i discovered the song Hotel California last night, and i already love it.
what i love about it is it’s so mysterious and dark, and there’s so many ways to interpret it. a list of ones I’ve found, if you will:
the literal intepretation: creepy, possibly demonic hotel that you can never leave, with spirits (presumably of other/past occupants) haunting the halls, tormenting you forever
the afterlife: the hotel is a metaphor for hell (i can understand it, but i personally find it kinda boring)
drugs: it’s all a metaphor for drug addiction
the highlife: it’s a metaphor for fame, as a performer who never really escapes the spotlight
the technically correct/original: hedonism and materialism in California/Los Angeles, and how everyone in such a place came from somewhere, and is trapped there forever by their own insatiable need for pleasure
the cult: the hotel is a commune/meeting place for a possibly satanic/cannibalistic/orgiastic cult, and the singer in the story is their next victim/initiate
the asylum: it was once rumored that the inspiration for the Hotel California was a certain psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles, and that the song is from the perspective of a patient
and there’s probably more. all from a single song, with a bewitching melody and progression.
fuck yeah.
I’ve seen colons inside close-parentheses get turned into smiley faces and I’ve seen parenthesized C’s and R’s become unwilling symbols of copyright and trademark but this is the first time I’ve seen this thing happen to a C and O that just incidentally happened to be on adjacent ends of words with a slash between them