songs about underage girls

Cafe Society
1

A friend who is an English Professor is looking for background for an essay. Here is the follow-up e-mail from last night’s poker game:

The list we generated follows, but feel free to share any songs that fit this category.

i saw her standing there - beatles
don’t stand so close to me - police
mexicali blues - grateful dead
i’m on fire - springsteen
hey nineteen - steely dan
stray cat blues - stray cats
so young – stones
hot blooded – foreigner
walk this way – aerosmith
Go away little girl – donny osmond
young girl – gary puckett
art lover – kinks

2

A class ic for it:

3

“Stray Cat Blues” is by the Rolling Stones. The Stray Cats did “Sexy and Seventeen.”

Roy Harper - “Forbidden Fruit”

4

Hey Nineteen is about an underage girl?

5

“You’re Sixteen” Johnny Burnette, covered by Ringo Star.

6

“Only the good die young” by Billy Joel

Also, it not the most sincere or appropriate or even popular song, but “the lapdance is so much better when the stripper is crying” by Bloodhound Gang is about an underage girl.

7

My Sharona–The Knack

Also, I don’t have a cite but my understanding was that the point of Hey Nineteen was that the narrator’s much younger girlfriend couldn’t get his cultural references (at one point asking “Who’s Aretha Franklin?” and causing him to doubt the whole thing).

Also, pretty much ANY Gary Puckett song.

8

Aerosmith - Ragdoll
Chuck Berry - Sweet Little Sixteen

9

ABBA - “Does Your Mother Know”

10

Joan Jett changed the genders when she covered “I Love Rock n Roll” (which now seems was unnecessary).
In the original it was a 17 year old girl not a 17 year old boy.
Disclaimer: “I knew she must have been about seventeen” so as far as the storyteller knows she could be 18, but she could just as well be 16.

11

people were tossing out songs last night… it was a poker game… there was beer…

12

Benny Mardones “Into the Night”

13

Sweet Caroline

14

“Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” by Spinal Tap.
Yes, it was a joke! But the lyrics certainly fit the topic:

“You’re sweet but you’re just 4 feet,
And you’ve still got your baby teeth.
You’re too young and I’m too well hung,
But tonight I’m gonna rock you…”
Otherwise there’s… “Jailbait” by Aerosmith.

15

OK, you get a pss then. :wink:

16

She Was Only Sixteen-Sam Cooke, later by Dr Hook.

17

Oingo Boingo, Little Girls - one that explicitly speaks to the creepiness of the attraction.

Heck, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung for that matter.

ETA: oh, and Jim Croce’s Five Short Minutes of Loving (done brought me 20 long years in jail)

18

Holy fucking crap! I had no idea that was a cover!!

19

*Clair *- Gilbert O’Sullivan

20

One thing to consider is that when many of these songs were written, 18 was not the agreed on dividing line between child and adulthood it is now. Most states had and still have a mishmash of rules about ages of consent. 18 is the rule in California and has sort of spread via the entertainment industry to be the nationwide societal norm, but that might not have been the case back when these songs were written. Perhaps it makes them no less creepy to modern ears, but they might have seemed less so at the time they were written.

Oh, and my nomination: Little Sister, most famously by Elvis. No ages explicitly mentioned, but obviously about a verrrrry recently pubescent girl.