It was by pure coincidence that PSoul and I both planned posts about song lyrics today. I haven’t bought or downloaded music since college. My very favorite jams were recorded before I was born, by bands of men who did dogknowswhat with their hoardes of hippie girl groupies. I’m embarassed to admit I’d never even noticed the lyrics in the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” before Macon D. put the words in this post.
Brown Sugar
(The Rolling Stones)gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin’ all right.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.brown sugar
how come you taste so good
brown sugar
just like a young girl shoulddrums beating cold
English blood runs hot
lady of the house wondrin
where its gonna stop.
house boy knows that he’s doin’ all right.
you shoulda heard him just around midnight.brown sugar
how come you taste so good
mmm, brown sugar
just like a young girl shouldaw, get down on your knees
brown sugar
how come you dance so good?
aw, get down on the ground
brown sugar
just like a young girl shouldI bet your mama was a tent-show queen,
and all her girlfriends
were sweet sixteen.
I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You shoulda heard me just around midnight.brown sugar
how come you taste so good
aw get down
brown sugar
just like a young girl should.I said yeah, yeah, yeah,
how come you taste so good?
yeah, yeah, yeah.
just like a young girl should.
Urrrghhhhh. The song is a glorification of slave rape, not a jolly tribute to a dark-skinned lover. I didn’t know that, as a high-schooler, when I hung my Rolling Stones tongue poster on my bedroom wall. “Some Girls” and “Under My Thumb” aren’t picnics either (just to name a couple). Classic rock is so fun to listen to; it’s what I grew up on. But in a lot of cases the lyrics are misogynist and/or racist, and the artists’ behavior may not have been admirable either. I feel dirty. Which lyrical discoveries have made you cringe?
Which lyrical discoveries make me cringe? All of them.
I only learned this late in life, from my kids, both of whom prefer instrumentals.
Um, it took me a really long time to figure out that the Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” was not in fact about someone who liked their personal space.
But that didn’t really make me respect the Police less (if anything, probably more). This is one of the reasons I try to only listen to lefty alternative groups like R.E.M.
“Every Breath You Take” is a creepy-ass stalker song that is often played at weddings. Misappropriation of meaning FTW!
@s.o.l.a.g: REM’s “The One I Love” is the same way. Always makes me laugh when people play that at weddings!
I also find it hilarious that people play “Born in the USA” when they want to be all AMERICA, FUCK YEAH! Um…it’s actually not an America-positive song. Neither is “Fortunate Son.”
I try not to pay attention to most Led Zeppelin lyrics, because I don’t want to get upset. Just focus on the music…
Thankfully I haven’t heard too many misogynistic lyrics from any of Eric Clapton’s music in any of his various bands, but I probably haven’t been listening too hard to those, either — I’m usually mesmerized by the guitar.
the Ryan Adams/Beth Orton cover of Brown Sugar is well worth a listen because it’s really mournful and angry and make the lyrics explicit and in an odd way reclaims the song.
My personal worst lyric – Pink Floyd’s The post war dream which includes the lines:
‘If it wasn’t for the nips/being so good at building ships/the yards would still be open on the clyde/but it can’t be much fun for them/beneath the rising sun/with all their kids committing suicide.’
I would like everyone to consider for a minute on how many levels those words are wrong.
I’m a big fan of Devo, and it made me completely bonkers when Target used their song “Beautiful World” in an ad. Either they didn’t actually listen to the song, or they assume that no one knows it. See also the cruise line commerical that uses Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.” Travel w/ Royal Carribbean, and get totally strung out!
I can’t really listen to a lot of the older music I like — jesus, as I think about it, it seems like I can’t listen to the lyrics of most things by men, to make a gross generalization. (Ian Mackaye, I love you!) What’s the line that gets drawn, where we say “absolutely not.” I mean, even if I never play sexist or racist Stones tunes, by playing them at all, I feel like I’m endorsing them (not to mention the whole appropriation of black music…). But I like them, albeit with a major *. Sigh.
On the topic, I also am gleeful when people grossly misinterpret songs as straight up YEAH AMERICA tunes.
Er, sorry — meant to say, can’t listen to the LYRICS of a lot of older music I like.
Also: I knew there must be a good reason for my heretofore unexplained hatred of the Rolling Stones. I’ve never liked ‘em, and now I feel pretty darn justified in that.
I can’t find much to fault in the Beatles’ library. Sure, they say some off-color stuff from time to time, but I feel like it was all satirical and/or tongue-in-cheek. Anybody else agree (or not)?
Kivrin, what do you think about this John Lennon song? Kinda like a theme song for the Oppression Olympics . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P91_H690z4
@macon d: Hard to hear anyone, even Mr. Lennon, saying that word…but apart from that, I’d say he’s spot on. (Of course I’ve heard that he wasn’t necessarily so enlightened prior to meeting Yoko Ono, but…hey, at least he came around eventually!)
Damn you, Mark David Chapman.
Unfortunately The Beatles (particularly John) were pretty douche-y regarding women, I believe. See esp. “Run for Your Life” which opens with the line, “Well, I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.” I mean, I’m pretty sure Lennon never actually killed a girl, but it’s not exactly something that makes me feel warm and safe to listen to…
But I do love them! And Zeppelin. And Pink Floyd. Hate the Stones, though. I just love music so much that I’ve gotten good at compartmentalizing my feminism and my rock and roll as two seperate facets of who I am, while still keeping a grasp on my values.
@macon d: I didn’t think I could love John Lennon any more, but now I do.
I never really liked many of the Stones’ lyrics, although I like a lot of their music.
Lucky for me, I listen mostly to lefties, The Beatles, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Reinhard Mey.
One of my favourite German bands (Ton Steine Scherben) were prominent anarchists, they have songs advocating squatting, and two of their most famous songs are called ‘Destroy what destroys you’ and ‘No power for nobody’… The ideology might be a bit outdated now, but you can appreciate the feeling behind it, anyway.
@ KMars: I’m the same way. I’ve always loved classic rock, but fairly recently discovered feminism . . . I guess I just list bands like The Rolling Stones under “guilty pleasures”. Besides, I’ve been listening to classic rock since long before I was old enough to have a clue what any of the lyrics meant
Kivrin, I must agree with you. I don’t like that slur, but the lyrics of that song really speak to me, and the point of using that slur is to slam home the message.
“If she won’t be a slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down, we pretend that she’s above us
We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that shes too unworldly to be our friend
We insult her every day on tv
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart, we put her down for being so dumb
We make her paint her face and dance.
We make her paint her face and dance.”
Pretty damn succinct summation of The Patriarchy, IMHO.
Now that I think about it, it’s actually amazing how many great (music wise, that is) anti-women classic rock/blues/etc. popular songs there are out there. It’s almost impossible to avoid. Then again, I guess it’s not amazing given that we do live in a patriarchal society.
I was briefly in a garage band (which, trust me, was never going to leave our garage) with my all-dude housemates in which I would sing misogynist and/or sexist lyrics, i.e. Sex Type Thing, Run for Your Life, Plush. I picked these songs, much to the surprise of my “band” mates, precisely because they KNEW the songs were sexist and let me tell you, it lead to some very interesting conversations about popular lyrics and cultural misogyny. And when their buddies would come over and see a woman screaming/growling, “You shouldn’t have worn that dress!” into a microphone. Well. Again, a lot of really interesting discussions ensued, and, I’d like to think (hope) that some of those discussions were eye-opening to the men involved.
So maybe we can enjoy these songs and their musical styles while constantly pointing out to others what is also inherently wrong with the sentiments/messages they are expressing?
Also, don’t some seemingly anti-woman lyrics actually bring to light to some anti-woman realities? One that jumps to mind is Judy Collins’ “Polly Pretty Polly” which ends in Polly’s murder. The perpetrator is damned and the listener feels empathy for the young woman who pleads for life: “Let me be a single girl, if I can’t be your wife.”
BTW, and not OT I hope: I should have KNOWN my first husband was a douche-bag when he suggested “Under My Thumb” for our second dance. I suggested “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” instead.
Okay, I’ll shut up now.
In my old 70s feminist collective, we listened to it only under cover of darkness, with headphones.
“Under My Thumb” creeps me out like whoa. I spent one full week contemplating the creepiness of that song. Sigh.
Personally, I’ve always found the Beatles’ brand of faux-wholesome nastiness way creepier than the Stones. Read any of the bios of that crowd and the Stones were a pretty mellow bunch by comparison.
I love Under My Thumb, but I’ve always imagined it sung by by a really pathetic drunk, trying desperately to show off for his “mates”. I can picture his bleary face, and the other patrons of the bar laughing behind his back at his lame macho fantasising.
Yes, I’m in a dilemma. I’m in a newly formed band with 5 men and 1 women. The man who wants to do “Brown Sugar” said, “Uh, the lyrics are pretty raunchy” when he brought it up. I LOVE the Stones! The little pigs. I think that “Satanic Majesty” thing was kind of for real for them. I guess they’re in touch with the very real cruelty in the world. Okay. Well. I guess I’m not doing the song. I wish I could find a feminist lyricist who could take the song and make it juicy liberation, like Mae West meets Weird Al, writing in verse. Any takers?