Perhaps it is my interpretation, but I understand the song to be a call-out to unsuspecting lads merely looking for a place to stay (insert obligatory “not that there’s anything wrong with that” statement here)
Oh - and what’s a thread about glorifying rotten behavior without a favorite Big Dumb Rock song of mine, **Lit Up by Buckcherry ** (read my thinking-way-too-much analysis of it in this earlier SDMB Thread…
Lovefool by the Cardigans basically has a woman encouraging a guy who no longer loves her to treat her like dirt.
And when you think they couldn’t sink any lower, they finish off their little misogynist trilogy with the even more despicable Baby Talks Dirty and She’s So Selfish…
I don’t think “Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” counts for this. She’s not glorifying that behavior, she’s berating her man about it, and sarcastically saying, “If you like painted-up tarts in bars so much, then maybe I should become one so you’ll pay attention to me.”
The tone of it just sounds ironic to me, not straight. It kind of helps if you think of the song as coming in the middle of a huge argument between them. “Okay, FINE…if you like all that stuff so much I’ll join you! How do you like THAT?!”
This guy deserved to die too.
Thinking about this, we could have a whole category of bounder women, too. Some examples fer ya -
“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” by Kenny Rogers (guy’s a paralyzed veteran with not much longer to live, but his itchy wife can’t wait to get some)
“You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille” by Kenny Rogers (wife leaves farmer with four hungry children and a crop in the field - she’s out picking up singer/songwriters)
“Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks (guy has to die because he was abusive - vigilante justice!)
“Criminal” by Fiona Apple (girl breaks a boy, just because she can, although in her defense she is repentant)
Kristopherson’s “Silver Tongued Devil.” Yeah, he does a lot of nasty stuff, but he’s not really me.
Lose Your Love by The Outfield
A song about a guy who sleeps with another guy’s girl and then tells her to be quiet about it:
As you leave me please would you close the door
and don’t forget what I told you
Just 'cause you’re right - that don’t mean I’m wrong
Another shoulder to cry upon
I just wanna use your love tonight
I don’t wanna lose your love tonight
Rape Me by Nirvana:
There was considerable controversy about the meaning, which Cobain said was an “anti-rape song”.
Stone Temple Pilots’ Sex Type Thing also has a sexual aggression theme
Sorry. I was going to mention that one as well, as another inappropriate wedding reception song.
Slight correction on Convoy. It’s not mindless destruction. It’s a bunch of truckers and their hippy friends smuggling a huge quantity of contraband (including a load of dynamite) to the East Coast, along the way cheerfully smashing through police cars, roadblocks, and National Guard tanks. And a toll gate. (But only 'cause they were short on cash! Nothing personal!)
Still a pretty high “yeesh” factor. And it was the 70’s when this became hugely popular.
I also need to give a shout out to Taking Care of Business (by Bachman Turner Overdrive) here. Okay, playing in a band for a living and shunning regular work isn’t the most reprehensible behavior, but I’m wagering that most of the people who choose that song for their business function/political rally/job fair etc. would be pretty critical of that kind of lifestyle.
Believe it or not, Cash *cleaned that song up * from its 1946 original by Billy Hughes, where the bad guy kills two people - his baby and a rounder, the rounder with spectacularly cold-hearted “I heard somebody calling my baby’s name/ I opened up the door and I blew out his brains”.
Hughes’ character is also callously unrepentant (If I had the chance/ I would do it again) and the Sherriff who arrests him (in El Paso) is sympathetic, offering “they may have had it coming, but this is bad for you”.
What surprises me about both those song is the shooter does not get the death penalty. Which is just, but surprisingly so.
I can maybe accept that the guy in Freebird needs to be free, but what gets me is that he asks her to remember him, as if he deserves it.
Yeah, but at the end he says to “lay off the whiskey and let that cocaine be”. It’s a cautionary tale.
BTW, I don’t think he wrote that. It does work well for him though.
Speaking of BTO, I think “Share the Land” sounds kind of obnoxious in retrospect.
Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand.
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land
that they’ll be givin’ away
when we all get together now.
Who, exactly is going to be giving away this land and where did they get it from? Wouldn’t they have had to take it away from somebody else?
And what would Randy Bachman do with the land if he had it? Are he and his band really going to get up at 5 A.M. and go pick rocks and do everything else it takes to actually work the land?
Nothing against the band really (Bachman is actually a pretty good songwriter), but that song has some pretty shallow, fatuous hippie sentiment in it.
“He Hit Me And It Felt Like a Kiss” was one of those songs that just didn’t quite work, because the satirical element just didn’t come through. But let’s be very clear" Gerry Goffin and Carole King were NOT endorsing wife beating.
The story they both tell is that the song was inspired by Little Eva, their former babysitter, who scored a #1 hit with their song “The Loco-Motion.” They found out that Eva’s boyfriend (later husband) had been beating her up. And when they tried to get her to leave him, she did what many women do in that situation: she made all kinds of excuses for him. She insisted, to Goffin and King’s horror and bafflement, that when her man beat her, that was just like a kiss- a sign that he really loved her!
They wrote a song based on Eva’s words and experiences. THEY weren’t saying that it’s okay to beat your woman, they were saying that, apparently, some women (including the victims) DO think so.
Have you met the Sixties?
Meanwhile, back in the twenty-first century, Carrie Underwood, Little Miss Jesus-Take-The-Wheel, herself, is demonstrating the cleansing benefits of turning your life over to the Lord, as she goes medieval on her boyfriend’s car.
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up 4WD, carved my name into his leather seats, took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires…
What would Jesus do, Carrie? What would Jesus do?
Probably cut his brake lines. Wait here, I think I have a hacksaw in my trunk.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that!
My hubby chimes in to add…“Stagger Lee” and I just remembered another Johnny Cash classic, “Delia’s Gone.” I saw the vid for that and WHOA NELLY I was scared of that man for a long time afterwards.
Another song that comes to mind is a cover Metallica did of “So What!” I can’t remember who did it originally but the lyrics are…well…yeah. Google at your own risk :eek:
*Me and My Uncle *by the Dead-it’s got card cheatin’, murder and more.