I try to consider intent when judging potentially offensive material. For instance, the book and movies Lolita are about a grown man having a sexual relationship with a minor (twelve in the book, fourteen in the movies). But the story doesn’t depict Humbert Humbert’s predilections as excusable or sympathetic. He’s an unreliable narrator, and the story is mainly about the difference between what he is and how he views himself.
I don’t get any of that from Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any irony, unreliable narration, or social commentary in it. It seems to be little more than a 30-year-old guy lusting after 16-year-old girls.
Nick Lowe’s song I Trained Her to Love Me is written from the perspective of a really crappy guy, who sets out to break women’s hearts. It’s written to make him reprehensible, and most people get that. Nick Lowe has reported that some fans really like the song and misinterpret the intent.
Yeah, we’re just going to have to disagree about this one. On their early records Cheap Trick were transgressive when they wanted to be. Pretty much the originators of pop punk.
As teenagers, The Warning released an entire concept album about a woman’s descent from obsession to stalking to abduction to murder to psychotic break to death. As one of the bandmembers described her reaction to the initial concept, "Why is there so much blood?'.
It was transgressive in 2018, it’s transgressive today, and yet the album and the songs are fan favorites in the band’s current live set lists. (though to this day, when discussing the album, they always start by explaining “this is a story we wrote, we don’t condone murder”).
Here’s one of the most popular songs off the album, to this day still a live concert favorite, a pop-punkish rocker about self-mutilation (dull knives cut better because they tear the skin, inflicting more pain)
So I recently discovered an entire album of calypso music by < checks notes > Robert Mitchum. Yes, that one.
It’s the sort of record that you might have heard in the background of a 1960s suburban cocktail party - it’s all light and peppy, and Mitchum is actually a decent singer. But…
…he does the accent. Also, “From A Logical Point of View” is one of the tracks. It’s just cringe in all sorts of ways.
Mick Jagger (of course, he also likes to sing in a terrible faux Southern accent whenever the Stones play a country song) did it after Mitchum, but before Sting:
