Results: Lyrically Speaking

My brother (a musician) says that song lyrics mean what the writer intended them to mean and nothing more, whereas I say lyrics can be interpreted in many ways, depending on the listeners' life experiences. What say you?

There have been thousands of songs written where the true meaning is cleverly veiled by metaphoric lyrics. For example, the song "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles. Unless you know a lot about the drug culture, you probably think this was just a cute little song about a brightly colored underwater apparatus. I say if someone innocently thinks so, then that's what the song means to them. My brother says, "No. It's a song about drugs. It doesn't matter what they think. " Could it be that he doesn't understand the difference between face value and interpretation?

I think most songwriters know that their lyrics are open for interpretation, don't you?

So just say it: I'm right and my brother is wrong!