Songs that make you feel uncomfortable

[Woodinblack]

1 minute ago, ubit said:

Brown Sugar is an anti slave song

It is not even slightly an anti slave song.

[4000]

13 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

My goodness.. if that's how you feel, don't ever join a folk band. The lyrics to half of those tunes will give you nightmares.

Or Nick Cave! 

[Sarah5string]

I've been a victom of rape and domestic violence, so I find songs which seem to glamourise things like that uncomfortable. Hip hop especially nowadays is AWFUL for its portrayal of the treatment of women, and it really doesn't sit well with me. However, with that said, there are few bands that are intentionally glamourising it because they agree with it, but instead they're telling a story. Anything could be taken to be offensive or insulting to some section of society but we just have to remember that music is an art form and we're entirely allowed to not like or agree with art for it to still be legitimate. Music is art of the time, and reflects the society at the time it was written.

With all that said, you have to make the decision about whether you want to play that song, you have every right to say no, just as much as the other members of your band have the right to say yes.

I hope you find some kind of compromise that suits everyone!

[paul_c2]

We've just had to ditch "Lady is a Tramp".

Its an interesting debate - do you continue to do songs which are clearly nowadays (slightly) inappropriate; or do you respect the fact that its a well-known standard and just enjoy and recreate the music as it was then.

Someone is bound to complain when we do "Fever" too.......

[PaulThePlug]

13 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

Someone is bound to complain when we do "Fever" too.......

Swap 'Fever' for 'Covid'... good-to-go...

She gave me Covid, Covid when she kissed me, Covid all through the night...

[ubit]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

It is not even slightly an anti slave song.

Depends on your interpretation. It's telling the story of a scarred old slaver and how he enjoys hurting his slaves. I very much doubt Mick Jagger is celebrating slavery.

[Dan Dare]

1 hour ago, ubit said:

 Make believe and in the past.

This. Songs, films, paintings, sculpture - in fact, all art - reflect the time and the culture they were created in. If they don't please or suit you, don't sing, play, look at or listen to them. But please don't whinge about or attempt to "cancel" them. I don't like the great majority of films. The gratuitous violence, covert (and overt) political agenda they promote and the manipulative appeal to base emotions in most irritate me. So I don't watch them (don't even have a telly). However, I recognise that others are free to make their own choices.

[Rich]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I certainly wouldn't do blurred lines.

 

We did this in a previous band I was in, but our female lead singer subtly rewrote the lyrics so the message was more of a 'you don't have to be a good girl, you don't have to do anything you don't want, and if he doesn't like it tell him to feck off'. I don't know if the punters noticed ,but once she'd done that I was quite happy to play it!

[Woodinblack]

27 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

We've just had to ditch "Lady is a Tramp".

Couldn't find any Ladies?

27 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

Someone is bound to complain when we do "Fever" too.......

I would if it was the awful Peggy Lee version. Just because of the mess they made of those lyrics.

My wife used to do the original and didn't have problems with that.

[Woodinblack]

2 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

. If they don't please or suit you, don't sing, play, look at or listen to them. But please don't whinge about or attempt to "cancel" them

Not more of that cancel stinky poo!

You can't cancel something, that is just a right wing meme. If you don't want to do something you don't do it, its not cancelling it. If your audience don't want to listen to it, its not worth doing it, its not cancelling it.

[Woodinblack]

5 minutes ago, Rich said:

We did this in a previous band I was in, but our female lead singer subtly rewrote the lyrics so the message was more of a 'you don't have to be a good girl, you don't have to do anything you don't want, and if he doesn't like it tell him to feck off'. I don't know if the punters noticed ,but once she'd done that I was quite happy to play it!

Oh that is clever then. Post it on youtube, make it the defacto standard

 

[pete.young]

1 hour ago, ubit said:

Depends on your interpretation. It's telling the story of a scarred old slaver and how he enjoys hurting his slaves. I very much doubt Mick Jagger is celebrating slavery.

Really? And here's me thinking it was about Claudia Lennear. I think a better reason to drop it is that most guitarists attempt to play it on a 6-string in standard tuning, and it sounds pants as a result.

One that makes me uncomfortable is seeing 50-something blokes singing 'I saw her standing there'.

[FinnDave]

My current Grateful Dead cover band won't play Mexicali Blues as it contains the line 'Instead I've got a bottle and a girl who's just fourteen' for fairly obvious reasons.

Given our average age, if we changed to 'just fourteen' 'to just forty' we'd still look like cradle snatchers!

Mind you, we frequently play 'Me & My Uncle' (written by John Phillips of the Mamas & Papas) which is about gambling, a gunfight, stolen gold and the final line sees the death of the uncle 'I left his dead donkey there at the side of the road'.

I have the feeling we'd rather be seen as potential thieves & murdered than child abusers, but in truth, I don't think many people take lyrics too literally. 

[Woodinblack]

13 minutes ago, pete.young said:

One that makes me uncomfortable is seeing 50-something blokes singing ...

The last bit wasn't necessary. That is why I don't do oasis!

[wateroftyne]

19 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

Mind you, we frequently play 'Me & My Uncle' (written by John Phillips of the Mamas & Papas)

…who’s probably on the ‘To cancel’ list anyway, given his history 😄

[neepheid]

14 minutes ago, pete.young said:

Really? And here's me thinking it was about Claudia Lennear. I think a better reason to drop it is that most guitarists attempt to play it on a 6-string in standard tuning, and it sounds pants as a result.

One that makes me uncomfortable is seeing 50-something blokes singing 'I saw her standing there'.

They could be reminiscing, recalling a tale of someone met long ago when they were that age too?  They're not necessarily looking at a seventeen year old young woman right now.  The lyrics are all written in the past tense after all.  She could be 17 as of 5 minutes ago, or 40 years ago.  There are many ways to look at it, everyone finds the one that suits their point of view.

Me personally I'd have veto doing the Rolling Stones "Under My Thumb" - I appreciate that the song's not meant to be taken literally but it's just a long form way of saying 'coercive control' written in a time before we had a succint term for it.  I'm not saying it doesn't shine a light on something horrible, but it makes my skin crawl just thinking about the lyrics, never mind me underpinning their musical transmission.  I've listened to it, soaked it in, said to myself "yuck, I don't want to be that guy".  Now I skip it every time it comes on in a Stones compilation.

[Woodinblack]

You don't get a lot of groups doing old Gary Glitter songs, and there arent many dodgy words in there.

 

[Lozz196]

I often go to see The Drifters (my Mum is a big fan), and many of their songs are about situations such as waiting for girlfriends at the school gates, or making out after school. Sung by blokes in their 30s/40s. And you know what, none of the audience seem to give a hoot, they just sing along ,dance and enjoy their fave songs being played live by their (current line up) fave band.

[Skybone]

1 hour ago, pete.young said:

One that makes me uncomfortable is seeing 50-something blokes singing 'I saw her standing there'.

Or "Teenage Kicks"

[MacDaddy]

31 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

I often go to see The Drifters (my Mum is a big fan), and many of their songs are about situations such as waiting for girlfriends at the school gates, or making out after school. Sung by blokes in their 30s/40s. And you know what, none of the audience seem to give a hoot, they just sing along ,dance and enjoy their fave songs being played live by their (current line up) fave band.

TBF in the USA they refer to University as 'school'.

[FinnDave]

1 hour ago, wateroftyne said:

…who’s probably on the ‘To cancel’ list anyway, given his history 😄

All too true, hopefully no one will remember that when we play it, though. It's a quick 3 minute filler, useful while recharging the brain ready for another lengthy one.

[peteb]

1 hour ago, neepheid said:

Me personally I'd have veto doing the Rolling Stones "Under My Thumb" - I appreciate that the song's not meant to be taken literally but it's just a long form way of saying 'coercive control' written in a time before we had a succint term for it

Surely the song is about is about the change of dynamics in a relationship and that singer has has turned the tables on a girl who used to push him around? 

Jagger commented on the controversy about the lyric, saying - "The whole idea was that I was under HER, she was kicking ME around. So the whole idea is absurd, all I did was turn the tables around. So women took that to be against femininity where in reality it was trying to 'get back' against being a repressed male."

[ubit]

Jeezo! They are just songs. Does everyone have to take them so literally? A- most of them were written in a time when things were different and 2- they are just poems. some of these songs are make believe and who in the Dog and Duck is going to complain because of the lyrics of a song that was in the charts? They just dance along enjoying themselves.

[ambient]

I don’t see a problem in adapting lyrics, or even not playing a song if it goes against modern thinking, or it makes a band member uncomfortable.

It happens in literature too. In Charlie and the chocolate factory for instance, the Oompah Lumpas were Pygmy slaves in the first edition. It was rewritten in the 1960s.

[neepheid]

15 minutes ago, peteb said:

Surely the song is about is about the change of dynamics in a relationship and that singer has has turned the tables on a girl who used to push him around? 

Jagger commented on the controversy about the lyric, saying - "The whole idea was that I was under HER, she was kicking ME around. So the whole idea is absurd, all I did was turn the tables around. So women took that to be against femininity where in reality it was trying to 'get back' against being a repressed male."

I just don't like it for the reasons I stated, that's my take on it and I'm not saying anyone else is wrong to look at it another way.