Blatantly racist songs that have managed to pass under the prejudice-radar

Is it normal for people to start threads and then never say anything in them? Why do I keep seeing this happen?

blame steorn

That duran duran covers album is bafflingly bad.

I can remember reading many times over the years, in the NME etc, criticism of Elvis Costello for that shitty diss on ray charles. guy wrote some decent tunes, and had a good band, but he always struck me as an asshole, and it always kind of put me off him.

Pashmina, off-topic, but there was this huge sign at a store near my office this week that read "FREE PASHMINA if you buy something something", and I was like damn, I didn't even know they got the dude. Fight the power.

fwiw kelpolaris did go on to say RADAR! RADAR! With an A.

WaSN'T THERE SOME DUMB G&R SONG THAT THEY GOT AWAY W BECAUSE(oops caps off) waxl was all like "i was playing a character" and ppl were like "oh that's just axl" or wtfe, I can't even remember it was so long ago. It didn't seem to harm g&r's career anyway.

I hope you bought something something then kkvgz! I was in Prudhoe, Northumberland, UK a few months ago, and a 4x4 drove past me and on the spare wheel cover, no shit, was the word "sarahel", it freaked me out a bit, I can tell you.

g&r's entire post-appetite career consists of harms to g&r's career

that duran duran cover sounds v strongly like primal scream

Okay, definitely not clicking on it now.

Was well up for it before you said that.

Yeah, the only reason that they may have "got away" with the racism on "One in a Million" is that it sold significantly less than their other albums.

i dunno, it had "patience" on it, every kid i knew owned it...

G N' R Lies, also known as Lies, is the second album by the band Guns N' Roses, released in 1988. According to the RIAA, the EP has sold over five million copies only in the United States.[1]

And appetite has sold 18 million.

But yeah, you're right. It's not like it was exactly an indie release.

Didn't exactly fly under the radar either.

clapton did indeed blame his outburst on booze iirc

― tylerw, Friday, November 19, 2010 5:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wikipedia enlightening as usual:

'In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton wrote "when I listened to music, I was disinterested in where the players came from or what colour their skin was. Interesting, then, that 10 years later, I would be labelled a racist.."'

yes eric, very interesting you'd be labelled a racist after giving a 'throw the wogs out' speech.

'In a December 2007 interview with Melvin Bragg on The South Bank Show, Clapton reiterated his support for Enoch Powell and again denied that Powell's views were "racist".'

I remember occasionally hearing old people, usually from a generation who are mostly dead, agreeing w/Powell's "rivers of blood" speech, and denying that it was racist. IIRC the reason given was that Powell was supposed to be worried that non-white ppl in the UK were in danger of having violent acts perpetrated against them by "native" ie white ppl in the UK. Pretty dumm I guess, though Powell was v clever at twisty rhetoric, one of the reasons he was so dangerous in his day. Clapton is depressing, taking your musical inspiration from black musicians, then espousing racist politics, even taking into account the "you're all right, al those others are bad" thing mentioned upthread, is just nonsensical. I guess the guy is just a moron. I guess I'll stick my head up and say that I thought cream were awesome, and that John Mayall album with clapton reading the beano comic on the cover is pretty great too, but at the risk of appearing stereotypically "politically correct" I never listen to them, because of Claptons idiotic beliefs.

Didn't exactly fly under the radar either.

true enough I guess, but then neither did Elvis Costello's or or Eric Clapton's.

racist, "pro-white" politics, I meant to say.

Maybe I missed it somewhere up in that, but "Walk On the Wild Side" to thread?

Is it normal for people to start threads and then never say anything in them? Why do I keep seeing this happen?

― I will always think of you, while (quite) fondly, myself (Evan), Friday, 19 November 2010 23:54 (Yesterday) Permalink

There's a shocking possibility that I have nothing else to contribute.

About Costello's remarks in Columbus: It is obvious to me that his (drunken) motive was to say something as offensive as possible to irritate and wind up the Americans. (Franklin Bruno's 33 1/3 Armed Forces book is excellent on the issue, as well as Clapton's ugliness.) Just look at the record, i.e., everything else he has ever expressed, recorded, valued, and celebrated. This is a guy who reveres Ray Charles, for Christ's sake. Along with a hundred other black American geniuses. And "white nigger" in "Oliver's Army" is of the Newman/Lennon ironic variety, not a fucking slur. Costello is the guy who wrote the brilliant anti-NF song "Night Rally", remember? Everyone's got to give this stupid charge a rest.

his "racism" may well have been overstated, but it stands as a strikingly stupid and offensive thing to have said. he fully deserves whatever he gets for it.

xpost

Ok, actually, I do (sort of)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-SfiiSoGc0
The lyrics to this are totally, totally harmless but fast-forward a little bit and in the visuals is what I take to have biggest semblance to a Chinaman... paired with the clearly oriental beat, I'd think a little of this was intentional... at least on the stage-dev's department.

Doesn't entirely bother me all too much though, aside that from it kinda spooks me how much it reminds me how much the whole thing looks like it'd go perfect in Orwell's 1984 universe, like a free concert for the proles before a declaration of war against Eastasia was signed.

the day i bought silent shout, i played it while driving to pittsburgh with some friends (i'd already listened to it a couple times by myself). everybody was digging the hell out of the first couple tracks, but when we got to "the captain", vibes got weird. i hadn't previously considered the idea, but suddenly knew what was coming. a good friend, who is chinese, was bummed by the childlike, cod "oriental" vocal affections. i tried to defend the song/band, saying that wasn't really the intent, but suspected that she was right. haven't since been able to listen to that song in quite the same way, though i still love the record, the band, fever ray, etc.

hardly blatant or even racist, but weird, you know?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNGexMkG82Y

I don't think the gong and the da-na-na-na na-na chimes were in the original TV soundtrack.

Speaking of the Axl Rose "I was just playing a character" defense, what about Randy Newman? I'm sure some people would find songs like "Sail Away," "Rednecks," "Half a Man" and "Christmas in Capetown" indefensible, even in light of his body of work where prejudice has always been a major theme. You can make an argument for his narrators speaking the way real people speak (the Mark Twain defense?), and how it's part of the sad satire of his lyrics, but for some, the use of racist language or narrators trumps the writer's intent.

(I remember an interview with Newman where he was asked about the intent of the song "Mr. Sheep," in which the narrator bullies a businessman on the street--Newman had to insist that the lyric wasn't taking an easy shot at a sheep-like office drone, but was instead meant to show what a jerk the narrator was. Looking at the lyric on the page, you'd be forgiven for not making that interpretation--it comes out more in the vocal performance. Remember that even the obviously satirical "Short People" caused a bit of a controversy among a humorless few.)

Even in this thread, you can see a fuzzy line that people will or won't cross depending on the situation. For instance, is it always racist to imitate a foreign accent? In Charlie H's example, where's the line when the fake Australian accents cross from smarmy to stupid, boring, tin-eared or racist? You'd have to examine each person's intent (though realistically, after hearing it for the twentieth time, I'd want them all to fuck off too).

regardless of intent, i always figured (as a not-short person) that the popularity of "short people" had to be crushingly brutal if you DID happen to be a short person. empathy not exactly newman's strong suit.

Well, RNewman's done it so often, "Roll with the punches" etc, people gonna know it's a 'part'. Whereas nobody really thinks Axl isn't who he says he is on records.

Also, as a father of a 'ginger' girl child, I never thought it appropriate to even watch that MIA video. Amber finds all that "ginger" prejudice amusing, she's a pretty girl and it works for her, so hey.

Still, from the little I've seen of MIA's vid, I think the 'joke'/'message' is a step too far.

What would be a phrase now "we don't know any better" that will show up on a thread like this in 30 years?

A lot of terms used to describe women and gay people in rap lyrics.

Many xposts - Doran, you've got your dates muddled. RAR and the ANL both pre-dated Costello's Ray Charles comment - Costello played for RAR and produced the Specials (he even produced Free Nelson Mandela ffs) and was not considered a racist in the UK - it was the US where his comments derailed his career. You may not like him but facts matter.

On the subject of Clapton, I spent a long time trying to find an authoritative source for the YouTube reconstruction quoted in the Wikipedia page, and those words are not in the sources it cites, eg J Street's book. He definitely did praise Enoch Powell and complain about Britain being overrun by immigrants, so the gist is true, but I wonder if the language has been embellished in the retelling.

Re: Randy Newman (and Oliver's Army), this recent thread deals with lyrics which use the N-word in a satirical context or, at worst, a crassly insensitive one - I don't think these examples belong on a thread about "blatantly racist" songs.

White musicians and "artistic" use of the N-word: A Discussion and Social History

And re: Enoch, I've never known what to make of this lyric in John Cale's Graham Greene:

"According to the latest score
Mr. Enoch Powell is falling star
So in future please bear in mind
Don't see clear don't see far"

^^^^

Mr. Enoch Powell is appalling, sir ?

That's what I always heard...

DL: Fair enough about RAR but my main point about no one considering Costello a racist in the UK is just plain wrong. I do, my mates do, I refuse to accept that we're the only ones. (And a quick google, makes me right.)

I should have remembered about RAR as I remember reading in an article that it was set up in direct response to Clapton.

Also this doesn't mean that much: Costello played for RAR and produced the Specials (he even produced Free Nelson Mandela ffs)

Clapton clearly has genuine heartfelt love for black musicians and black music but he is also clearly and definably racist scum.

Have you ever met Jerry Dammers? He's as militantly anti-racist as they come, and spiky in the extreme. If he considered Costello racist there's no way he'd have worked with him. I'm not talking about you and your friends (or me and mine) but his fellow musicians and the general public. It's about looking at the broader picture - nothing else he has ever done suggests any racism, whereas Clapton continued to push his support for Powell for decades afterwards. Context is vital.

Ok, fair point. And yes, I have met him.

My picture of Costello was one of someone who had been inadvertently racist in the past by presuming too much kinship with black people that allowed him to talk like this until he came spectacularly unstuck. You can see modern equivalents of this... Westwood interviewing Kris/KRS1 perhaps?

There are loads of example of this in music journalism itself. There are some Lester Bangs pieces that painfully illustrate this (with full self awareness).

Reading back issues of Melody Maker and NME from the 60s and 70s can be very bracing indeed.

Westwood interviewing Kris/KRS1 .. w'hap?

i know it was addressed way up thread, but didn't the Kinks also play Sun City back in the apartheid era? and catch some flak for it?!? that and "black messiah" are splotches on their reputation, unfortunately.

also, i'm not gonna go surfing through this thread to see if anyone called out Morrissey for his more questionable lyrics/songs ("bengali in platforms" being the most obvious offender here).

xpost Ha, yes, bracing indeed. I came across a 1975 NME review of the Equals headlined "Support Your Local Spades".

My take on Costello at that moment is that he was just a prick who would use racist language that he didn't even believe in order to wind people up, so I'm not saying he emerges covered in glory, just that he was more arsehole than racist imo.

anyway, "flying under the radar" implies kinda furtive as opposed to pretty blatant racist lyrics. so the kinks' "apeman" (with ray davies's silly pseudo-Caribbean accent) or the smiths' "panic" would be more under-the-radar (if indeed either song IS really racist) than either "black messiah" or "bengali in platforms" (where the bigotry is pretty much out in the open).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiu11ovUeDM

For the record, I've got a lot of time for Westwood but... this was bound to happen sooner or later and you can't blame KRSOne really can you?

That pseudo- Caribbean accent was a staple in Brit-rock for a while: Ob-La-Di, Dreadlock Holiday....there's a particularly horrendous example on a Blodwyn Pig album I have somewhere, but since they were fairly under the radar anyway....What was more invidious was the way white British rock bands saw reggae as 'novelty music', to be used in the same way as the 'music hall' colourings that were also a staple. And of course, they were always (wrongly0 confident that they could play it.

Re: the Equals headline above - if you read CSM 'From the Hip' collection, the stunning ease with which racial epithets sprung from the hipster lip then is astounding. Bangs was the same, of course, but recanted honestly and completely.

"Dreadlock Holiday" is pretty fuckin racist. Meant to add it last night.

If it hasn't been mentioned yet....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqITI8ZwR-A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH2P_pVze6s

There's a reprehensible Python track on one of the Secret Policeman's Ball live albums. They, of course, claimed it was ironic, or something, but you only have to hear the audience response to know they were playing to the gallery.