‘Gonna lock her up in a trunk, so no big hunk, can steal her way from me’. FFS Cliff, behave, call yourself a christian? ‘She was just 17, you know what I mean’? Yeah I think I do know what you mean and I’m not sure I like it. ‘Girl, you’ll be a woman soon’. I think you’ll find that’s not a reasonable defence.
Is it time for songs for words that are suspect/ambiguous/offensive/sinister to be consigned to history?
Words. Don’t come easy.
by 63 Comments
Interesting post but….. 17 is a legal age and I suspect majority of girls in this country are sexually a five by then. Or is it from the angle that the singer is way older than that in which case yes I agree that it might be a bit creepy.
Cant imagine Cliff as some possessive love God – didnt he famously not consummate his relationship with a former tennis star?
Buster would rather you didn’t mention that…
Depends on the age of the singer, 17 is ok when he is 20 or 21 as Macca was. Bit more problematic when he sings it now.
Or, in Heaven 17’s Come Live With Me:
“I was 37, you were 17. You were half my age, the youth I’d never seen”
Which makes me think: (a) perv, (b) mathematically inept perv
It might be worse. Given how crap he is at maths, I’m not sure I trust him to get her age right.
Great song though. From a very great album.
The “rule” is half your age plus 7 minimum age I believe. So a 37 year old shouldn’t be “courting” anyone younger than 25 and a half.
Sorry that should have said active not a five. Wouldnt let me edit for some reason.
That typo came across as creepier than the lyrics in the OP. 😆
Thanks for clarifying Steve. I guess I’m thinking with ISHST there’s a ‘barely legal’ vibe happening. But then, what can we say about the Stones, Stray Cat Blues’- ‘I can see you’re 15 years old, no I don’t want to see your ID’?
Others of a similar ilk. My Sharona – ‘Always get it up for a touch of the younger kind’, Prince ‘When U were mine – ‘Let all my friends come over and eat’.
If we’re giving Rolf and GG the big E, shouldn’t we be consistent?
(And as for Maurice Chevalier…
Although “Don’t stand so close to me “ doesn’t cross the line in my view….I don’t think a song with that subject matter would be released now.
Cecil Sharp’s collection is full of dodgy stuff. Can’t we stop all this silly hand-wringing historical revisionism? Should we be burning all those books lauding how wonderful the British Empire is, and how its benificence has greatly improved the lot of all those poor natives? It’s not like books and songs are up on pedestals to be admired FFS.
Spot on Vulpes
Last time I checked murder was against some law, too. So someone should ban all books, movies and stage plays where (more or less) innocent citizens are killed. And if we think the singer of a song is always singing about his own experience or opinions – why weren’t people upset that Agatha Christie and that Shakespeare bloke killed all those people?
By the way, on a personal note, yesterday I joined a team for a new project. And we were informed that “my mate Dennis will do the research, he’s quite well prepared now he’s out of prison…” Turns out Dennis did 25 years for shooting his wife and her lover in flagranti.
That Cash fella has a lot to answer for in Reno.
Hope the project wasn’t how to get away with murder
There is a series on Netflix titled exactly that – How To Get Away With Murder.
I only watched one episode because unfortunately, it was one of the worst things I have ever watched on TV.
But well said Fatima.
No of course not. All art is contextual and just because we (as an audience) have a different context when we listen now than the listeners of the fifties did doesn’t mean we have to close our ears to the lyrics of the time, or we can’t bear to watch Tom and Jerry smoking. I’ve just reading Circe by Madeline Miller and one of the less discussed subtexts is how she has cleaned up some of the more outrageous aspects of the myths for a modern audience, as well as lots of great stuff as well. Whether we should listen, and can enjoy listening now, is a different question to whether we should be able to listen. (insert gag about the least offensive thing about Cliff/Sting is the lyrics). ie they need to be on Spotify and then we can make the choice ourselves.
Being actually convicted IRL of criminal activity does rather than the context of Rolf and GG’s work.
Agree. We’re at total liberty to be disgusted or whatever by art, and nobody’s making anyone listen to Folsom Prison Blues or a massive chunk of all hip hop. Same with reading TS Eliot, given his numerous racist reference to Jews (see the other thread). But chucking everything down the memory hole and censoring it out of the collective memory isn’t the way. It happened. It wasn’t great to modern eyes. That’s it.
Ps: My Sharona is simultaneously horribly noncey, and also a great tune. They’re both true. The former should probably kinda ruin the latter for any decent person, but that doesn’t mean the latter isn’t still true.
I have always admired Harvey Andrews’ courage for writing and recording this sad and difficult tale of the nasty curtain-twitching, virtue signalling tendency of a witch hunt mob with their orcish shouts of ‘pedo’ and their unwillingness or inability to look for facts beyond tabloid sensationalism.
PS spot Danny Thompson’s unmistakeable bass swing behind this story.
GJ – are you suggesting they be banned or just ignored because I think the latter is already happening. Firstly because of age and also discomfort.
Neither. I’m asking: 1 – What price revisionism? 2- Who really listens to the words? 3 – What’s the most offensive lyric you know of?
Hmmm, have to think about that.
Flippantly, I’d offer that single by Wayne County & The Electric Chairs perhaps?
But seriously, first you have to define the term ‘offensive’.
And then there’s casual racism. Would Rod still refer to a Chinese lady thus:
On the Peking ferry, I was feeling merry
Sailing on my way back here
I fell in love with a slit-eyed lady
By the light of an eastern moon
Shanghai Lil never used the pill
As in all things, DONOVAN is our leader in this respect: “I’m just mad about fourteen/ fourteen’s mad about me”…
Ah, you’ve ruined it for me! I always heard that lyric as ‘Fontaine’ 🙁
So did I! I’m slightly shocked. What is it with all the dodgy lyrics in the 60s and 70s about young girls?? I honestly don’t get it. Was it just like a dare game where it was seen as transgressive and rebellious?
It’s like that Who song where he says, “We need water, and maybe somebody’s daughter”.
Of course women of all ages are somebody’s daughter, but saying like that makes it sound like some kind of kidnapping scenario.
It’s just for research for my book! Move along, nothing to see here…[walks away to hastily start writing another book]
Throw in Suerlungs as well and it seems he had a bit of a thing about 14 year old girls.
Gangsta rap seems to have created a whole parallel world of acceptability.
I’m staggered what is said on some of those tracks – just don’t ask me to cite any. I switch off.
If others in other genres spouted similarly there’d be outrage.
As for the last lyrics I have heard that have offended me nope. Shocked hearing heroin by Lou Reed for the first time was shocking and stimulating but not offensive. Nope can’t think of my.
I’m writing something about sexual violence in the lyrics of popular music but what interests me the most is how casually accepted some blatantly sinister lyrics have been – and I think still are – accepted.
As JW says, many rap lyrics are are off the scale offensive but given the genre, I suppose that’s pretty much the point and therefore it’s somehow less rather than more shocking.
To take – almost at random, two hit songs which could easily have been played back to back on pop radio, even now I guess: Young Girl’ By Gary Puckett etc and Brown Sugar by the Stones.
YG is openly disquieting – ‘With all the charms of a woman, you’ve kept the secret of your youth’. ‘Now it hurts to know the truth’. ‘Beneath your perfume and your make up – you’re just a baby in disguise’.
There’s no secret message there: there is a message, but it’s not secret. This isn’t, I don’t think, a ‘character’ song, describing a situation from the outside, it’s a plaintive first person paean to potential pedophilia.
Whereas Brown Sugar – ‘Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields, sold in the market down in New Orleans, scarred old slaver knows he’s doing all right, hear him whip the women just around midnight’ is a powerful, really quite lyrical (though brutal) depiction of shocking historical sexual violence. That might mean that it’s more acceptable, less disquieting but I wouldn’t mind betting that there was significantly more contemporary consternation re BS than there was about YG.
Thoughts?
Although it’s something of an uncomfortable listen these days, I’d argue that the Gary Puckett song is not ‘blatantly sinister’, for the simple reason that it can easily be interpreted as a ‘get me out of here’ plea from a bloke who has just discovered that the 18 year old he thought he was getting hit on by is actually only, say, 15.
She’s just made up and dressed herself like an older girl, but really she’s just a kid. That’s how I’ve always read it anyway. There is no ‘secret message’ because it’s blindingly plain that the bloke is uncomfortable about the liaison.
You’ve been very choosy about the lyrics you quote. With lines like, “My love for you is way out of line”, and, “I’m afraid we’ll go too far”, it sounds like a man ending a relationship, not a ‘paean to potential pedophilia’. I think you need to find a less nuanced example to meet that accusation.
It’s a great choon all the same.
I don’t think people paid much attention to lyrics back in the 60s and 70s. Lola was banned because it mentioned Coca Cola, not because the subject matter was about picking up a transvestite. Was there any consternation about YG or BS at the time? I suspect not, they both got airplay and TOTP appearances. The Stones’ managed to tick both the racist and sexist boxes in Some Girls with the line “Black girls just wanna get fucked all night”, I reckon they would have got away with that if it hadn’t been for the F word.
Also about 99% of people have no idea what words Jagger is singing.
Changed to “white girls…” on relatively recent live versions.
Where are the obligatory….people?
Interesting how people perceive potentially contentious songs if they don’t understand (or can’t be bothered to learn about) the context in which the songs are written.
Randy Newman’s Rednecks, for example, is a third-person POV satire that brilliantly skewers not only the bigoted attitude of the title character but also the smugness of many of the liberals who will look down on his racist schtick.
Ostensibly dealing with a man ogling little girls in the park, the Kinks 1981 album track Art Lover is on even shakier ground until you realize it’s about Ray D’s losing custody of his kids. Even so, I doubt very much if he’d write or play it now.
The story of Short People is instructive. It was misinterpreted by two sets of people:
a) idiots
and b) people who wanted you not to like Randy Newman because he is a pointy-headed liberal.
If there’s one thing the last few years have taught us, it’s that people believe what they want to believe.
And c) (some) Short People too.
Heightist scum.
Glee did a mashup of “Don’t stand so close to me” & “Young Girl” but they rejigged the lyrics slightly to make it that the school girl is infatuated.
The school girl is infatuated in the Sting lyric. “She wants him so badly” and all that. “Knows what she wants to be” – as heard in the spluttering defences of caught-out paedos the world over. “Inside her there’s longing” – yeah right. Get in that cell, short-eyes.
No.
In the sixties and seventies, maybe the eighties too, it was okay to lust after schoolgirls. Junior Wells sang Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (I’m gonna tell your momma and papa I’m a schoolboy too). Nils Lofgren’s Jailbait concludes an excellent album. Songs about prostitutes were common. Even Elton John did an ode to a sweet painted lady. Not so much these days, unless deliberately meant to shock as in Rap.
The Stones were certainly caricaturing themselves on Stray Cat Blues (would you let your daughter date a Stone?) and what happened on tour, stayed on tour, right? Some ‘groupies’ for almost any band were well known to be under age. Of course, Bill Wyman went that step further. Today, Rock stars from the golden age would be more likely to be arrested on sex crimes than drug busts.
Not a jailbait lyric, but in the original “The Spider and the Fly”, Jagger sings with almost disdain about the veryold female “she looked about 30”, on the Stripped album in the 90s, she became 50. Think the age on Stray Cat Blues went up slightly too.
All girls are innocent!
Explain this.
Boomerang Topic.
We’ve discussed this before here, at least twice.
Is there anything more to be added? I think not.
I think we’ve discussed most things at least twice on here, tbh.
I have trouble with this. Who are the “we”. Is it the mob who started here after Word mag and blog folded.
Can a topic not be revisited allowing later members and lurkers to chip in. I it’s been done and you don’t want to participate then fine but no need to try to shut down a discussion because “we’ve done this”.
Within reason of course. A thread overlapping a v recent thread is a different matter.
Not trying to shut anything down. Just offering an opinion.
But isn’t an opinion, a comment indicating disagreement with the thrust of a thread, rather than its existence?
After all, if you think there’s nothing more to be said, logic (not to mention manners) would suggest saying nothing at all.
No matter, you’ve successfully managed to breath life into something that was otherwise dying a natural death.
Think you could do the same thing for my grandad?
In reply to both of your questions:
1.) Not necessarily.
2.) Sadly, no. I don’t think so.
Fair enough
Afterword t-shirt.
Afterword t-shirt
Now there’s an idea…
“I’m going to catch that horse if I can
And when I do I’ll give her my brand
And we’ll be friends for life
She’ll be just like a wife
I’m going to catch that horse if I can”
The lyrics to Chestnut Mare would suggest a Horse/Human relationship, surely this should be banned too.
Peter Shelley “Love Me, Love My Dog”…must we throw this filth at our pop kids?
and I believe Queen enjoyed a relationship with their automobile.
These suggestible lyrics may have given that chap the idea that sexual relationships with tractors was a good idea.
Anto Thistlethwaite knows a bit about that…..