23 Backstories About Famous Songs

Music fans spend a lot of time trying to find meaning in the songs they know and love. We read bio after bio, scour lyrics on Genius.com, and endlessly debate with our friends just exactly what Ringo Starr was saying when he sang “I'd like to be under the sea / in an octopuss's garden.” Life's truest mysteries. Also did you Guns ‘N’ Roses's Slash wrote “Sweet Child O Mine" as a string-skipping exercise on guitar? That's just a bonus fact. You can have that one. We're generous here at Cracked.

Well, hold on to your butts, because it's gonna get weirder than all of that. It turns out a lot of our most popular songs have meanings that are a lot more bizarre than we would've thought possible. We asked our readers to dig up some surprising facts on some of your favorite songs. The winner is below, but first the runners-up ...