The opening line, “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man,” came from Baby, Let’s Play House, written by Arthur Gunter and performed by Elvis. I think we can include that one in our list as well.
Another popular song, “Dead Puppies”, was performed by the same person that did “Kinko The Clown”-Ogden Edsl.
“My Way” by Eddie Cochran (NOT the Paul Anka/Sinatra song) is in the same vein. It was covered by the Who a few times.
“The Homecoming Queens Got a Gun” has not aged well. I thought it was a riot as a teen.
I think you mean “cultural appropriation”? That is, the taking from a culture, rather than the approval of a culture?
A Pat Travers song comes to mind: I’d Rather See You Dead
Which brings to mind the song Seventeen by Winger (“She’s only seventeen…Daddy says she’s too young, but she’s old enough for me”).
yet he still plays this song routinely today.
A long time ago, I remember my cousin playing me some David Allan Coe songs that were, uh… never going to be played on the radio.
Sure
. I blame autocorrect.
Might as well include Boom, Boom (Out Go the Lights).
And frankly, Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix is fairly troublesome, too. But there are lots of songs about men being violent towards women.
Some personal anecdote: in the mid 90s, I had a new acquaintance/friend who was a big country fan. I had already developed an interest for country music via the Byrds, the Stones, Bob Dylan and some alt-country bands like Wilco, but he played me some of the real stuff. One time when we had a small party, he brought a tape of David Allan Coe songs that impressed me much. Those were all great, but “normal” country songs. I forgot about that for a few years until the Napster years came along, when I remembered the name.
So as many people did, I did a search for “David Allan Coe” and initiated the download for dozens of songs, without looking at the song titles. When the downloads had completed, I went to the folder and started to play the songs. WTF??? Every second song was the vilest, most vulgar racist song I had ever listened to! I couldn’t believe that my friend who was a decent person could like such an artist. I already knew that a lot of MP3 files on peer sharing services were misattributed, so I thought that was an explanation, but anyway I instantly deleted all songs attributed to David Allan Coe from my hard drive.
I later researched the matter and learned that indeed, David Allan Coe had a mainstream career as a country singer/songwriter and was respected by many people for it, but actually put out these racist songs, allegedly as “parody songs”. I never could listen to another song by him again.
I remember watching MTV in the 1980s or 1990s when they played that song. And I think Pearl Jam’s Jeremy was edited in a way that it wasn’t clear that the kid killed himself and not his classmates.
There’s also Wait Until Tomorrow where Jimi doesn’t fare so well.
Neither has “Johnny are you Queer?” (Josey Cotton?)
Joan Jett gets a pass, though.
ISTR that MTV refused to air “Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun” but “Night Flight” did. Night Flight showed a LOT of things that MTV wouldn’t.
Perhaps? I don’t think I watched Night Flight so where would I have seen it? It has been decades though.
There were also some lesser-known video channels.
Wikipedia claims that in the 1970s (?!) some stations would not play “My Ding-a-Ling”