#61

I can get the “whole other era” thing for the song Shadow when it was originally written but why the Hell the tindersticks thought it was OK to cover it in the 90s is beyond me.

#62

Run For Your Life is particularly grim, especially coupled with what we know about Lennon as a person.

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#63

Fucking hell, I’ve never heard that song before. Those are horrendous lyrics

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#64

The ‘I’d rather see you dead little girl’ line is ripped straight from an Elvis song but still inexcusable.

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#65

Delilah by Tom Jones is about murdering your other half for having an affair

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#66

You’d be amazed by how many books and films are about people murdering other people.

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#67

The Tom Jones mention made me thing of Baby Its Cold Outside…that has some questionable lyrics too.

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#68

Nick cave has many great songs about murder. I don’t think they’re problematic as there just stories not his aims for mankind.

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#69

There’s definitely an extra dimension to the Tom Jones one cause you tend to hear it played at weddings and anodyne discos and chanted by crowds at football stadiums, which feels kind of weird i guess

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#70

Good point and I was thinking a little on the same lines.

There is a difference between a song straight up being offensive due to bad taste lyrics and a song telling a dark story.

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#71

Fucking hell.

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#72
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#73

Yeah, if a song is kind of upbeat and singalong-y, people don’t really care what the lyrics are outside the chorus. You’re Gorgeous, Born in the USA, Delilah, nobody is bothered what they’re actually about.

The verses of Sweet Caroline could be about a Neil Diamond hunting and torturing everyone who he ever believes has wronged him and it would still get played and danced to at your auntie’s 60th birthday party.

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#74

This is quite patronising, I was only listing songs with dodgy lyrics as I remembered them :woman_shrugging:

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#75

So dead! So dead! So dead!

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#76

Men murdering women for infidelity is part of a societal pattern of misogyny and I think it’s unlikely we’d let anyone have a free pass doing a breezy pop song about it.

But murder in general could certainly be part of a lot of modern songs without that problematic aspect.

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#77

Can’t stop laughing at the idea of this.

#78

I can understand why my comment came across as patronising- sorry for that. It was a flippant comment rather than a proper argument (it was late and I was going to bed).

I do find the idea that songs can’t deal with dark or unpleasant subjects without being ‘offensive’ nonsensical though. Art and culture should and does reflect society and talks about the things that happen in society. You can write a book from the perspective of a murderer or any kind of obsessive or reprehensible person and you can do the same with a song if you are skilful enough. The subject matter doesn’t make the song ‘offensive’ any more than it makes the book or the film offensive- it’s the way that the subject matter is dealt with that can be offensive (or not - reading this thread makes me think I’m a lot less easily offended than a lot of people on here).

There is an argument that Delilah is offensive because it hides what it is about behind its breezy exterior but that argument needs to be developed a bit more than just pointing out what it is about, in my view. There is a contrary argument that that just makes it a surprisingly clever song and that it’s our fault if we don’t listen to it properly.

2 Likes
#79

I’m a huge Babybird fan and it’s amazing how often this song is used by people for weddings etc who haven’t listened to the lyrics

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#80

See also The One I Love by REM. People only listen to choruses.