Song lyrics are occasionally rather controversial, and rightly so as they have the capacity to inspire unthinking, emotional reactions in listeners. This alone would be a good reason to pay attention to what comes out of artists’ mouths. However, there are other cases, where there are no overt reactions, which can be equally dangerous. Some lyrics seek to normalize aberrant or dangerous behaviors which can lead to listeners’ acceptance of the propositions involved as if they were healthy or normative. What follows is a brief description of such songs in no particular order, taking examples from several different genres and artists to demonstrate that it is a universal concern. If a parent is genuinely going to ask, “Won’t someone please think about the children?” then they need to be thinking about music, too. This is not a call for censorship. Artists are and ought to be free, as of right, to sing what they please. It is, however, most emphatically a plea to parents and others concerned with child welfare to pay more attention to what young people are doing.
One recent hit is Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat” featuring Nikki Minaj. In the fifty-first week of 2012, this song registered at #9 on the Hot 100 Billboard Charts in the US. While his own portion is problematic, linking a woman’s desirability entirely to her physical appearance rather than any of her qualities as a person, it is Minaj’s lines which are the more troubling. The main portion of her lines, “Justin.. Bieber, you know Imma hit 'em with the ether / Buns out, weiner, but I gotta keep an eye out for Selena / … beautiful confessions of the priest” indicate several dangerous possibilities. First, she intends to drug Bieber with ether, an old fashioned anesthetic and occasionally used today as a recreational drug. She then talks about playing with his “weiner,” keeping in mind that, though he is 18 years old as of this writing, he looks like a much younger person and could be a target of pseudo-ephebophilia. This is a circumstance where the adult predates upon those who, though legally of age to consent, appear to be younger than that while not actually childlike in appearance. By indicating that she must “keep an eye out for Selena [Gomez],” Minaj further indicates that rape is her only route to sex with Bieber because he is unlikely to be unfaithful. Female-on-male rape, or, at minimum, female-on-male sexual abuse, is a very real phenomenon in our country and one that is even less talked about than the more “normal” male-on-female varieties. Considering that less than half of female victims of sexual abuse report, it is unsurprising to learn that the numbers are smaller still for male victims. Lastly, she is making light of the very real, and very traumatic, experiences of the young men abused by priests, effectively alleging that youth sexual abuse is part of the sacramental duties of the priesthood. There is absolutely nothing about her lines in this song that contribute to its legitimate, if putative, artistic merit. While I cannot speak for other parts of the country, these lines are routinely played on the air by various radio stations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area of North Texas. It is unlikely that many young people are registering these lines consciously. That is precisely the source of danger: the subconscious absorption of an idea, time and again over the course of several weeks, that this dangerous behavior is acceptable.
This next one is billed as a Christmas song by Lady Gaga, “Christmas Tree,” featuring Space Cowboy. In other songs, she has advocated for queer rights, third wave feminism, and other subjects some might consider controversial. Those are legitimate topics of inquiry and disagreement, but one would think that burning Jews on Christmas was nigh-universally accepted as an affront to human dignity. The lyrics are formally presented as “light you up with you on top,” but the pronunciation is clearly addressed to the Christmas tree as if a person and spoken as “light you up, a Jew on top.” The intention is to make a less than oblique reference to a sexual position, itself potentially objectionable for young listeners, but that is not what is actually said by Space Cowboy. The need for a more cautious screening process by producers and sound editors is clearly indicated as a solution to this problem. I doubt either singer is antisemitic in any meaningful sense; merely that they should put as much care into how they say things as they put into what they say.
Last on our list of concerns is “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earl. In the last part of the song, he talks about serving in Vietnam, coming home to grow drug plants, and having a flashback during a DEA raid due to PTSD. His lyrics imply that the only people serving in the military were “white trash.” He posits veteran drug use as a perfectly normal response. Worst of all, he trivializes the very real problems caused by PTSD in troops in an era before its causes and effects were diagnosed in sufferers, to say nothing of the racist overtones of the entire verse. Denigrating trauma-sufferers is just as bad as ignoring them, but implying that it directly affected everyone and did so in the same way is also a falsehood which can lead to misunderstanding and mistreatment from society. These people, many of them drafted and forced to go to Vietnam, were met with vicious insults and even assaults from their fellow citizens, to say nothing of an initial refusal by the American government to treat their physical and psychological health concerns. This song, a popular one for country line dancers, perpetuates the problem.
Each of these songs, from a different genre with different concerns, is indicative of a larger problem in American society. Others may rant and rave about increasing violence or sexualization of children. Those are valid concerns, surely, but they cannot be met without first paying attention to what happens in the world around us, including on the air waves. My challenge to you, gentle reader, is to listen to and think about the words in your favorite songs and decide whether or not you would want young ones listening to them and absorbing their messages that normalize rape, antisemitism, and PTSD.
– J. Holder Bennett, KMA Music Historian
