And we all wrong.
Songfacts
Quote:
Sometimes if we're feeling particularly confident or have nothing to lose, we feel we can take anything life throws at us. That's the sentiment in "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," written by Eddie Schwartz, a struggling guitarist living in Toronto. He told Songfacts the story behind the song: "I was in a kind of weird therapy when I was in my mid-20s, it was called bio-energetics, I believe. One of the things we did was punch pillows, I guess it had something to do with getting out hostility. I went to a session where we punched the pillows for a while. It all seemed kind of strange, but I remember walking outside of this therapy session and standing on the doorstep of the building I'd been in, this small house in Toronto, and the title just came to me, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot.' I haven't been to therapy before or since. Maybe I should go back."
The song was written from a male standpoint, with the lyric "Before I put another notch in your lipstick case." When male bands cover it, they sometimes sing the line as "Put another notch in my guitar case." This was the only line Benatar changed when she recorded it, changing your to my.
"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" can be interpreted as a song about a one-night-stand, but that's not what its writer had in mind. Eddie Schwartz told Songfacts: "The song is laden with sexual innuendo, but at the core is a song about self confidence. It's a song saying 'no matter what you throw at me, I can handle it, I can play in your league.'"
In 1984, Benatar had an interesting exchange with Songwriter Connection magazine regarding this song. Responding to a question about standing behind what she sings, Benatar said: "There's very few songs where I let lyrics go. I mean, there's times when I let lyrics go because the rest of the song is fine. But, most of the time, I'm real meticulous with the lyrics because I gotta sing them. There were certain parts of that song ('Hit Me With Your Best Shot') that I liked, but most of it that I've sort of outgrown. I mean, it's so hard to sing, 'you're a real tough cookie.'
One night, you know sometimes you announce people's names, this is by so-and-so? When I said 'Eddie Schwartz,' I swear to God, the room - it wasn't very big, then, it was about 1500 people - it just went dead - silence, like, Eddie Schwartz?"
The lyrics are suggestive, but most people didn't consider the song offensive. There was some politically correct commentary in newspapers at the time about it being sexist and about encouraging violence against women. Says Eddie: "This shocked me because it was written from a man's standpoint at the beginning and it was always meant metaphorically - no punches are actually thrown in the song."
We were wrong but that is how it goes. Once a song is released the listener interprets based on their priors and we often get it all wrong. Back then there was no
Songfacts or
Wikipedia and the bands encouraged listeners to interpret their songs for personal needs. It made the bands seem mysterious. Back then people poured over their favorite bands lyrics as having some sort of deep literary, philosophical, or religious meaning. It made these fans feel their bands were geniuses and themselves by geniuses by association because they solved the mystery.
Nowadays they pour over lyrics in order to label the song "problematic" and the singer racist, misogynistic etc. Progress
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 27 Jul 2022, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.