Oh I love the song to death, especially since it’s so politically incorrect. But you’ve gotta admit it’s completely cringeworthy these days. I can’t imagine Collins or Genesis ever performing it again.
I had no trouble finding the lyrics to Ted Nugent’s “Jailbait”, and… ew, gross. I’m not gonna repeat them here.
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, by Sonny Boy Williamson (and recorded by many others).
Good morning little school girl
Good morning little school girl
Can I go home with you?
Can I go home with you?
Tell your mother and your father
I once was a school boy, too
As far as I can tell, if you listen to the original, Berry says nine years old. Not nineteen.
German Euro-disco band Bad Boys Blue had an English-language song called Pretty Young Girl in the mid-80s.
The Police - Don’t Stand so Close to me.
There were quie a few songs then what were banned within a few days of being released. One was Ebony Eyes by the Everly Brothers. By banned, I mean nearly all radio stations removed it from their play list. A few others were Transfusion by Nervous Norvus, and the original Battle of New Orleans by Jimmie Driftwood, before JOhnny Horton sanitized the lyrics and cut out most of the verses entirely.
Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy
A lot of “Great American Songbook” songs were originally written to be performed by African-American artists, in Broadway shows or revues. Lyrics got re-written for white artists to sing; condescending terms got revised.
Without looking it up, I think the original line in “Puttin’ on the Ritz” had to do with stylish, well-dressed Harlem types making the nightclub scene and whooping it up “every Thursday evening.” Seems innocuous until you examine urban social history and notice that Thursday night was traditionally the maid’s night off.
“Lulu’s Back in Town” has an original line about how “You can tell all my pets/All my Harlem coquettes/Mister Otis regrets/That he won’t be around” because, well, Lulu’s back in town, and he’ll be boffing her tonight, thank you very much. When Mel Torme recorded it in the 1950s, the line became “All my blondes and brunettes.”
Psh. I Don’t Like Mondays was about a real life school massacre.
I’ll see your “Illegal Alien” and raise you a “Speedy Gonzales” by Pat Boone.
You got me curious so I did look it up and while the second paragraph is right, Irving Berlin wrote the song and couldn’t find a use for it for three years so it wasn’t intended for anything in particular.
However, the movie Putting On the Ritz (1930) had it sung by an interracial chorus, the first in a talkie apparently.
I myself grandfather in a lot of stuff in my regular rotation that I would be appalled by if someone tried it today, including:
[ul]
[li]Post-teens singing about their love or lust for teens - e.g., When you Were Sweet Sixteen, Sexy and 17, Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl[/li][li]The pathetic girl songs - Where the Boys Are, Bobby’s Girl, ahem Johnny Angel[/li][li]Songs that smack of stalking or harassment - My Lorraine, Young Blood[/li][li]Casual Racism - Ling Ting Tong, Rang Tang Ding Dong (I am the Japanese Sandman)[/li][li]Caddishness in general - The Wanderer, Travelin’ Man[/li][li]Songs that involve abusing women - Catch 'Em Young, Treat 'Em Rough, Tell ‘Em Nothin’, Monkey Hips and Rice, Tain’t Nobodys Business if I Do, 32-20 Blues, Ain’t She Got Nerve[/li][li]Songs whose viewpoint is otherwise appalling - Rotten Cocksuckers’ Ball, Signifying Monkey[/li][li]Songs where you think the guy is singing about his girlfriend or wife but he’s actually singing about his daughter - Barbra Lee, Memphis Tennessee[/li][/ul]
I could mention a bunch more, but all these are songs that I like and won’t be ditching because of some element that would make me reject a new song.
There’s an uncensored version of the video on You Tube; at first, I thought it was because some of the performers were quite obviously white men in blackface, and maybe it was, but there’s also a brief shot of a woman wearing a bustier that doesn’t cover any of her breasts.
When the song came out, about 15 years prior to Columbine, MTV refused to play it. The “Night Flight” program (remember that? Overnights on the weekend on another channel) did.
How about this?
2013 Void Vision remake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_poOYfklzo
“Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers.”
Nobody stands anybody up with their hair in curlers.
What ARE curlers, anyway?
Remember Starz? Subway Terror, Violation, Cherry Baby?
(I may be the only living Starz fan left)
Anyway … they had a song off their Coliseum Rock album called So Young, So Bad featuring lyrics such as:
“Two more years and you’ll be seventeen
But you’ll be burnt out and wasted from the things you’ve seen”
and
“You should be home playing with your dolls
Instead of here playing with my balls.”
To be fair, that was controversial in its own time, and they ended up putting a sticking on the album saying it’s not them endorsing killing an Arab but about the Camus novel The Stranger.
Yeah, I am willing to believe the song was intended to be entirely innocent. But it’s still creepy as fuck and I remain surprised that no one said, “whoa, we’re not going there” before the song was released.