In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry has two classic lyrics:
“Have a drink, have a drive,
Go out and see what you can find”
and
“If her Daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal,
If her Daddy’s poor, just do what you feel”
They don’t make 'em like they used to.
RealityChuck, Every Breath You Take just comes across as more, well, wistful and romantic, than the Run For Your Life song.
Consider:
“Oh can’t you see,
You belong to me,
My poor heart aches,
with every breath you take”
vs.:
“Run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl
If I catch you with another man
That’s the end, little girl.”
Zorro - I HOPE no one’s getting their knickers in a twist over stuff like this. It’s just interesting to see how times change. What was PC in 1963 is very different from what’s PC in 2003.
The Grateful Dead wrote “Jack Straw” (We can share the women, we can share the wine) and “Sugar Magnolia” (Her head’s all empty and I don’t care…she waits backstage while I sing to you) at the beginning of the 1970s, and they were already dated by the middle of the decade.
Have you heard that “blue and yellow purple pills” song by that band that Eminem was working with?
Don’t knock it. “Bitch, Get your Clothes Off and Do Me, Ya Ho’!” sounds like a guaranteed hit among the Gangsta Rap crowd.
Under my Thumb (“is a Siamese cat of a girl, under my thumb she’s the sweetest pet in the world… it’s down to me, the way she talks when she’s spoken to down to me, the change has come she’s under my thumb”)
Midnight Rambler
actually, almost any song written by the Stones. And yeah, they’re great.
“The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown, c. 1984.
Lines like “Debbie’s really having a blast/ She’s wasting half of the class” just wouldn’t go over well after Columbine.
Loretta Lynn had a song called Your Squaw is On the War Path.
“Well your pet name for me is Squaw
When you come home drinking and can barely crawl.”
Pink Floyd’s “In The Flesh” would probably cause an outrage today.
Are there any queers
in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall
There’s one in the spotlight,
he don’t look right to me
Get him up against the wall
And that one looks jewish!
And that one’s a coon!
Who let all this riff raff into the room?!
There’s one smoking a joint,
and another with spots,
if I had my way I’d have all of you shot!
Call Me by, um, some R&B group.
Here’s my number and a dime.
Call me anytime.
Them pay phone people have a lot to answer for. Soon they’ll be GQ threads on "Why does “drop a dime (on someone)” mean to squeal? Some old fogey will have to explain that way back in the ancient times, pay phone used to be a dime. Yeah, pay phones, remember those? We used to use them a lot before cells took over the world.
Just so no one misinterprets my post, I’m not saying that the band actually held the opinions in the lyrics. Just that they’d be jumped on by a ton of soccer moms who wouldn’t bother reading it in contect.
How about Bobby Vee’s “Come Back When You Grow Up”?
I’d like to take your virginity but if you’re gonna to make a big deal about it, let someone else pop your cherry and I’ll catch you on the rebound. Yccch.
Leslie Gore went both ways. She sang “You Don’t Own Me” but in “Judy’s Turn to Cry” we get:
and “Maybe I Know”
And what can I say about “Wives and Lovers”? Sexist as all get out, but one of the best melodies that Bacharach or anybody ever wrote. It’s up there with “The Look of Love” as my favorite among his songs.
When I perform this one, I always sing the last chorus:
"You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful, and I’m in jail"
“Yes my heart belongs to daddy
So I simply couldn’t be bad
Yes I’m gonna marry daddy”
Cole Porter
And there’s always “Hot Hindoo” by Gershwin
Yes, but that refers to a sugar daddy, not a father.
Uh, the Pink Floyd song is meant to be a sarcastic stab at the neofascist skinheads of late-70’s England. I see no reason why that song wouldn’t work well today.
I could swear that, years ago, that song used to go “Give me the biggest lickin’ I ever had”. Can anyone back me up?
So it was even sicker.
How 'bout the ‘Too Fat Polka?’
“I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me…”
Have no idea who sang this, but in 1989 in Missouri I head this C&W song, by a woman, that went something like:
“Daddy’s hands weren’t always gentle
but I grew to understand
there was always love in daddy’s hands.”
At least 2 different kinds of child abuse insinuated here. And it was definitely on the radio.
That’s Holly Dunn’s Daddy’s Hands*:
I remember Daddy’s hands folded silently in prayer