I love Eve 6 especially because of their innovative lyrics, but I was gonna mention a line at the end of their song “Bang,” which says
Brush that sand off your Ask your questions later Love me long time
I otherwise love the song but I always cringe at that part.
I also nominate almost every song Aerosmith ever released but especially the album Permanent Vacation. Musically exceptional, lyrically horrifying.
We’ve got…
*Steven Tyler singing in historical African American Vernacular English
*A song about a black man who murdered his slut wife, with references to domestic violence, see above
(And every night she take her thing into the city
And in the morning make me beg
And if I’d taken all her real titty gritty
I’d smack her right upside the head)
*A song about using a woman for sex on the d/l (“I’m rippin’ up a rag doll, like throwin’ away an old toy”)
*A song about a guy’s emotionally unstable girlfriend, and how hard a time she’s having, and this about her: (“There she was, buns up and kneeling, I was wheeling and dealing, my ace in the hole so to speak.”)
That’s all just off the top of my head. Listened to that album all the time in high school. Now I’m like, “What??”
Regarding The Kinks…
I’ve always interpreted Art Lover as a sad song about a divorced dad who lost custody, although it’s set up to make you think the singer is a creepy perv at first, and then sucker punches you with the reveal. No cringe there.
As for Lola, also no cringe there for me. I strained my face rolling my eyes at a relatively recent lefty example of Poe’s Law that declared the song to be hate speech because Ray deliberately misgendered Lola in the line “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola”. I honestly don’t know if the writer was serious or attempting to parody extreme wokeness.
However… the 1978 Misfits album has a cringe two-fer with Black Messiah and Out of the Wardrobe. I get Black Messiah is a Randy Newman-ish character song, but the line “I’m the only honky on an all black street” makes me cringe. As for OOTW, it does support Dick’s love of being a cross-dresser and his wife’s eventual acceptance but the couplet “He’s not a f*ggot as you might suppose, He just feels restricted in conventional clothes” makes me wince every time I hear it.
Ca. 1990, I dated a man who owned a used record store, and there were 4 artists that I remember to this day whose albums/cassettes/CDs they couldn’t give away. Asia, Twisted Sister, Huey Lewis & The News, and surprisingly, you guessed it, Bob Seger.
Art Lover is cringe. What is the reveal lyrics? Without knowing that is about a divorced dad at the park with his kid, I don’t know how you would infer that from the lyrics.
Misfits have plenty of cringey albums, but I think that was their point. That’s like bringing Slayer lyrics into this discussion
I was referring to the Kinks album titled Misfits, not Glenn Danzig’s old band. The latter would be like complaining that GG Allin makes me cringe. I mean, that was the point of his “music” (unless that was a whoosh)
“She’s just a substitute for what’s been taken from me”. Seemed like a custody issue to me the first time I heard it.
I am doing a quadruple facepalm DOH! And no, it wasn’t a whoosh…that was me reading far too fast for my own good. Please strike my stupid comments about the band Misfits and Slayer from the record.
I still don’t see that line as a reveal. I guess if you squint real hard and give it a charitable interpretation, you might, but as the lyrics read, they are creepy.
Wow, I don’t really get that from either of those songs. The titles, sure, but the lyrics taken in their entirety seem to have a bit more depth than “I must follow my dick”. But I’m only a casual fan, so you may be totally right.
[quote=“Spice_Weasel, post:121, topic:974173”]
(“There she was, buns up and kneeling, I was wheeling and dealing, my ace in the hole so to speak.”)[/quote]
Not to be mistaken for Frank Zappa’s “Dinah-Moe Humm” -
[She was buns-up kneelin’
BUNS UP!
I was wheelin’ an dealin’
WHEELIN’ AN’ DEALIN’ AN’ OOOOH!
She surrender to the feelin’
SHE SWEETLY SURRENDERED
An’ she started in to squealin’]
Huh. So that’s where that came from. I want to clarify I don’t care about obscenity in songs. The context is what I find cringe-worthy. “My girl’s in a state of emotional crisis, but it’s cool, at least I’m getting laid.”
I guess I’m swimming against the tide. I love Seger. “Rock and Roll Never Forgets”, “Night Moves” (yeah tell me no one else ever reference boobs in a song) “Turn The Page”, “Fire Down Below”, not just about his dick. Oh, and he does one of the best versions of “The Little Drummer Boy.”
Speaking of artists whose whole catalogue is a full-body cringe, Limp Bizkit also used the same rhyme in “Nookie” (“She put my tender/Heart in a blender/And still I surrender.”) But the Eve 6 song predates it, I’m certain.
