Shaggy admits his fans have misunderstood meaning of hit song ‘It Wasn’t Me’ for decades
It turns out, Shaggy's most iconic song was actually just one big misunderstanding.
Orville Richard Burrell CD, known professionally as Shaggy, is a Jamaican-American reggae musician who scored big hits with In The Summertime and Boombastic - which if you're of a certain age surely just makes you think of that one scene from Mr Bean.
Undoubtedly, the 56-year-old's biggest song is It Wasn't Me. And if you thought that the song was about encouraging infidelity, then you would be absolutely wrong.
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It's actually the singer refuting claims that he travelled to Spooky Island alongside Scooby Doo and the rest of the mystery gang back in 2002.
Ok it's not actually that either, given that the song came out before the movie anyway, but the musician's answer is probably the one you'd least expect.
Considering some of the lyrics include 'she even caught me on camera', 'she saw the marks on my shoulder', 'heard the words that I told her' and 'heard the screams get louder', with Shaggy advising his friend to tell her that it simply wasn't him, you might think that he is encouraging him to keep cheating and lying about it.
However, he seemingly disagrees, going off an interview with people in 2023.
He said: "It was a big misconception with that song because that song is not a cheating song. It's an anti-cheating song. It's just that nobody listened to the record to the end.
"There's a part in the record where it's a conversation between two people and you have one guy, which is me at that point, giving that bad advice, like, 'Yo, bro, how could you get caught? Just tell her, ‘It wasn't me', and then at the end, the guy says, 'I'm going to tell her that I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused.
"'I've been listening to your reasoning, it makes no sense at all. Going to tell her that I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused. You might think that you're a player, but you're completely lost'.
"Nobody hears that part! That's what the song says."
Now I'd say that, given the main crux of the song depends on Shaggy egging his mate by singing it wasn't me, you can't really just go off one line near the end about owning up and suggesting that it's actually not ok (talk about a character glow up). But if Shaggy says the hit song is not about promoting cheating or 'being a player' then I guess we will have to bow down to his superior wisdom on this one.
Topics: Music
James Moorhouse