In its original form, Vanessa Carlton’s 2002 hit "A Thousand Miles" is a cinematic pop song about romantic longing, carried by one of the hookiest piano melodies ever written. But here are two other universal truths: Music is a fluid art form built for reinterpretation, and high school generally sucks. In that spirit, a pair of Arizona teenagers performed a bizarre and virtuosic piano-and-drums version of Carlton's classic during their student talent show—part next-level trolling, part act of polite youthful rebellion.
Make Weird Music, a YouTube channel devoted to "shining a light on the world's most creative music," documented the whole tale. (The source makes sense, given that the page is operated by Anthony Garone: a tech ghostwriter, musician, author, and proud father of Gabe, the 17-year-old pianist in question. Gabe's drummer bandmate is best friend Owen Dueck, also 17.) Garone's video actually opens with a home-studio live performance by the duo, and that alone is worth the price of admission: The piece, originally arranged by Brekky Boy's Taylor Davis, opens with a straightforward rendering of the piano melody—before everything goes haywire with dissonance, leading to a heavy jazz-fusion section and other forms of avant-garde chaos, with the original melodies sprinkled in throughout.
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But that performance is really just an homage to the duo's surreal talent-show spectacle, which took place at Mesa's Dobson High School where roughly 250-300 students and parents looked on with some mixture of pop nostalgia and severe confusion. Garone sprinkled in snippets of hilarious cell-phone footage throughout the video. "You can hear the audience," he says in the clip. "They started with all cheering, like, 'Yeah, it’s 'A Thousand Miles. Woo-hoo!' And then you go [plays dissonant harmonies]. They’re like, 'Oh, my gosh! What is happening?'"
"They are such trolls," Garone tells GOOD. "They were joking about doing the talent show, and they were gonna get up and do something terrible: play like idiots or do a sketch that was intentionally not funny. I was like, 'Why don’t you do something that’s challenging and interesting?' I showed them this Mr. Show sketch 'The Audition.' I’m like, 'You have an opportunity to do something meta and weird, just like [David Cross in the show]–you run a piece called 'The Audition' while you’re auditioning. There’s something you can do for a talent show that demonstrates your talents but also demonstrates that people won’t understand your talents."
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Garone—himself a guitar virtuoso and massive fan of progressive music—was already familiar with Brekky Boy's version of "A Thousand Miles," so he made the initial suggestion. They eventually agreed, impressively transcribing the whole piece in roughly a week. (Garone also connected with Brekky Boy's Davis, who was excited to learn that someone else was performing his weird creation.)
"It was super intimidating," Dueck tells Garone in the video, describing their process of learning and performing the track. "It was definitely interesting," adds Gabe. "There were a lot of weird parts to it that I enjoyed transcribing." They also talk about how they ramped up the strangeness to include their stage presence: "Right before the curtain opened, Owen comes up to me and is like, 'Dude, we should just stare at each other—weird the audience out,'" says Gabe. (They did indeed follow through on that idea, gazing at each other for a silent 15-second overture.)
Gabe notes with a laugh that they "didn't win" the contest. But, as Dueck clarifies: "Winning wasn’t the point. Playing something so weird that people would question our skill level—I think that was the point."
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In a way, it was a form of performance art.
"I love this quote from [The Residents'] Homer Flynn, who said, 'Life is all about letting things pass through you, and then you put your own creative stamp on it on its way out," Garone tells GOOD, paraphrasing an interview from the MWM channel. "This [Brekky Boy] arrangement to me is, 'Hey, this is a cool song. I want to put my own creative stamp on it. Then to have someone cover that cover with a whole different intention? He hears the song and then says, 'My goodness, I want to do this to my high-school peers because they’re so irritating and boring and mundane.' I don't mean this in insulting ways, but my son is always like, 'All they do is sit on their phones all day. They're not paying attention. They're not learning anything. They slow down the learning. I would love to make them suffer through these four minutes of...'Gotcha!'"
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You may have missed the actual meaning behind these 5 popular songs.
'Every breath you ...' what? 5 classic songs where people totally missed the meaning
I’ve never been a "lyrics guy"—as long as the words sound pleasing to the ear, are relatively interesting, and aren’t evil or distractingly dumb, I don’t care all that much what the singer is going on about. I’m focused on the dynamics, the color of the arrangements, the rhythms, and harmonies. It’s only natural that I’d misinterpret some songs over the years, including ones that I’ve heard a thousand times while walking around malls and supermarkets.
I know I’m not alone. And I’d argue there are plenty of factors behind this phenomenon: Some people take lyrics too literally, while others only focus on hooky choruses and fail to notice nuance in the verses. Context can also blind us—if the music is danceable and upbeat, you might fail to catch darker elements in the words. Still, it can be hilarious and/or shocking when hugely popular tunes are misinterpreted on a mass scale.
Speaking of which: Let’s consult a viral Reddit thread titled "Any songs that are (or were) misunderstood by the public?" There's a mountain of suggestions—everything from '90s Latin-pop hits to '80s heartland-rock epics. But five of them felt especially perfect, so let’s dig a little deeper below.
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The Police - "Every Breath You Take" (1983)
As someone argues in the comments, "Pointing out the real meaning behind 'Every Breath You Take' has to have become so commonplace that it can't really be misunderstood anymore." Point taken. But still…this eerie Police track continues to be used in pop culture and everyday life as a signifier of romance—appearing as the soundtrack to TV slow dances and being arranged for weddings by string quartets. It’s easy to assume, at first glance anyway, that the song's protagonist is pledging their devotion—sticking around for "every breath" their partner takes. Instead, the atmosphere is more disturbing, given the whole "I’ll be watching you" thing. "I didn't realize at the time [I wrote it] how sinister it is," Sting told The Independent in 1993. "I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance, and control."
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Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the U.S.A." (1984)
"Born in the U.S.A." is one of Bruce Springsteen's signature songs—but also likely his most misinterpreted. As an official explainer video notes, the words "center around America's industrial decline and loss of innocence during the Vietnam War"—a message that became somewhat diluted as politicians began using the stadium-sized track for their campaigns. "Conservative commenters praised the song, and it earned the approval of both candidates in the 1984 presidential election," the clip's narrator adds. "Despite being adopted as a patriotic anthem, 'Born in the U.S.A.' is far from nationalistic." In a deep-dive piece, NPR quotes Springsteen talking about the song on stage: "'After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about,' he said before performing 'Born in the U.S.A' to a crowd in 1995. 'I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it."
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Los Del Rio - "Macarena" (Bayside Boys remix) (1995)
Most Americans probably know the bubbly Bayside Boys remix of Los Del Rio's Spanish-language hit—it became the marquee moment of many a mid-'90s wedding reception and middle-school dance, thanks to its once-ubiquitous choreography. Maybe it's because people were too distracted by remembering the dance moves, but lots of us didn’t notice the lyrics. Of course, the chorus is in Spanish, which could have been a barrier for some, but the remix features English lines like the following: "Now don't you worry about my boyfriend / The boy whose name is Vitorino / Ha! I don't want him, can't stand him / He was no good so I, ha ha ha / Now come on, what was I supposed to do? / He was out of town, and his two friends were so fine."
"My little teenage mind was blown when I learned 'Macarena' was about cheating on a boyfriend with his friends," one Redditor wrote. "[Thank you] for the correction, it was 2 friends! Was sleep deprived writing this. I just did the moves, never questioned the lyrics." Yeah, gotta admit—this legitimately never crossed my mind either. Same with some of the people who took part in a reaction video for Distracify: "It’s definitely about dancing," one person said, before learning the truth. Another added, "I have no idea what it’s about still to this day. Please tell me it’s not something really dark."
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Baha Men - "Who Let the Dogs Out" (2000)
The party was nice. The party was pumpin'.' Until, that is, some "flea-infested mongrels" got involved. Back in 2000, you couldn't escape Baha Men's booming cover of "Who Let the Dogs Out"—it became a staple of sporting events everywhere, a kind of bookend for the Jock Jams era. "I know I definitely misunderstood 'Who Let the Dogs Out' to be about actual dogs," one Redditor wrote, likely speaking for most of the listening public. There's probably a good chance most of those people chanting the chorus weren't thinking about the song's real meaning, crafted by Trinidadian artist Anslem Douglas for his 1998 original. But if you pay attention to the lyrics, "Who Let the Dogs Out" has a feminist theme, telling the story of women who stand up against crass catcalling. "This is going to be a revenge song where a woman tells men, 'Get away from me—you're a dog,'" Douglas told Vice in a 2021 video history of the track. "[Offensive] slang was everywhere. It was just degrading women and calling them all sorts of derogatory names. I tried to do a social commentary as a party song, but the party song overshadowed the social commentary aspect of it."
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Hozier - "Take Me to Church" (2013)
One section of the Reddit thread is devoted to songs interpreted as pro-religion, when the truth is... well, more complicated. "'Take Me to Church' by Hozier is often used by Churches for things, and I’m like 'Oh, that’s not…,'" wrote one user. The bluesy, slow-burning ballad may use religious imagery. Still, it's about something more human—"[It's] this idea that powerful organizations use people’s sexuality in order to mobilize people against women, against gay people," the Irish songwriter told Genius in 2023. "And the justification behind that is often religious in nature." Hozier even isolated one particular lyric that highlights this misconception: "'She tells me, ‘Worship in the bedroom' [is] something tongue-and-cheek, a bit of humor to it, also revealing that this is not necessarily a traditional worship song," he said. "I think I still see my name put into playlists for Christian music, and I’m not averse to that—I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. But that line I would’ve thought would’ve disqualified it from something like that."