You Won’t Believe What Semisonic’s Closing Time Is Really About [VIDEO]

I put bread on my family's table by knowing the origin stories of pop songs.

It's a rare vocation, I know. Still, it's one that is suited to me. By the time I was out of high school, I was an historian when it came to bands like the Doors and Pink Floyd. Through college, my obsession was with the Beatles. Ask me about them. If memory serves me, I can pretty much take you through their entire story.

Today's music doesn't always have the romanticism that those groups from days gone by have had for me, but still, behind every hit song, there is a story.

As a dad-to-be and an amateur songwriter myself, I have little doubt that there will be a song that is inspired by the coming birth of my child. That's why it was especially interesting to hear that Semisonic's Grammy winning song Closing Time isn't about the nightly last call for alcohol the way we all thought it was. It's about the birth of lead singer Dan Wilson's first and only child.

Closing time, time for you to go out to the places you will be from

Closing time, this room won't be open 'til your brothers or your sisters come

If someone were to come up to me and just tell me that that is what this song is about, I would probably think that interpretation is possible but unlikely. Dan Wilson, the author and lead singer, explains it in no uncertain terms in the video above.