Your Pat Travers reference reminds me of “Boom Boom, Out go the Lights”
Well, I thought I treat my baby fair
I just found out she don’t want me here
If I get her in my sight
Boom boom! Out go the lights!
Garry Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part 2 used to be pretty popular at US sporting events, but after his multiple sexual offense convictions, less so. Kind of interesting in that its acceptability has nothing to do with the song itself.
Then I give it as my example.
That song still pops into my head every time I see a Camaro. And I come from a family that owned them, and rode in plenty of them that my friends owned.
It’s a good song except for that one bit.
Never released as a single, AFAIK, but it was popular when I was in college in the '80s, and I used to play it regularly when I DJed at our campus radio station.
A number 1 hit. Please Mr. Custer.
“Snortin’ Whiskey” wouldn’t get airplay nowadays, like it did ca. 1980 when it was released.
It’s an ode to cocaine.
This was my first thought as well. Will also add in The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band, although I think those cancelling it miss the point of the lyrics. Also, is Clapton’s cover of Cocaine considered acceptable these days? Definitely a jam though. My Sharona has some questionable lyrical content as well.
I know Blue Mink had the best of intentions, but I doubt Melting Pot (“Curly, black and kinkies/Mixed with yellow Chinkies”) is on anyone’s top ten list of socially unifying songs today.
We still hear it every year though and artists are still releasing new recordings, so I’m hard pressed to think it’s no longer socially acceptable. I did hear a version where the changed up the lyrics with the woman saying she was going to leave and the man saying “Baby, I’m cool with that.” I couldn’t help but think this woman wanted the man to ask her to stay but he just wasn’t interested in her.
Probably still is
Y’all know that every comic, song, movie, book and tv show isn’t nessecerily autobiographical?
Oh….to stay on topic…I could list a billion jawdroppers like “Wives and Lovers” or Ahab the Arab
AFAIK, British comedy team Flanders & Swann never made the hit parade, but in the early 1960s they released two albums of their live shows, “At the Drop of a Hat” and “At the Drop of Another Hat.” (The live performances were recorded by George Martin, who would go on to produce some albums by an English pop band that achieved a modicum of fame.)
Their songs are all extremely witty and sophisticated, both lyrically and musically, and the subject matters of most are entirely innocent and anodyne. Except, as I noted in this post last year, for the two I referenced there, both of which deal with, in essence, date rape. In that post I wrote that we shouldn’t be sidetracked by that issue. I guess this is finally the place to discuss it.
Madeira M’dear (lyrics) is about a “base” old man who seduces a “pure” 17-year-old girl with the help of the title beverage. Stated like that, it sounds like a horrible song. But in fact, it is one of the cleverest and most erudite tunes you are likely to hear, and its use of zeugma is so extraordinary that it is frequently cited as a crowning example of the technique.
The song is one of F&S’s most popular; it was covered by the folk group The Limeliters in the '60s, and by many others, even up to quite recent times.
The other is “Tonga Maiden,” which is much shorter.
Oh, it’s hard to say "Oly-ma-kitty-luca-chi-chi-chi, "
But in Tonga, that means… “No”!If I ever have the money, 'tis to Tonga I shall go.
For each lovely Tongan maiden there, will gladly make a date.And by the time she’s said, “Oly-ma-kitty-luca-chi-chi-chi,”
It is usually too late!
Today few would consider writing anything that treated date rape so lightly, and anyone who tried would certainly be widely condemned. It is, of course a very good thing that most people are more sensitive to the serious consequences of sexual assault.
Flanders and Swann were both Oxford graduates with many notable achievements beyond the light comedy that brought them their greatest fame. If either were alive today, I’m sure they would be deeply embarrassed by how these songs might be perceived by many today.
But the fact that society’s attitudes have progressed shouldn’t make us lose sight of the talent of the artists or the excellence of their art.
The twist in “Madeira M’Dear” is that while it’s about an old lech trying to get a young girl drunk so that he can take advantage of her, in the end she consents willingly (having come back of her own volition and awaking with a smile). That is, as they say, the joke.
Only by ignorant people. The song is innocuous.
The lyrics are sweet and harmless. No sex, just hand holding and dancing, unless you think 17 yo boys & girls shoudlnt do that?
And misogyny .
I concur.
Colored is kinda okay- NAACP,UNCF, the United Negro College Fund,. etc. It all depends on context.
It is a novelty song.
I concur also.
A faggot is also a bale of wood, but not in the context of that song.
I’ve always heard that lyrics as being ironic - the backup singers were supposed to be in the style of a Black girl group from a decade earlier, like the Ronettes or the Shirelles, back when “colored” was the accepted term.
Is the faux Trinidadian patois the most offensive part, though ? I always thought the flippant, happy-sounding allusions to casual prositution were much more problematic.
In any case, super catchy song, one of my favourites from that era. Icky lyrics, unfortunately.
Way back in the distant moons of time and uncivility i.e.1961, British comedian Charlie Drake had a hit in the UK, US and Canada with the novelty song “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back”.
Wiki describes it fairly methinks as:
It was a #1 hit here and has a place in the National Archives of Music Australia
But following it’s last listener requested appearance on the airwaves in 2015, the national broadcaster ABC banned the song and said it has removed the track completely from its system and taken steps to ensure “this would not happen again”.
The Andrews Sisters later claimed that they thought the song was about being waitresses and were embarrassed when they discovered what it was really about.
Oh, right.
Not quite. “Fag” does, “faggot” used to mean a bundle of brushwood, or (?maybe linked by the image of a witch’s broom) a grumpy/bossy old woman - or in parts of the country, a type of meatball. You could have quite a filling meal of faggots followed by spotted dick.
But I digress. Weren’t some of the original words for “Puttin’ On The Ritz” rewritten to be less patronising/stereotyping?
And then there’s Tom Jones’s “Delilah”. At least the singer expects to be arrested, I suppose.