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

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!

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.

You're talking about a phase of The Stranglers that lasted two years in a career that's gone on for more than forty. A lot of the earlier stuff was meant to push people's buttons - the song that Alex in NYC quotes in the first post was simply written because the band wanted to see what would happen if you wrote about the typical themes of rock'n'roll/blues numbers in a straight, undisguised, non-cryptic way. Of course, the end result was offensive and there was uproar, but that was the point - and their management were encouraging them to be more and more controversial and confrontational, if anything.

'Nice'n'Sleazy' is actually about the Hell's Angels, the title comes from a slight mangling of the Sinatra song.

By the time they got to Black and White, they'd grown tired of wanting to piss people off and started to write about broader topics.

Even taking all that into account that sort of posturing comes across as deeply, deeply lame at a distance of 40 years and still nasty given everything we now know about British pop in the 70s. Then again a lot of punk comes across as lame at that distance, the impossibility of looking at Johnny Rotten without cringing etc.

I think the lameness is kind of the point in the Strangler's case though (or at least it adds to the effect), this sort of angry impotent self-disgust

Of course that sort of posturing and being controversial for the sake of it comes across as lame at a distance of 40 years later, but The Stranglers circa 1977 - and you can throw any late '70s punk band you like in here - were making music for the time and not for 2017. I don't think any artist knows how their music is going to sound 40 years down the line.

In his book which explains the creation and meaning behind every Stranglers song which he was involved with, Hugh Cornwell is adamant that he wasn't actually condoning ogling women on 'Peaches', but more that he was just saying that it existed - he was documenting what was happening at the time, where the average bloke on a building site wouldn't hesitate to wolf whistle at women walking past etc. Now, you could say that by writing a song about it that he was condoning it, but I don't believe that's the case - I think the song was more just taking something awful that existed and pissing people off by rubbing it in their faces.

There's also the Squeeze song 'It's So Dirty', and the language used towards women in that song is outrageous and even Chris Difford thinks so these days - but for him that song was taking the general language used by the people he was hanging out with in pubs and documenting it in song. You may not like how women are referred to in that song - and I certainly fucking don't - but it happened and that's why the song was written.

I personally like the fact that some of the more awful attitudes of past eras have been written about like this, because not only does that mean that - from a historical perspective - we have a fairer reflection of those eras, but also it makes me realise just how much people and attitudes have moved on.

(As an aside: 'It's Not You' and 'Object' surely must be two of the worst set of lyrics Robert Smith ever came up with.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFIAYai7J4E

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!

Wasn't that actually his (perhaps half-baked) point? That as these artists reached the apparent cusp of their political relevance and power they just kinda folded for various reasons in order to preserve their individuality as artists rather than becoming actual catalysts of revolution as members within a larger group? It wasn't that their art was bad it was a question of its true power to affect change under the circumstances (the balance of power shifting from government to corporate industry).

Yeah the other day I listened to Cool For Cats beyond the four singles everyone knows and loves, and was kind of shocked by the stuff they were hiding on the album tracks. I mean, I live in SE London so I shouldn't have been

xp
I have a strong feeling that way too much significance is being heaped on - what to my perception is - a bunch of music biz scenesters being music biz scenesters. Looking at history through the evolution of the music biz seems so hackneyed and myopic. I don't think that narrative there is much of an insight.

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

― Mungolian Jerryset (bendy), Saturday, 7 October 2017 04:40 (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aiui this song is about a specific person on the fringes of her social circle at the time, rather than satire per se. it's vaguely plausible in hindsight that she was using the lyrics as a proxy for her own bigotry but not especially likely I don't think

"I Knew a Jew Named Frankenstein" by Sun City Girls.

So much early punk and later hip-hop, I couldn't begin to list it all. And the Fugs. And the Rolling Stones. And Chuck Berry. Basically, every musical artist I ever liked was a bad person. Except for Simon & Garfunkel. Simon, anyway--I'm not so sure about Garfunkel.

Sorry Imago. Sometimes those sorts of subtleties are hard to detect in texts. Point taken, my friend.

"I just don't get involved in politics," she said. "What I see now is that race relations are worse than they've been since the sixties. Crime is out of control in the Democratically-controlled inner cities. All people in power have an agenda. They're pretending to favour immigrants, or whatever. But what they really favour is votes."

Better get out, Exene!

ATCQ - Georgie Porgie

super bummed about all the exene stuff. didn't know

Brown Sugar - Rolling Stones
Custard Pie - Led Zeppelin
Elton John - Jamaican Jerk Off
Kiss - It's a tie between Christine Sixteen & Plaster Caster
Sweet - Wig Wam Bam (musically it's such a jam but...jeez)

Only Women Bleed - Alice Cooper -- I know this is sincere and actually a nice ballad but the title/chorus just nopes me right out of the song every. single. time.

Hey! Little Child - Alex Chilton

Garfunkel killed my parents. Just to watch them die.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned 'Run For Your Life' or 'You Can't Do That' by The Beatles yet, although it's good to see that ILM hasn't quite gone down the route of the retirement home yet.

Prince's vault track "Extraloveable" is a really great tight funk song that's totally ruined for me when he threatens to rape the object of his affection near the end of the song. He later released a different, more censored version but it was slower and lacked that punch and vitality that was the hallmark of his early years.

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."