Chantilly Lace never, ever struck me as “funny uncle” creepy. I was a kid when it came out, and I saw it as a funny song about a guy who’s hopelessly smitten, and he’s wrapped around her little finger. Later on, I saw the lust in it, but I never saw any grown man/little girl factor. Maybe it’s The Big Bopper’s wonderful glissandos in that echo-chamber bass voice that sounds eerie to you.
Bass voices in pop music are rare. They suffer when they are squeezed through the cheap speakers that most people hear pop music on. In The Bopper’s time, it was AM radio, and 6" x 9" car speakers were the best that most people ever heard. Much later in the late 60s and early 70s, the Jefferson Airplane/Starship used car radio speakers as their studio monitors. They knew that’s how most people would hear their music.
He’s definitely having a good time being wrapped around said finger! I only heard the song this past year after I started listening to Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper definitely comes off as a lot of fun. Like someone who would make innuendos or stuff, but wouldn’t come off as sketchy, just as really funny. Or the type of guy who can hit on all the girls but have it come off as just flattering or sweet, and not like, “Ew, get this guy away from me.” So the very opposite of Chester the Molester.
I’m pretty sure that Mini Strawberry Pie song was marketed towards the obese shut-ins of Japan (as is the case with most songs sung by young teenage girls there).
Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell (?) always makes me shudder, don’t quite know why.
We’ll Sing In the Sunshine - sounds happy and laid back; actually means I’m-outta-here in exactly one year because I will never love you.
Young Girl - Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. Self-explanatory. “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” by the Police could be said to be creepy, but Sting is hot and Gary P is not!
I was watching Dirty Dancing about three weeks ago, and singing along to Eric Carmen’s ‘Hungry Eyes’, when I started paying attention to the words for the first time pretty much ever.
“Ive got this feelin that wont subside/ I look at you and I fantasize/ You are mine tonight…” My friend and I agreed, oooh, that’s a little hard core. But we gamely sang along.
“Now Ive got you in my sights/With these hungry eyes…” Wait, a gun metaphor? Some startled giggling ensued. “Now did I take you by surprise?” We stopped. Okay, this song? Officially creeped us out.
The key to enjoying pop music is to ignore what the lyrics say, even if you know them. OTOH, this can be problematic if you choose some creepy song as the one for your first dance at your wedding reception.
You want creepy? I’ll give you creepy. That song with the lyrics that go “Killing me softly, with your song, killing me softly, with your words…” I know it’s all about a breakup or something, but when I was a kid, it terrified me with images of slow, gentle suffocation, like being buried in softly-falling snow…
Some 60s/70s rock songs have extended instrumental sections in the middle that sound freaky bordering on eldrich. Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin come to mind.
“Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook still creeps me out to no end. Not the song itself, but because it reminds me of the infamous torture/murder of Sylvia Likens. The house is still there in my old neighborhood, and when we were kids we were warned aginst misbehaving, lest we get sent to “Dirty Gerty’s” (Gertrude Baniszewski) house." YIKES!
“Killing me softly with his song” means simply that she was listening to a singer whose lyrics resonated with her very deeply. Every song he played made her think, “It’s like he’s reading my mind! This is about feelings and experiences I’ve had… it’s eerie.”
I can’t prove this, but I swear I’ve seen that song featured in one of those Kidzbop commericals…the song’s creepiness is magnified tenfold when sung by preteens who probably haven’t even made it to second base yet.
