The #MeToo movement, or whatever it has morphed into today, has certainly forced us to reevaluate our relationships, mostly for the better. Men in power find it is not so easy to get away with the antics they were able to get away with in the past. You may not face jail time, but you certainly will find plenty of embarrassment if you overstep the bounds when it comes to unwanted sexual advances. Just ask Andrew Cuomo?
That said, the movement has taken yet another quixotic turn. The lyrics of rock songs are now being questioned. Rather than risk further offending anyone, The Rolling Stones decided to drop Brown Sugar from its concert set list, a fan favorite they have been playing for decades. Keith seemed a little bemused by this because in his mind it was about the "horrors of slavery."
It is a weird song as it drops all sorts of intriguing references but ultimately seems to be about having dirty sex with black women. I can well imagine many women took offense to this song over the years, but then most rock-and-roll songs are about sex in one way or another, the raunchier the better. That appears to be one of the main reasons we like these songs, having or imagining having sex with them playing in the background.
Few songs are as raunchy and over the top as Walk This Way, another song that has come under fire not so much for its highly suggestive lyrics, but that Steve Tyler was frolicking around with an underage groupie at the time. Julia Holcombe has since pulled her life together and written a tell all book that challenges many of the assumptions previously held about the song and others penned during the brief time of her notorious relationship with Tyler. It's not like Tyler denies any of this. In fact, he even made her younger than she actually was at the time - 14 - which would have landed him in jail in most states. Fortunately for him, Julia was 16. For many that still doesn't make any difference, as he was much older - 27 - and appeared to relish dressing her up as a school girl. So far, Aerosmith has no plans to drop the song from its concert set list, although they long ago changed their infamous logo.
It seems we are going down a path that is getting darker and darker. Many of the Blues songs we hold dear are about sex in one form or another, some as raunchy as any rock song that was penned. There's even an entire genre of "Dirty Blues" that will make a grown man blush, like Good Grinding by Little Brother Montgomery and Irene Scruggs that dates back to 1930. In fact it is safe to say that much of the inspiration for songs like Brown Sugar and Walk This Way came from these raunchy Blues songs.
Nothing wrong with re-examining these songs and establishing the context in which they were written. That's what musicologists do. But, do we "cancel" songs because they don't suit our contemporary understanding of gender relationships? I suppose for some persons innocence is lost. It was pretty hard to take what My Ding-a-Ling was actually about once I reached puberty, but in the end I got a big laugh out of it.
I understand that some songs are more harmful than others, but how far do you take this lyrical inquisition? It just feeds into the conservative double speak when it comes to cancel culture. At least Kyle Smith, writing for the National Review, was able to capture the irony in "cancelling" Brown Sugar, noting that before Christian conservatives were trying to censor rock and roll music due to its explicit lyrics. You might recall the infamous hearings that were held on Capitol Hill to examine song lyrics back in the 1980s.
It's not like you can remove these songs from the public domain. They will continue to get airplay long after the musicians who penned them are buried six feet under. I suppose what persons want is some admission from the Stones and Aerosmith that these songs are offensive, but so far none has been forthcoming.
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