Gordon Lightfoot’s 1965 “For Lovin’ Me”. He admitted it’s the most chauvinistic song he ever wrote. I’m a big fan but that song is cruel and heartless. He thought Peter Paul and Mary’s cover (that helped get his career started) was done more tongue in cheek.
That’s what you get for lovin’ me
That’s what you get for lovin’ me
Every thing you had is gone
As you can see
That’s what you get for lovin’ me
I ain’t the kind to hang around
With any new love that I found
‘Cause movin’ is my stock in trade
I’m movin’ on
I won’t think of you when I’m gone
So don’t you shed a tear for me
'Cause I ain’t the love you thought I’d be
I’ve got a hundred more like you
So don’t be blue
I’ll have a thousand 'fore I’m through
Now there you go you’re cryin’ again
Now there you go you’re cryin’ again
But then someday when your poor heart
Is on the mend
I just might pass this way again
I’m kinda surprised no one has mentioned the protagonist of “Leaving On a Jet Plane” by John Denver, who is a self-admitted philanderer.
“There’s so many times I’ve let you down
So many times I’ve played around
I tell you now they don’t mean a thing
Every place I go I’ll think of you
Every song I sing I’ll sing for you
When I come back, I’ll bring your wedding ring.”
Why, so he can cheat on her after they’re married too?
Huh. I always took it to mean he was ready for marriage because he was done playing around. Maybe that’s because it hit the top 10 in 1969, when a lot of guys were leaving for Vietnam. I was very young and probably naive, but I don’t think my take is too far from Denver’s intention:
“Bags packed and standing by the front door, taxi pulling up in the early morning hours, the sound of a door closing behind you, and the thought of leaving someone that you care for very much. It still strikes a lonely and anguished chord in me, because the separation still continues, although not so long and not so often nowadays.”
I forget who sings it but how about “Signs”? The one where the guy tucks his long hair up under his hat to play a gotcha on someone who gave him a job. The one where he goes onto clearly marked private property so that he can yell his outrage at someone about the existence of private property? That song should have ended with a shotgun blast.
Five Man Electrical Band. Yeah I know the song is about “stickin it to the Man” which was a big thing in the Vietnam era I guess, but it always sounded to me like the guy was just a self-righteous prick.
You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar
When I met you
I picked you out I shook you up I turned you around
Turned you into someone new
Now five years later on you you’ve got the world at your feet
Success has been so easy for you But don’t forget it’s me who put you where you are now And I can put you back down too
Every “dickish” move in this thread is done by … a character in a song.
NOT the songwriter. Every writer, of music or prose, creates characters (partly by putting words in their mouths) all the time.
Would you spend your life angry at Mark Twain because Tom Sawyer did something jerkish? And do you think Johnny Cash was actually confessing to shooting a man in Reno? (“Just to watch him die”? Pretty dickish, John-Boy…)
Well, of course. That’s just a common literary device which I suspect most posters recognize. It’s even referenced by someone upthread who noted that one song was “tongue in cheek.” Sometimes it’s more obvious than others - Randy Newman is a master of singing like a dick (Short People, He’s Different, etc.) and we know he’s being ironic.
However, I think in some cases the songwriter WAS a dick who didn’t realize that their lyrics suggested unpleasant traits or messages. “Please Come to Boston,” my example, is probably one. I don’t think the songwriter intended people to think, “boy, what an ass.”
The song was also criticized for declaring the child was the man’s, rather than the couple’s. Anka defended his choice in a 1974 interview, saying, “it’s not meant to alienate anyone. I could have called it ‘having our baby’, but the other just sounded better. It’s not a male ego trip— my baby.”[6] Anka did sometimes sing the line as “you’re having our baby” while performing in concert.[[7]]
I did assume at first that the OP was looking for examples of actual singer / songwriter dickitude showing, and I made the point myself that a lot of songs are about characters, not the actual person singing the lyrics.
And If you read on past that post of mine you quoted, I and others brought the point up, and the OP confirmed they were actually looking for dickitude in the song characters, not the actual singers / songwriters.
That said, there does seem to be a lot of crossover, especially in the John Lennon examples. I think it is an interesting question-- where is the line between the character and the actual personality of the singer / songwriter? For example, the Rolling Stones have a lot of mysoginistic songs-- Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl, Brown Sugar. How much of those songs are satire or character-based, and how much the actual beliefs of the young Stones at the time?
Songs about guys afraid or unwilling to commit is its own subgenre. It could support its own thread.
I’ve been meaning to write a thread just about this song.
In the Dave Loggins version, it is his girlfriend (or clinging wet noodle) that is saying “come back to Tennessee”. The singer is out doing good stuff. The girl is trying to change him, guilting him to come back and lead her boring life.
I always wanted to know if anyone else agreed with me that the point of the song is that he IS NOT going back to Tennessee. I like to think the “singer” is the guy that wrote “I Owe It All To Pamela Brown”.
