The Mentors, who played “rape rock”.
:dubious:
That’s not the worst of it. At the end the Girl Scouts wind up with Marines - so it isn’t kid on kid, it is adult on kid. Double yick.
But back when it came out I don’t remember any controversy.
I was going more for the joke.
But if you want to take it seriously, Danny never responded to the question of whether or not the girl he met over the summer “put up a fight”. But it’s notable that Danny’s close friend Kenickie thought it was a reasonable question to ask Danny and, outside of the parody I linked to, neither Danny or anyone else was shocked by the question.
So we have to conclude that while Sandy may not have put up a fight, other women have done so in the past and everyone thought it was reasonable to ask Danny if he had had to force this particular girl to have sex.
The Who’s A Quick One (1967?) is like this – meant to be humorous, so knowingly “rapey,” yet its existence tells you something about the norms of the time and place.
But this is different than, say, Foreigner’s Seventeen.
Excitable Boy is a black-humored songwriter talking about a how society deals with sociopaths with a sardonic wit. No different than, say, Oingo Boingo’s Only a Lad.
Foreigner’s Seventeen is a guy bullying a teenage girl, as is that Wang Chung line that seems to suggest you should force a blowjob on your date. Fun times :(:smack:
Or, you can conclude Danny’s friend was simply asking whether or not Sandy was pressurised into having sex with Danny. The lyric writers may also have chosen that line as it simply rhymed with love at first sight.
I think the line is quite reasonable for a wannabe gang member(and likely virgin) to ask in front of wannabe gang member friends. As a bonus it rhymed, and was an excellent juxtaposition to love at first sight sung by the girls.
That’s a pretty novel interpretation for “Dance Hall Days”; almost every lyric is cryptic and strange (“Take your baby by the wrist, And in her mouth an amethyst”). I think it’s a stretch to consider anything in it to be rape-y.
I Googled “What is Wang Chung’s Dance Hall Days about?” and one of the first hits is Paste Magazine’s “secretly horrifying lyrics.” 
It is funny, but it does reinforce the point that their lyrics are creepy.
Whenever I hear folks trying to humorously parse lyrics, I think of how corny I thought that Steve Allen was (who I love) while doing the same.
Yes! That’s the classic rapey song that gets played every holiday season.
I don’t really understand that interpretation. Yes, I get how “Baby It’s Cold Outside” could be played for rapeyness, with the woman genuinely reluctant and the man pressuring her. But I’ve never heard it sung that way: it’s always presented as though the woman is enjoying herself and really wants to stay but is just worried about her reputation.
It may be that a lot of people who think “Baby It’s Cold Outside” sounds rapey are too young to remember situations in which women really wanted sexual activity, and were encouraging and consenting to sexual activity, but felt they had to tear themselves away from the consensual sexual activity for fear of how they’d be judged by others.
Mind you, I think the current situation in which women are allowed sexual autonomy is a very positive change, and calling out rapeyness in earlier pop-song lyrics is perfectly legit. I just think “Baby It’s Cold Outside” isn’t a very good example because it’s actually about something much more nuanced than an unwilling woman and an importunate man.
A song like “I Gotcha”, on the other hand, makes it very clear that the woman is unwilling:
On the other end of the spectrum, Zevon’s “Excitable Boy” and Zappa’s “Bobby Brown Goes Down” aren’t trying to make rape sound romantic or sexy or inspire any sympathy for the title character. They’re deliberately bringing in an incident of rape to help show what a horrible person the title character is.
I agree w/r/t Baby it’s Cold Outside. I hear it as a flirtation with two willing players.
I’m always amazed at how people get upset about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” but give Springsteen a pass for “Fire.” Perhaps it’s because Springsteen has a reputation as a liberal, or because so many women have found him genuinely attractive.
But face it: in “Fire,” he’s forcing himself on an unwilling girl in his car. When she says unmistakably that she doesn’t want to have sex with him, he’s enough of an egomaniac to call her a liar and insist she DOES want it!
But he’s the Boss, so he can get away with murder, while people obsess over Frank Loesser.
What “people”? The only remark about Springsteen’s “Fire” in this thread has been Mr Dibble agreeing with you that it’s rapey.
Your grudgefest is somewhat undermined by the fact that the rapeyness of Springsteen’s song “Fire” is in fact widely discussed, even by those who admire his progressive politics, as here:
… Say, what’s in this drink? …
Were there roofies in 1944?
Actually, per Sandy, there was no sex.
Nope, although there were the so-called “Mickey Finns”, or “knockout drops”, typically chloral hydrate.
“What’s in this drink?” used to be a joking expression for “I’m being rather daring or improper in my behavior and I’m going to blame it on the alcohol I’ve consumed”.
It did not mean “I’m alarmed at my inexplicable physical impairment or incapacity and I’m literally worried that you deliberately drugged me”.
That has always been my take as well.
Flunitrazepam wasn’t developed until the 1960s, but there was of course alcohol long before that. Depending on the way the line is delivered by the singer – and interpreted by the listener – it could be taken to mean something like “What’s the recipe for this delicious cocktail?” or “Whoa, this is a lot stronger than I was expecting!” The former isn’t “rape-y”, but the latter is.
Key and Peele did a parody titled “Just Stay for the Night” in which the man is obviously a would-be rapist, but the woman knows how to defend herself.
I was thinking of “I’m gonna make you love me” by the Temptations, but upon reading the lyrics it’s more a guy saying he’ll do whatever he has to to be the kind of guy the woman could love.