Eagles "Hotel California"

There are several strange theories and urban legends about the "real" Hotel California. Some include suggestions that it was an old church taken over by devil worshippers, a psychiatric hospital, an inn run by cannibals, Aleister Crowley's mansion in Scotland, or San Quentin Prison in California.  It's even been suggested that the "Hotel California" is the Playboy Mansion.  Even more, there are many theories the lyrics are metaphor about divorce, drug addiction, having an affair, and many others.  “Hotel California” is a metaphor but it is about materialism and excess.  Don Henley in the London Daily Mail November 9, 2007 said: “Some of the wilder interpretations of that song have been amazing.  It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew.  But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce.”  It's a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream.  Henley said “We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles.”

Regardless of its meaning the Hotel California album is #37 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time.  It won the 1977 Grammy for Record Of The Year and in 2009, the song was certified Platinum (Digital Sales Award) by the RIAA for sales of 1,000,000 digital downloads.