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Song Stories

“Four Winds”

Bright Eyes | 2007

Bright Eyes leader Conor Oberst received a Four Winds ring from a mysterious stranger before setting off to Tepoztlan, Mexico, to have the relic blessed. "A Native American friend of mine did it for me during a visit to the Pyramid of the Sun," Oberst said about the ritual. "Now it feels extra-magical and I wear it all the time." The ring was inspiration for this song off his 2007 album Cassadaga. Driven by a deep-fried fiddle, “Four Winds” makes reference to a William Butler Yeats poem and ponders questions of biblical proportions.

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Song Stories

“Karma Chameleon”

Culture Club | 1983

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."

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