Blog

“Hotel California” by The Eagles

Many people think that the song is about a haunted hotel or maybe someone hallucinating on illegal drugs. Come to find out that the song has a completely different meaning altogether. “It’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about” Don Henley (Eagles frontman) said in a 2002 interview with 60 Minutes. But with lyrics like…

“There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
‘This could be Heaven or this could be Hell’
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say”

Sounds like a haunted hotel to me. However, one part of the song does fit Henley’s definition….

“Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget”