You Never Knew What These Misunderstood Songs Were Really About

‘Hotel California’ – Eagle

Its commonly believed that the song is about purgatory, referring to the line “this could be heaven, or this could be hell.” In a 2002 interview, Don Henley stated, “It’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about.

We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. Hotel California’ was our interpretation of the high life in L.A.”