One song that really annoys me is Elton John's Candle In The Wind. This is mostly because it's just an annoying song but also because I have these odd memories of it that span my entire life until adulthood, when I finally figured out what the song even meant.
I have memories of hearing the song while sitting in the back of my parent's sedan when I was probably aged 7 or 8, and for some reason at that time the lyrics "They crawled out of the woodwork" meant only two things to me: termites and Pinocchio. Now since termites weren't something a person would write a love song about, Candle in the Wind was obviously about Pinocchio. Probably not the Pinocchio, I thought, but a girl version, since he says how she looked like Marilyn Monroe. And when he said he saw her in the 22nd row, it was at one of those marionette shows just like in the movie, except she probably still had her strings. Obviously.
For many years of my life I was content with this explanation of the song and frankly, I don't even know if I ever considered any other meaning behind Elton’s words. Until I happened to be dating a guy whose mother was incredibly southern, and southern women love Elton John, and once we went to see him in concert. Elton John fans don't just like Elton John any more than Muslim extremist have an OK feeling about Muhammad. Elton John fans don't just sing along during a concert, they revere each syllable that drops from the lips of their Messiah.
But this woman I was with was an entirely different kind of Elton fan in that she revered him while also being completely wrong about the lyrics to his songs. Maybe not the lyrics exactly, since she knew all those and shouted them loudly from our sky box high above the stage, hoping I’m sure that her voice would carry across the legions of people and settle on the ears of her idol, a pang of beauty that resounded above the pedestrian fawning he was so used to. She sang and she swayed with each verse and chorus, stopping every once in a while to turn around and see if we too were singing and swaying along, which we weren't, because we weren't crazy.
This was a woman whose entire home was wallpapered with bright yellow satiny fabric overlaid with purple velvet filigrees winding up the walls to elaborate gilded crown molding. This matched her purple and yellow wingback chairs and her purple and yellow floor-length curtains that were fit for tearing down and making matching outfits from for a gaggle of Austrian children. Singing and swaying with her would be acknowledging such things were right to do.
What she seemed to get wrong most of the time was the meanings to Elton John songs. Rocket Man became an ode to the United States space program. Tiny Dancer was about, "those Olympic skaters? You know the ones that skate in the teams where they skate on their own and then come back together and hold each other while they skate." Bennie and the Jets was to her obviously a song about a football player. Toward the end of the night he began to play Candle In The Wind and she turned to look at us with a pure joy flickering in her eyes and said, "This one's about his mama!"
I scrunched my forehead in thought and remembered what lyrics I could of the song, something about him being a kid? Something about a lady being naked? Or something? I started contextualizing these images with the idea he wrote the song about his mother and mixed with the 5 free sky box cocktails I'd had my thoughts blurred into a panic of pedophilia. Was Elton John molested by his mother?? Why do people like this song!?
That crazy southern lady just shouted out, "That boy just loved his mama! Writin' that song for her and all!"
A few months later when I finally broke up with that guy, I sent a short email to his mother telling her that I was sorry things didn't work out with me and her son, but given that he was an asshole who tried to buy my affection instead of communicating with his words, it was inevitable. I wanted to say that it was probably her fault for coddling him so much as a child and leading him to believe that romance was of greater importance than building a functioning relationship with a person, but instead I just said, "And by the way, Candle In The Wind isn't about his mother, and every idiot knows that. It's about Pinocchio."
