1. The Flaming Lips – The spiderbite song
The general belief is that Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, wrote this song about Steven Drozd’s (the band’s drummer) heroin addiction but there’s more than that..
At first Wayne actually believed it was a spider bite and wrote a song about it to his friend. You can hear about the full story behind this beautiful piece On The Soft Bulletin: Complete Film from Scott Booker. In the movie the band manager describes the song as: “a strange song. Steven is getting bitten by a spider, and just lyrically tells the story in such plain spoken manner: Here’s my friend Steven who’s in the band and he got bitten by a spider and the doctors were gonna cut of his hand.” But the thing is the story sounded quite different from Steven himself: “I thought I got bitten by a spider so I go to the emergency room and I told them ‘I thought I been bitten by a spider’. They’re like: ‘well it could be’, so they’re giving me some antibiotics.” he keeps on: “I started talking to the doctor and I’m telling him all what happened. He say ‘you’re might be a drug user’, he knew what’s going on and I said ‘Oh, yes I am’. And he said ‘did you inject your hand?’
2. The Cure – Lullaby
The song (how appropriate) is influenced by the poem “the spider and the fly”. Although Robert Smith, The cure’s frontman, attributes this song generally to childhood nightmares .There are many other speculations about the horrific lyrics: drugs addiction, depression, independence and even sexual abuse.
3. Devendra Banhart – Little Yellow Spider
The little yellow spider is mentioned only on the first verse. You can also find Albatross, squid, mockingbird, (sexy) pig, (baby) crow and a turtle. You can say that probably Devendra had smoked way too much. You might also find in this purposely childish song, a kind of a message – We don’t give the animals the credit which they deserve. Maybe we are more intelligent than them (at least most of us) but we are missing a lot of things if we consider only money and power as indicators for happiness.
4. The National – Terrible Love
“It’s a terrible love that I’m walking with spiders”
Before the album “High Violet” Matt Berninger, The National’s frontman , became a father. This experience combined with his fears and insecurity have a profound influence on the lyrics.
Spiders refer to these fears – the fear of starting a new family, embracing a new born baby and officially start the adulthood.
5. The Who – Boris the Spider
John Entwistle, the Who’s bass player, wrote this peculiar song. On the live album ‘Left for Live’ John have a short remark regarding this song (with his heavy English accent): “This is a bit of a sad song because my tarantula died two days ago. Her name was Doris. She was seventeen and she packed out, which means died.” Let’s send him our dearest condolences. One last fun fact: the spider was actually a present from his friend, Joe Walsh from The Eagles.