For a song with California in the title, “California Dreamin’” is curiously lacking in surfboards, hot rods, and beautiful blondes named Wendy and Rhonda. Instead we get depressing imagery about brown leaves and gray skies. Phillips was writing about what he knew, and what he was trying to escape. For him California represented a new start, a fantasyland utopia where you’re always “safe and warm.”

Wong in Chungking Express responds to “California Dreamin’” because she’s similarly looking to escape a drab existence. She wants to fall in love, and when she does fall in love, she wants to be closer to the object of her affection, Leung, even if it means rummaging through his things in clandestine fashion. But when she finally has the chance to be with Leung, she decides instead to leave and travel the world. Like millions of other people, Wong was no doubt inspired to pull up stakes in a more literal sense by Phillips’s romantic restlessness. Happiness at home will never be as alluring as the promise of something even better some place else.

While Chungking Express ends ambiguously—Wong returns home to find that Leung has purchased the snack bar where she used to work—we all know what happened to Phillips after “California Dreamin.’” I’d like to think that things turn out differently for Wong and Leung, and they live happily ever after and dance to “California Dreamin’” as they prepare chef salads for lovelorn customers. But the meaning of “California Dreamin’”—and by meaning I mean our perception of its meaning—has changed, and it’s this: Getting what you want can be absolutely the worst thing that can ever happen to you. All the fame, drugs, and willing women in the world won’t keep you safe and warm if it’s always a winter’s day in your head. (via The A.V. Club)