I guess you can argue that, but the same argument could be made about "Captain Jack" or "Suzanne"... After all, we're not all drug addicts, or in love with someone named Suzanne.
I don't think it's an uncommon storytelling technique to talk of "you" when you really mean "me", usually it's done to add some distance to the narrative. For example, the interpretation of "Dancing Queen" that I've often heard is that the narrator is an older woman talking to her 17-year old self, that's why she's using "you" instead of "me".
― Tuomas, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 11:21 (ten years ago) link
I have no quibble with "Dancing Queen" & suspect those who do of male chauvinism
― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 16:53 (ten years ago) link
At first I was gonna write something about how exuberant repetition of the "dancing queen" epithet creates the illusion of a character more powerfully than the use of the second person can contain it; but then I realized, Nah, it's just that I'm a manly man & I tune out when the radio calls me a dancing queen, otherwise I'd be getting in a lot of dumb fights with the radio
― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 16:59 (ten years ago) link
Dylan owns this one. Positively 4th Street is another
― Dr X O'Skeleton, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 17:59 (ten years ago) link
You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friendWhen I was down, you just stood there grinning
and so on
― Number None, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 19:06 (ten years ago) link
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
― dlp9001, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 19:29 (ten years ago) link
As mentioned above, "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen does this, and I find it extremely irritating. I realized that if read in another voice, it could basically pass for one of Garrison Keillor's monologues on Prairie Home Companion. Try it:
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, and you can hear the boats go by, and you spend the night beside her, and you know that she's half crazy, but that's why you want to be there... And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China, and just when you mean to tell her, that you have no love to give her, then she gets you on her wavelength, and she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover... and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, and you know that she will trust you because she's a nice girl, raised in the Lutheran tradition, just like you were
― Poliopolice, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 21:28 (ten years ago) link
hehehe
― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 21:36 (ten years ago) link
Gold Panda - "You"
― nxd, Wednesday, July 23, 2014 1:38 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol
― uxorious gazumping (monotony), Wednesday, 30 July 2014 23:32 (ten years ago) link
BAKER STREET, yo
― resulting post (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 30 July 2014 23:37 (ten years ago) link
Pink Floyd - Pigs (Three Different Kinds), Shine on You Crazy DiamondsFrank Sinatra - (Love is) The Tender Trap
― ablaeser, Friday, 1 August 2014 03:05 (ten years ago) link
Billy Joel - Viennahttp://songmeanings.com/songs/view/77983/
― nxd, Friday, 1 August 2014 14:37 (ten years ago) link
Hold Steady - You Can Make Him Like You
― ablaeser, Tuesday, 19 August 2014 02:31 (ten years ago) link
Kleenex - "You"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjQJeE79nDg
― Mark G, Tuesday, 19 August 2014 08:47 (ten years ago) link
Bruce Springsteen - Night
― kornrulez6969, Wednesday, 28 March 2018 13:05 (six years ago) link
More Dylan songs from the same era as others cited above – “She’s Your Lover Now,” “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” (maybe others I’m not immediately thinking of...)
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 13:52 (six years ago) link
The Magnetic Fields – “You You You You You”
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 13:57 (six years ago) link
Napalm Death - You Suffer
― Colonel Poo, Wednesday, 28 March 2018 13:58 (six years ago) link
Later Dylan – “Tight Connection to My Heart”
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:00 (six years ago) link
Mid-period Dylan: “Up to Me”
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:03 (six years ago) link
With all due respect, I'm not sure those two Bob songs qualify.
― kornrulez6969, Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:06 (six years ago) link
I noticed that this happens so much in Belle and Sebastian songs.
― loud horn beeping jazzsplaining arse (dog latin), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:10 (six years ago) link
xpostWhy not – or am I misunderstanding the premise?
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:17 (six years ago) link
Hmm maybe I am
― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:18 (six years ago) link
also - a lot of Leonard Cohen (like Suzanne, most prominently).
― loud horn beeping jazzsplaining arse (dog latin), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:19 (six years ago) link
was gonna mention every single Pet Shop Boys song but I guess that's been covered
― frogbs, Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:24 (six years ago) link
lotta Frank Sinatra, including Tell Her You Love Her, Come Blow Your Horn, Love and Marriage, Young at Heart
― Josefa, Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:28 (six years ago) link
xp Being Boring a wonderful exception to the rule tho!
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 28 March 2018 14:33 (six years ago) link