Just Google “racist Warner Brothers cartoons” and be prepared for an eyeful. Same thing with animal abuse and sexism, too.
p.s. “Brick” isn’t that old of a song.
But still anachronistic.
And the line, “Little and dark, more like monkey than man” is painful today.
No love for Jack Jones?
Day – after day
There are men
At the office,
And – men will always be men.
Don’t – send him off
With your hair
Still in curlers;
You – may not see him again…
(Wives and Lovers)
Most of Elton John’s “Island Girl” is just cringeworthy today. Hell, it had to be at least a little bit cringeworthy even back when it was released in 1975.
From the Fallout Wiki:
All those songs on Fallout 4 were from the 1940’s-60’s.
Kids, anachronistic means something you encountered recently that was from a bygone age, not something you recall from your childhood, fifty years gone by. We can laugh at the tastes of our grandkids, but our greatest laughs, if we are to maintain our moral superiority, should be aimed at bad cover bands.
outgrowing
It means something you encountered at any time that belongs to another time. Something simply being old or “from a bygone age” doesn’t make it anachronistic. The White House, for example, isn’t anachronistic, it’s just old. Most of The Beatles’ catalogue isn’t anachronistic, it’s just old. If you released most of those songs today, they would unremarkable.
I’m having a degree of trouble seeing how a lot of the things here are anachronistic. How is “Wishin’ and Hopin’” anachronistic? It’s just another “treat you lover right” song. Compare:
Show him that you care just for him
Do the things he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him, ‘cause
You won’t get him
Thinkin’ and a-prayin’
Wishin’ and hopin’
cf
Stand there like a ghost shaking from the rain (rain).
She’ll open up the door and say, “Are you insane ('ane)?”
Say it’s been a long 6 months
And you were too afraid to tell her what you want.
And that’s how it works.
That’s how you get the girl.
cf
I should’ve bought you flowers
And held your hand
Should’ve gave you all my hours
When I had the chance
Take you to every party
'Cause all you wanted to do was dance
Which of those songs is 40 years old and which are 3 years old? Songs like this have been around for as long as humans.
Or “I will Follow Him”? It’s just another “I’ll follow my love to the world’s end” song.
Compare
I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go
There isn’t an ocean too deep
A mountain so high it can keep
Keep me awaaaay!
cf
Where you go, I’ll go
Where you stay, I’ll stay
When you move, I’ll move
I will follow…
cf
If I could, then I would
I’ll go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low
I’ll go wherever you will go
Anybody want to guess the ages of these songs without Googling?
If these lyrics had not been written in the past, but instead been written and released tomorrow, they would not be in any way remarkable. That is the very *antithesis *of anachronistic. Anachronistic refers to something that is clearly outside of its era. The example in the OP is (arguably) anachronistic. Lyrics about beating women are anachronistic. Lyrics about going to great lengths to get, keep or get back a lover are the vast majority of songs being written right now.
These lyrics are not in any way anachronistic
And the most bizarre example is “Brick”. It’s a song, written just 13 years ago, about abortion. The last time we had a hit song with that subject matter was in 2007. Eight years. So very anachronistic.
Seriously, if Brick were released tomorrow, completely unaltered, it would seem like a perfectly contemporary song and would have every chance of being be a hit once more. It’s not like a song about a young couple having an abortion is completely irrelevant in the brave new world of 2016.
I knew the song but never paid any attention to the lyrics, until you pointed this out. I just used Google to check them out, and
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
How did that even get on the radio, anyway? 
Also from the 80s: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades (so jaunty it was used a a High School graduation theme), Queen’s “Waitin’ for the Hammer to Fall” (one of their jauntier tunes) and the very jaunty synth-pop “I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”.
I can’t think of any post-80s hit songs on the subject, so in that sense I guess it’s still anachronistic, just not as anachronistic as you might think.
Well, that song was written from the point of view of an egotistical jingoist. It was meant to be ridiculous and over the top to satirize nationalism.
Compare it to some of Tom Lehrer songs – “I Want to Go Back to Dixie,” or “My Home Town.” They say outrageous things to prove those things are stupid.
ETA: My point is that it’s not anachronistic because the attitude was cringeworthy at the time it was recorded.
Side note: The producer of the Flanders and Swann albums was a pre-Beatles Sir George Martin.
The song “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People was also a bit of a hit, very jaunty, and appears to be about a serial killer.
The 1941 matinee serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel has a couple.
In one scene, Captain Marvel is fighting a group of gangsters on the roof of a skyscraper. One of the villains lunges at the hero. The hero casually tosses him over the edge of the roof. :eek: You could not do that in a kids’ movie today.
In another scene, teenager Billy Batson and his friends are surrounded by an army of the villain’s henchmen. He steps up to a machine gun, and calmly mows down wave after wave of attackers.
Not to mention the racial angle: the villain’s henchmen are allegedly Siamese, but played by white actors dressed in costumes out of an Arabian Nights/British Raj movie.
I’m always surprised at the lyrics of “Brown Sugar” from The `Stones.
ETA: that Ben Folds’ song that Rick Kitchen mentioned above is troubling. It’s good musically, but the lyrics are tough to take.
Stray Cat Blues, by the Rolling Stones, 1968.
Mexicali Blues, by the Grateful Dead, 1972
Songs involving sex with underage girls wouldn’t pass today.
Neither would the original cover for Blind Faith’s album in 1972:
WARNING! NSFW!
The first time I heard this song even in 1975, I immediately thought ‘this is about a 6’ 3" black transvestite prostitute.’ I still think that today.
And way back in the day, we used to make fun of Jack Jones ‘Wives and Lovers’ (as we did with Bobby Goldsboro’s entire drippy ouevre). None of us high school kids thought getting married meant a cushy gig holding down some rich man’s couch, and we would become trophy wives waiting for our master to come running home! ‘dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music, time to get ready for loooooooove’. 
[quote=“Tim_R.Mortiss, post:32, topic:758873”]
The song “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People was also a bit of a hit, very jaunty, and appears to be about a serial killer.
[/QUOTE]“Everybody Run! The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” (Homecoming Queen's got a gun (Unedited!!!) - YouTube) is from 1987.
This word doesn’t mean what you think it means:
anachronistic:
The 1940’s World fair predicted super highways.
Star Trek predicted floppy disks and flat screen TV’s.
Idiocracy predicted reality programs and America’s Funniest Videos.
Gary Puckett and The Union Gap’s “This Girl is a Woman Now” does not refer to her age, but to the fact that she’s had sex!
The Treniers had a hit in the early fifties called “Uh Oh (Get Out of the Car)” about how, if your girl doesn’t come across, you should throw her out of the car and make her walk home in evening gown and high heels. Lyrics not easily available on line, but here’s a recording:
Also, check out this great “bathroom book” AMERICAN CORNBALL: A LAFFOPEDIC GUIDE TO THE FORMERLY FUNNY. Well-researched explanations of why out great-grandparents thought domestic violence, outhouses, suicide, and men wearing barrels was funny.