Do you find it hard to tell what a song is about?

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hey, drone and ambiance is cool.

perhaps every single song in an album played at once, reversed. or listening in to obscure numbers stations.

In the case of TV and movies I think that that is definitely an aspie trait, though it may also be a "young person's trait" in your case as well. But I remember my mom coaching me to read between the actors' lines, and took at how their expressions say things different form what their words are saying- stuff like that- to understand movies. Without that coaching I might have been dxd as a low functioning autistic instead of an aspie!

With songs its hard to say. Experts have even done studies - and found that most young folks have no idea what the lyrics of their favorite rock songs mean. Country tends to be pretty straightforward, and obvious in meaning. Other genres not as much. So that issue may not be as ASD related as is understanding big and small screen drama.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 12 Nov 2015, 9:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes. I actually have to go on to 'songmeanings.com' to find the meaning of the song because I cannot understand what the song means. It's a problem I have had ever since I was young, I can never find my own interpretation of a song. Even the most straight forward songs are difficult for me to interpret.

I also have difficulty interpreting poetry and literary works as well..

It all depends on how deep the growling is. :p

I often figure out the deeper meaning to song lyrics (if there is one) after several years of listening to them. I'll be listening to a song I've loved for eons and suddenly a lyric will finally make sense. It's weird. I wonder how I could have missed something so obvious. I was listening to "Roam" by the B-52's the other day and the meaning suddenly slapped me right across the face. How did I miss the obvious sexual innuendo all these years?

I really like Bob Dylan's lyrics because they are so open to interpretation. It's like he's telling you to create whatever meaning works best for you at the time. Make the song your own.

I have a similar problem interpreting meaning if I'm reading fiction. I'll completely miss certain symbols, themes, and motifs because I'm so bogged down by other details of the book. I think I prefer non-fiction books for this reason. Just the facts, please. No time to decipher ambiguity.

Don't be troubled if there is a bustle in your hedgerow.

It's just a sprinkling for the May Queen!

if it's any consolation, many songs played in advertisements (which were not written for the ads themselves) are often the opposite of the message they are trying to give you, or are just plain disturbing if you look deep enough into the lyrics. The people who put such songs in their commercials are either clueless or they end the commercial before you can hear that it's an anti-love song being played for some online dating website, or it's really about greed and commercialism, or the song carries a dark, creepy message even though it sounds happy and lighthearted - like "99 Balloons" and "I'll stop the World and Melt With You."

I really should stop reading TV Tropes.

I have a lot of problems with auditory processing so I have to look up the lyrics to most songs just to understand what the words are. It's not uncommon for me to find out I was singing the wrong lyrics. Hard to know what something means if you can't understand the words. And while I'm at it I research meanings too.

A lot of songs are really ambiguous and don't have a definite meaning. I think sometimes they are meant to be interpreted in multiple ways, so it will show if people are "in" or "out" depending on how they understand the song (songs about drugs for instance). A lot of pop songs that appeal to pre-teens and teenagers are non-literal or have double meanings, so if you understand the underlying meaning it's supposed to show that you're "cool."

Me too, which is weird because I was always great at literary interpretation. But poetry, unless it's pretty direct and obvious, can really throw me for a loop.

I actually don't listen to the lyrics as words. I listen to them as another instrument, another part of the whole that makes the song. When I do want to actually listen to the lyrics, I get out the album cover, or look them up online, and read along with the song.

I, frankly, can barely even understand the words when they're in a song. They're all so... warped, being sung like that, that it comes out as a confusing tangle, so I usually have no idea what it's about.

That being said, I usually just listen to stuff without lyrics to begin with. Usually game OSTs, which is pretty much it.

i always watch films with subtitles because those also sound warped to me.

What??? There is??

Between auditory processing disorder and metaphor failure, I pretty much don't get lyric meanings. I just like the sounds and rhythms.

My brother played Don McLean's "American Pie" over and over again and I still don't get that one. Something to do with JFK maybe? Nixon? uhhh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/08/gloomy-don-mclean-reveals-meaning-of-american-pie-and-sells-lyrics-for-1-2-million/

This reminds me of when George Bush used Bruce Springsteen's song "Born in the USA" as his campaign theme tune when he ran for president. Seems his PR team didn't know the meaning of certain lyrics, either.

(To make it clear - Born in the USA is about how USA isn't really that great after all, also it's about someone from the working class and G. Bush most certainly is not)

I definitely relate to this. Most of the time songs contain metaphors, which I just cannot wrap my head around.
I also always preferred listening to composed music over songs with lyrics because I cannot relate with them, therefore I don't see any value.