As much as I love The Beatles can anyone imagine these lyrics being accepted today?
They are appalling. Or am I too critical?
I simply typed 1980 in the white area below the video and…
???
Carole King and Jerry Goffin wrote He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) for the Crystals.
Lots of appalling songs from that era.
But is “slap my bitch up” really any different?
Maybe not; John Lennon didn’t like it much either.
Still, it’s hardly the worst sentiment ever expressed in song, then or now.
And one of the things they teach you—or ought to—in high school lit classes is that the “speaker” of a poem or song is a character, a persona, not to be confused with the writer of the poem/song.
And don’t forget, Lennon answered his younger self in Getting Better.
Although in this case, I hear Lennon *was *kind of an abusive ass in his younger days.
Why is this one worse than Maxwell’s Silver Hammer?
Or Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy?
So, would OJ’s favorite Pat Travers song be “I’d Rather See You Dead”?
Prodegy claimed that song wasnt about violence against women;
Have you heard Norah Jones’s song Miriam from her latest album Little Broken Hearts? It’s a sweet, soft-sounding strain she’s singing to her husband’s lover as she kills her.
That urbandictionary page says it’s a bit more complicated than that.
this is an even more appalling version He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss) by Nicole Dollanganger
If you listen carefully, the Beatles’ We Can Work It Out are pretty bad, though far more subtle. The lyrics are basically, “See it my way or else we’re through.” Real passive aggression while pretending to be reasonable.
That’s (mostly) a Paul song.
That’s new. Usually it’s grumpy old people saying, “music wasn’t this crude back in my day!” Now we have “music back in my day is too crude for today!”.
I thought the OP’s link would be Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. As stated, Smack My Bitch Up is not about bitches, or smacking them. And He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss) is not encouraging violence! It’s about battered spouse syndrome (“he hits me because he loves me”). Artists are allowed to disagree with their works. I am pretty sure Jeff Lindsay/James Manos, Jr. doesn’t carve people up in real life.
Shall we talk about Neil Young’s “Down By The River” or just about everyone’s “Hey Joe”? Or “Banks Of The Ohio”?
Click on the title of the video, then type 1980 (you won’t see it echoed).
Lennon didn’t even come up with the “I’d rather see you dead, little girl” line. There are tons and tons of old rock and blues lyrics that read as extremely creepy or unsettling today because people’s sensitivities change. I mean, forget the “I’d rather see you dead” part - do you hear “little girl” very much these days? I think that brings up all the wrong associations.
Norwegian Wood is about burning a girl’s house down, isn’t it?