melted cake references. Next time, pack that sucker in Rubbermaid. It'll last forever.