Somebody to Love

Actually, this song was originally written and performed by a band called "The Great Society", which was the band that was started by Grace Slick, Jerry Slick (her 1st husband), and his brother, Darby Slick.

Grace talks about the song and it's meaning in her autobiography, "Somebody to Love". The song was written by Darby and is about a more grown up version of love... She says they were tired of all of the "Why don't you love me?" songs that were typical of love songs of the era.

The song means, if you're feeling down and out, and life is handing you a bunch of shit for whatever reason, find somebody to love... To Love in the human sense, not the sexual or romantic sense. To give love, rather than bemoaning not receiving love.

In her words: "Rather than the loving you're whining about getting or not getting, a more satisfying state of heart might be the loving you're 'giving'. Suggesting that adhering to the old Puritan cliche, 'It's better to give than to receive', might actually make you a happier person. The idea of service and selflessness may sound like a tedious task reserved for bald monks, but the way Darby wrote the lyrics, altruism didn't seem like such a lofty and unattainable state. He gave the impression that giving could even be an enjoyable adventure."

• Steve

God how I love this song. It's so amazing, and the drums and so like heavy but simple...

I hate how everyone looks at music as a response to heartbreak. Not all music is about that. I feel like she's saying that when you feel like everything you thought was true is betrayed, the first thing you look for is solace in someone/something else. I understand how it might seem like the verses make no sense, but when you really open your mind they really do, like "but in your head, baby, i'm afraid you don't know where it is" - I think this is like when you're involved with someone who doesn't think at all about real things (society, the universe, etc), they're too involved with the false - the superficial things provided as distractions by society. I think when listening to this music it's important to remember the things that were going on in this time period, it really helps you gain perspective.

I do not know about you guys....but this version is better...NOT the Janis Joplin version....It is a really good song, and the music video is great too....you can find it pretty easy. For some reason in the video she was holding a electric cord in it....lose the microphone?

Ok, instead of trying to work out what it means, why don't you all do you research into the song and actually find out what its meant to mean? The Best of Jefferson Airplane booklet says that it was the bands "adult" response to "I wanna Hold your hand" by The Beatles, Grace Slick stated in a BBC documentory "of course you dont wanna hold her hand, you wanna dick her!". The opening lyrics "when the truth is found to be lies, and all of the joy within you dies" could prehaps soundtrack a time of innocence, when people were turning a blind eye to the war in vietnam because they believed it to be right. And The Jefferson Airplane original is so much better than all the covers out there.

its about living your life with no one to love and acting like you dont care but everyone knows you do

i fucking love this song

I hate the remix of this song. But the original is a true classic.

The repetitive parts make sense, and I like the song, but the verse parts are odd.

i think its like reflecting what happens when you party too much and you think everything is so secure, but then people dick you over and everything becomes like a downward spiral... that's just what it makes me think of...

good song i always find myself singing it haha catchy