Ethically Iffy, Morally Questionable, Politically Incorrect and/or Roundly Objectionable Songs by Your Favorite Artists

neil young and crazy horse's 'welfare mothers'

all of The Fall

"Girls" by the Beastie Boys

"Handcuffs" by Parliament

Kinks again, "Black Messiah"

I'll start...

"Bring On the Nubiles" by the Stranglers

...why this is objectionable shouldn't require a lot of explanation.

GO!

― Alex in NYC, Friday, October 6, 2017 7:12 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can think of one that's probably more objectionable!

"Turtle Crazy" - Toy Dolls

The Who, "I Don't Even Know Myself."

Townshend's demo, and the live versions played throughout 1970, contains the line "and no n----- will ever throw it."

By the time they first recorded it in late 1970, the line was changed to "and no one will ever throw it," and this was kept when they played it live starting in early 1971. A second recorded version, released as the b-side to "Won't Get Fooled Again," also had the new line.

Queen's 'The March of the Black Queen' has the phrase "n***** sugar" in it, which I always thought was a bit "why?"

'Don't Try Suicide' doesn't come across well either.

'Don't Try Suicide' comes across better than 'Death On Two Legs' which has the line "Do you feel like suicide / I think you should".

"neil young and crazy horse's 'welfare mothers'"

i love singing along to neil's "stupid girl" when i play that album and i always think man this is dumb and mean and why am i singing along to this but it's totally fun to sing along to.

not as much of a fan as I once was but ... "Bengali in Platforms" by Morrissey

Police, "On Any Other Day"

Neighbourhood Bully -Dylan

Jane's Addiction - "Whores"

"neil young and crazy horse's 'welfare mothers'"

i love singing along to neil's "stupid girl" when i play that album and i always think man this is dumb and mean and why am i singing along to this but it's totally fun to sing along to.

'a man needs a maid' is pretty shitty too

There are many Led Zeppelin songs that qualify for this thread, but 'Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)' is particularly execrable as every. single. line. is. misogynistic.

So many old Blues standards are paeans to paedophilia, domestic abuse, christian fundamentalism, murder etc.. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl by Sonny Boy Williams + Crow Jane by Skip Jones are two very dodgy ones that come to mind. And I find it hard to justify how much I love old dodgy shit like this, but I do.

One with no merit at all that comes to mind is Welfare Recipients by Just Ice. Like a rapper dissing poor people in the Regan era, and saying they are worthless, with that shit fake-ragga KRS 1 production that was a thing back then. I'd imagine this arsehole was probs one of them black Trump voters.

idk what the point of this thread even is, I feel like this is the majority of popular music

Also in the cannon of 'which of their many objectionable songs do you pick?': Guns'N'Roses' 'One In A Million'.

Grateful Dead - Jack Straw:

We can share the women
We can share the wine
We can share what we got of yours
'Cause we done shared all of mine

I guess my point was to highlight songs from artists you otherwise generally admire/endorse/espouse, etc., and the quandaries that those songs pose. Sorry, should've fleshed it out more.

i pretty much stopped listening to Iggy on the day i heard 'African Man'

I mean, Guns N' Roses' "One in a Million" is inarguably objectionable (see also "I Used to Love Her"), but -- personally speaking -- they've never been favorite artists of mine, and I think Axl Rose is roundly indefensible bozo, so I'm not at also surprised that he released such material.

Conversely, I still harbor a stubborn and nigh-on-inexplicable fondness for KISS (largely based in childhood nostalgia), but "Christine Sixteen" vaults majestically over the boundaries of taste, ethics, morals, etc. into very bad territory. Still, I'll never part with my KISS albums.

Wonder how many Rolling Stones songs are gonna turn up here?

Wonder how many should?

"I Like Chinese by Eric Idle/Monty Python ... perhaps it was always intended to be objectionable, but I find it really difficult to listen to in 2017.

I suppose there is the possible invocation of "poetic license," wherein some of these songwriters may have been assuming a character (lots of Nick Cave songs would spring to mind). I tend to wince at a line in "No Feelings" by the Sex Pistols, wherein Rotten claims that he'll "beat black and blue" the "pretty pot of glue" that's been following him around, but then -- by the song's titular admission -- he's acknowledging that he -- or the song's protagonist -- is devoid of compassion. So, as such, is he forgiven for such a line?

All the most ethically suspect Stones songs are also the most exciting so I don't find them truly objectionable. Provocative is a better word. Mick is obviously playing the devil and his main motive for crossing lines is being horny which I sort of feel is fair game.

lol rmde

wasn't aware that part of being horny was being racist

ok, sorry

Rush - Anthem

Live for yourself, there's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more

I'm so glad Neil Peart grew out of his Randian phase by the fifth album or so.

"No Vaseline"

Also,

idk what the point of this thread even is, I feel like this is the majority of popular music

Shakey OTM

Dire Straits - Les Boys

Kinks again, "Black Messiah"

― henry s

god, so many kinks songs. "when i turn out the living room light"!

Hours and hours of Frank Zappa songs, from "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" onward.

fahey- 'revolt of the dyke brigade'

Whoever wrote the lyrics to 'My Lean Baby', performed by Sinatra, really odd and kinda fucked up.

junior kimbrough 'you better run'

"No Vaseline"

are you sure you're not thinking of, say, five or six other songs on this album

lol yeah was gonna say like half of Cube's first couple of records. which are still amazing.

That Exene had an actual paranoid meltdown makes the paranoid meltdown of "Los Angeles" hard to listen to as satire anymore.

John Cale - "Chicken Shit"

Definitely cannot abide by saying ALL of The Fall's work fits here. As they are my ultimate/desert island/pick only one,etc band. But I really wish those opening verses in The Classical didn't contain THAT word. Which I never tolerate in my day to day interactions.

hey, the implication is that they're one of my favourites too!

I don't know why anyone would "admire" the Stranglers really - I can't think of a band who encapsulate the nasty leeriness of 70s Britain more perfectly. It just oozes out of them. Same with a lot of the bro-rock stuff that's being namechecked here. Say what you like about the Stones they knew how to pull the sleaze off and a lot of bands didn't.

Most of the 70s New York artists were completely tone deaf when it came to race. There's a Patti Smith songs that's almost too obvious to mention here.

I can't think of a band who encapsulate the nasty leeriness of 70s Britain more perfectly. It just oozes out of them.

this is what's compelling about them, surely - the ugliness of that 70s vibe brought to the surface (there's definitely something odd about watching the clip of them doing 'Nice and Sleazy' on Top Of The Pops, what with every aspect of 70s TOTP now coming across as vaguely sleazy and gross, and how they sort of fit in but also seem totally out of place)

I haven't read it in years, but there's a bit in the Simon Reynolds and Joy Press Sex Revolts book that talks about the Stranglers similarities with the Doors and they say something like that the Doors sound like being euphorically drunk whereas the Stranglers sound like a hangover - I think that gets at what's interesting about them, they're the hangover to the Rolling Stones/TOTP glamorous version of 70s sleaze

I think the point where I realised Adam Curtis is ever so slightly full of shit was a sequence in one of his films that had a montage of Patti Smith and 70s New York artists, and it posited in a grandiose voiceover that were was something highly important about them or something. There is nothing important or significant about annoying hippy pseuds making very bad music, pal!

Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
Devo - Mongoloid

Not a Lemmon stan, whatever that is, but am sure that Run For Your Life is less about an imagined girlfriend-murdering character and more about a (quite juvenile) black humour based around some of the more questionable tropes of rock & roll - dry clowning without really questioning the underlying issue. Obvious that Lennon would feel embarrassed about it later, most people feel this way about their juvenile humour, especially when it has that personal connection to his physical violence.

hi alex in nyc!!

my first answers are "shake ya ass" and "bitch please II" but there are so many

the the : violence of truth.

i never did get a response as to why matt felt the need to use the n word.

Lots of Death in June.

If Death In June is your favourite artist you can hardly be surprised at their / his questionable ethics.

He's not my favourite artist by any means, but I still have a lot of time for the early stuff when he was part of the Current 93/Coil/NWW crew.

Not a Lemmon stan, whatever that is, but am sure that Run For Your Life is less about an imagined girlfriend-murdering character and more about a (quite juvenile) black humour based around some of the more questionable tropes of rock & roll - dry clowning without really questioning the underlying issue. Obvious that Lennon would feel embarrassed about it later, most people feel this way about their juvenile humour, especially when it has that personal connection to his physical violence.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

"run for your life" is the work of the lennon who, in his youth, delighted in doing physical caricatures of cripples, and was only dissuaded from same slowly and at great length.

Yes, that's what I mean, a cruel, juvenile sense of humour, which he later grew out of (not saying he was a wonderful person later on, but he stopped *this* bullshit at least, eventually.) Think RFYL is degrees more interesting than those horrible impressions though.

the older i get the more credit i'm willing to give lennon for, like, actual personal growth, which was not a necessity for him after about 1963. lennon thought mocking cripples was hilarious, eventually grew out of it and became embarassed by it... and then you have people who mock cripples when they're fucking 70 years old and get elected president anyway. lennon wasn't a wonderful person, but these days i'm not honestly convinced that humanity has much better to offer.

More early Squeeze:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqkb-UAjebg
Thankfully they grew out of this kind of thing

<i>Devo - Mongoloid</i>

Ah, good one. Totally forgot that one. Also, "Pink Pussycat" is vaguely disquieting in that capacity (though still an excellent track, to my mind).

The point upthread about the Stranglers going well out of their way to be provocative in that era is completely spot-on, but that does't necessarily absolve them, so to speak.

Oops, i've forgotten how to properly format here. It's been that long.

I can think of a few but black metal is low-hanging fruit.

Also: what's so morally objectionable about 'Windowlicker'? The French lyric 'j'aime faire des croquettes au chien', i.e. 'I like to make biscuits out of dog meat'? The video? Its prelude, perhaps, but that assumes the song is inseparable from its visual component.

'Windowlicker' is offensive UK slang for someone with Down's syndrome or a similar disability

Ah, I had no idea. My French-inflected mind automatically associated it with 'faire du lèche-vitrine, i.e. 'window-shopping'.

Devo - Mongoloid

if this one bothers you probably don't pay attention to the lyrics on any of the Hardcore Devo stuff, especially "Bamboo Bimbo". just gross all around.

Gil Scott Heron - The Subject Was Faggots

'Windowlicker' is offensive UK slang for someone with Down's syndrome or a similar disability

― plp will eat itself (NickB),

I had no idea

I don't think it's that commonplace, I'd never heard anyone say it, I only found out about it due to this crappy punk band from London that were around in the 00s called Short Bus Window Lickers, I knew what Short Bus meant and that made it pretty obvious.

i'm about the same age as RDJ, maybe its use was confined to that generation

btw: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/outrage-lego-calls-new-character-5853032

Sparks - Young Girls

Maybe nick its only used in a certain part of the uk? pretty sure we are about the same age roughly

In the past I've heard it used in both Western Scotland and London, fwiw

I've only ever (over)heard it being used twice.

I've heard it in west of scotland in the 90s. Well more "Windae" licker obv.

I'm from Australia and encountered it in imported English culture before the Aphex record.

Weird thing to be hipster about

On the same Aphex vibe I have always felt Rubber Johnny was built around horror of physical disability. Perhaps more Chris Cunningham's fault than Richard James'.

Ah, I had no idea. My French-inflected mind automatically associated it with 'faire du lèche-vitrine, i.e. 'window-shopping'.

― pomenitul

i kind of assumed it was a drug reference, some variation of "windowpane"

This was my assumption too.

I don't know if morally objectionable is the right word, and I think it's an amazing songwriting but I never know how to feel about Graham Parker's "You Can't Be Too Strong." Not many songs have taken on abortion in an artistic way, and he has since claimed it being interpreted as anti-abortion was incorrect (he was intending to present it from three perspectives then "you decide what's wrong" as he sings at the end) but...it's always somewhat troubled me even though like I said I don't completely know how to feel about it or interpret it.

some of you ppl don't like characterizations in lyrics

<i>Devo - Mongoloid</i>

Ah, good one. Totally forgot that one. Also, "Pink Pussycat" is vaguely disquieting in that capacity (though still an excellent track, to my mind).

― Alex in NYC

"bamboo bimbo" is miles more offensive than either of these. just a vile song.

There are a few tracks by NWA that would qualify ! Right now I'm listening to "She Swallowed It"...

The police deserve a bit more respect than they got from those guys imo

Saw "Mongoloid" mentioned, and I'll add a lot of stuff from those "Hardcore Devo 1974-77" collections.

As frogbs noted

Came in to say "Run For Your Life," which I just can't see as a clever persona piece, it's just a mean ugly bad song I hope he later regretted.

So I guess I'll go with "Beat on the Brat."