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I saw a performance of Miranda Lambert's song "Little Red Wagon" as part of a collection of country music. One of the dancers had some very... suggestive movements during the chorus. (Granted, these dancers did inject more sexiness into other songs than I thought was called for.)

You can't ride in my little red wagon
The front seat's broken and the axle's draggin'

I'd never heard the song before so for all I knew the suggestiveness was warranted. Looking back over the lyrics, though, I'm not sure how to interpret to get that particular meaning. My best guess is that the dancer was treating "little red wagon" as some euphemism for female genitalia but I don't see why. Is that what the "little red wagon" represents? Or is it standing in for something else? As it's in the title and chorus, I gather that it is important to the song, so I figure it must mean something.

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  • The little red wagon is presumably the same one that appears in Skip to my Lou. But I don't know what that means in terms of your question. And the original lyrics were little red wagon painted blue, although I don't know what difference that makes, either. Commented 2 days ago
  • Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar Commented yesterday

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Wikipedia states:

The titular line of the song, "You can't ride in my little red wagon, the front seat's broken and the axle's dragging" is a reference to a popular call and response song in American children's camps.

The song she is referring to can be found here

An example of the original children's song lyrics:

You can't ride in my little red wagon Fronts seat's broken and the axle's draggin'. Omp bah omp bah bah!

2nd verse same as the first, a whole lot louder and a whole lot worse! You can't ride in my little red wagon Fronts seat's broken and the axle's draggin'. Omp bah omp bah bah!

So while Miranda may imply a certain empowerment in denying her interlocutor the relationship he wants, it is probably not intended to be the explicitly sexual reference that you deduced.

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In the immortal words of Tom Lehrer,

Properly construed, everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan, and the Wizard of Oz -- There's a dirty old man!

The original content/context of the children's song is not determinative. There is a long tradition of popular musicians giving suggestive interpretations of seemingly innocent material.

Given the relatively common sexual interpretation of the verb 'to ride,' for a woman to suggest a connection between 'riding my wagon' and sex seems pretty straightforward, regardless of its size or color. There doesn't have to be a direct line from vehicle to genitalia here. To take this further, I recall a song in which repairing a bicycle was absolutely, positively, about sex. Could you tell from the written lyrics? Unclear, but as performed, there was no way to miss it. In other words, the question is generally not close reading of the the text of the lyrics, but of how the performer(s) choose to put the song across.

I don't know what to think if the singer is truly delivering zero innuendo while the dancers are metaphorically climbing poles.

While this is most prominent, in my experience, in blues, I see no reason to be surprised to find it in country.

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  • To be a proper answer, or even a frame challenge, I think you'd need to give an explanation of how to find this interpretation, instead of just asserting that it exists. Commented yesterday
  • Edited to fill in. Commented yesterday

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