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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

"The chorus of the song goes... "All that she wants is another baby.." The intended meaning was “All that she wants is another lover... But of course, no native speaker of English understood it that way. We all thought the song was taking this really surprising angle: “All that she wants is to get pregnant."

Is this true? I never had such confusion about this song, and the Wikipedia page for it doesn't mention it.

It seems more likely that a non-native English speaker would have misinterpreted the lyric -- lyrics often don't intend the literal meaning of the words and the use of "baby" as "lover" is pretty widely known.

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I'm a native speaker of English. I lived in Germany in my twenties as a military wife. My general understanding was that having two children in Germany as a single mom was the sweet spot for the benefits system. You were financially better off with two kids and no job than with one kid and no job. (Or so I was told.)

Single American soldiers were generally understood to be targets of local German women hoping to have another child without much risk of long-term entanglement.

So, yes, I took the line literally as "She will sleep with you to intentionally get pregnant and is merely using you as a sperm donor."

All of a sudden I kind of want somebody to make a cover with your text instead.

This was a massive hit when I was in high school, and I was in my "fuck pop music" phase. The main thing that turned me off to it was that she was trying to get pregnant, so TIL. It is amusing that the intended meaning is closer to "all that she wants is another fuckboy"

It was slightly different with Brittney Spears and "Hit Me Baby One More Time". It was pretty apparent that she didn't mean she wanted to be physically abused, but it wasn't clear what she actually meant, and I wasn't going to waste my time trying to figure out the real meaning of a song I didn't want to listen to in the first place.

Im a native English speaker, and I'm shocked to learn that the writer meant it to mean "lover."

Baby is used for lover, so I can see how it's confusing. Still, I never even considered it.

I actually like it a lot better as a literal "baby." It makes the character in the song more unusual and mysterious.

When I first heard it, I considered both interpretations, and left it ambiguous in my mind. Ambiguity is actually a selling point, in my observation: people shape it in their head to mean whatever they want it to mean. It's just like (alleged) news: if they tell you what you want to hear, you are more likely to tune in again: Confirmation Bias. It's partly why media choice has made the nation more divided.

Wait, I'm confused.

Do native english-speakers intuitively interpret the lyrics as "infant" or as "lover"?

"Babe" is common word for "lover" in many languages, including mine, and I never thought someone would think this upbeat song is about getting pregnant.

As a native I assumed infant.

Another baby lacks the usual possessive and seems doubly ambiguous for a lover.. (Is it a new lover or an additional one?)

Wanting another baby (infant) is both a common phrase from 30 somethings and a kind of warning that fits nicely into a pop song where the audience is treated as having a 16-21 level of maturity. The peer warning about a temptress or other opportunity that is a threat to their irresponsible lifestyle.. "Watch out for that vixen-cougar" was the subtext I was hearing. A little nicer than "she is a man eater"..

The use of baby as lover is well known, but not when phrased like this. I think its because 'baby' needs to have ownership attributed to it to imply partner.

My sense is that "baby" is a term of endearment that is typically addressed to someone in particular. Similarly, you might express affection for someone by calling them "dear" or "honey," but it would be weird to say "I want a dear" or "I want a honey."

I think thats right, using the slang baby as a direct object is rare but possible. “I shot my baby” e.g., but using it with “another baby” really throws it off because a lover is not something you usually have multiple of at the same time so there is not enough context to resolve the ambiguity and lots of natives default to the wrong meaning.

I always thought they just forgot the comma. "All that she wants is another, baby."

I am an native english speaker that moved to Sweden. I am currently learning swedish and the swedish language doesn't use commas in the same way. I think a comma, even in just the lyrics (or a pause in the song), would have made things clearer.

But the comma would make _baby_ refer to the listener as an addressee of the singer (vocative). That is not the meaning the article says is appropriate. Commas are not put between a determiner and its noun so a comma would give a third meaning, turning _another_ into a pronoun.

Oh now I've misinterpreted this song two times haha. Thanks for the help.

I always thought it was about babies, and I'm a native English speaker.

I was in high school in the early 90s and heard this song a bajillion times. To the extent I thought about the meaning of this song lyrics (I tried really hard not to), I always thought it meant child, not lover.

The song is just ambiguous enough to leave you wondering if there's a dual meaning to it. She's clearly out for a one night stand, but maybe she wants an actual baby out of the deal.

And leaving you thinking about it is a neat trick to making the song popular. I find the fact that it was unintentional amusing in it's own right.

The use of “baby” as “lover” other than in direct address or with a possessive (most commonly “my”, which is also implied in direct address; but other possessives are occasionally used, mostly after someone has used the idiom in conversation, either to acknowledge or refute the first speakers possessive claim) is almost never heard in English; yes, the idiom is common, but the idiom is also quite particular in form, as idioms often are.

I was only about ~9 when the song came out and always thought she wanted to get pregnant.

I still thought that up until I read this...now feeling very stupid.

There's been at least some speculation that the "pregnancy" interpretation was, in fact, completely intentional on the songwriter's part:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/how-90s-pop-band-secretly-sold-n...

I also never had any confusion about that lyric—just figured “another baby” meant “another person to call ‘baby’” (i.e. a lover) and chalked it up to poetic license.

As a 13-year-old native English speaker when I first heard the song (around the time it came out), I certainly misinterpreted it. But then, as a kid growing up in a fairly conservative evangelical Christian environment, I wasn't inclined to interpret mainstream pop songs charitably. And those minor chords helped to make it seem dark.

Yeah, even if it was "wrong" (really, it's a stretch to call it wrong), though ok, Baby was usually used when you were referring to the person directly, or using a term like "my baby". It's a much smaller poetic licence than what happens in a lot of lyrics composed by native speakers.

I thought the same thing. I'm a native English speaker and even though I was a kid when the song came out, I understood the lyric correctly. Or maybe it was because I was a kid that I understood it correctly? I don't know, but maybe not the best example.

Second that. There was a program on svt play a couple of years ago in the series ”hitlåtens historia” where the band talked a lot about the song.

all my extended family on the swedish side had many lovers, and a child with each, so that might be the same thing

It's blatantly false and bizarre as a claim. I grew up during the early pop 90s, and rather drowned in that culture day to day (it was still peak MTV). It's far more likely that few people thought it referred to having a baby. If it had been taken to mean having a baby, the song never would have charted. Referring to someone as their baby romantically, was and is extremely common. It was routinely referenced in R&B songs at that time as well. I don't see how it could have been missed.

In Sweden there was a radio program where you could call in and report what misunderstandings you or a friend had of songs and they would riducule you no end. There are a lot of weird misunderstandings thanks to just not listening properly or the vocals being very unclear. Or just pronounced strange so they fit into the melody.

There was a series of adverts based on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gib916jJW1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxELSzay2lc

Im British and I always thought the song was about wanting a baby (get pregnant)...

I bought the album when it came out, and I certainly thought it meant a child, and so did most people as far as I can tell. After all, that's what it says, and interpreting baby as an endearment would mean the line made no sense given how the term baby is used.

I'm a native Swedish speaker and I always thought they meant having another child. The issue isn't the term "baby" being ambiguous, it's the phrasing.

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