3 Hooks From the 1970s You Can’t Stop Singing Even Though You Have No Idea What They Mean

There are countless reasons why music transcends language and culture. But one of the most obvious reasons is how you don’t need to understand a song’s lyrics or meaning to enjoy the tune. Many iconic hooks from the 1970s have been misunderstood or misheard, yet this hasn’t stopped listeners from singing them even though they have no idea what the songs mean. Here are three classics to make the case.

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“Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

Robert Plant fills Led Zeppelin’s epic ballad with mythology, loose metaphor, and folklore. In the refrain, Plant sings, “Ooh, it makes me wonder.” And that makes two of us. Speaking with Dan Rather, Plant describes the abstract lyrics as something of another time, “from the mind of a 23-year-old guy.” Released in “the era of 23-year-old guys.”

While there’s plenty here to interpret with a range of meanings and intuitions, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Compositionally, “Stairway To Heaven” remains a giant of 1970s classic rock.

“Riders On The Storm” by The Doors

The Doors’ finale from L.A. Woman hints at Jim Morrison’s 1969 featurette, HWY: An American Pastoral, which stars Morrison as a cagey hitchhiker. Over his band’s long blues jam, he stitches together several ideas about a dangerous drifter, the randomness of birth, and one’s dependence on a romantic partner.

People have long debated how much of Morrison’s writing is poetry vs. substance-fueled ramblings. Perhaps we are all riders and life is the storm, or the riders are just the literal passengers in Morrison’s hitchhiker tale, and the storm is the perilous journey down the highway. Thankfully, it’s not necessary to decode Morrison to enjoy this hazy jam.

“Blinded By The Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

In an episode of VH1’s Storytellers, Bruce Springsteen gives a detailed explanation of the deluge of rhymes in “Blinded By The Light”. Yet when Manfred Mann’s Earth Band covered Springsteen’s autobiographical tune, it landed at No. 1, and chances are, few, if any, listeners knew exactly what they were singing about. For example, how many people then understood the meaning of this line: “As the adolescent pumps his way into his hat”?

However, it’s The Boss’s hook that many often get wrong. In Springsteen’s original, he sings “Cut loose like a deuce,” referencing hot rod culture. But the Manfred Mann version changes “cut loose” to “revved up,” and singer Chris Thompson’s “deuce” sure sounds like “douche.”

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