Hotel California is a wildly popular song by the classic-rock group named the Eagles.
Looking at the lyrics literally, we follow the story of a lone traveller driving through a desert in California. It is getting dark so he decides to stop and rest at a hotel that he sees in the distance.
He soon finds that the hotel has supernatural activity since he hears voices and someone talking about a spirit. He becomes so disturbed that he decides to run away. He can’t escape, however, and is told “you can check-out any time you like but you can never leave.”
It is revealed by one of the writers of “Hotel California” -Don Henley- that it was about being in the music industry. The center of the music industry, according to Henley, was Los Angeles, California and -more specifically- Beverly Hills. He said that it was a “mythical place” and “the end of the innocence.”
The lyric “we are all just prisoners here of our own device” alludes to musicians that become famous and, thus, feel they can never live life as they did before.
In the song, the traveller looks ahead and sees a “shimmering light.” Another writer of the song -Don Felder- said that this light was “Los Angeles at night.” He says as you drive closer to the city, you start to think of “propaganda and advertisement” along with “beaches, bikinis” and “palm trees.”
By the way, here is a great live version of the song by the Eagles https://youtu.be/ctXeHc9_kr8
