Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
So you go from this bit of, ahem, social criticism:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.
To this:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake and she buys a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter etc etc
Yep, that’s right. Mick’s as bothered by the frozen steak as he is by the dangers of tranquilizer abuse. By the end of the song, the hypothetical freezer-and-cake-mix-using mother has died of an overdose. Told you so!
Misogynistic rock songs aren’t exactly a rarity – hell, “Mother’s Little Helper” isn’t even the worst offender in the Rolling Stones’ disography.
But unlike more straightforward outbursts of misogynistic nastiness like, say, “Under My Thumb,” “Mother’s Little Helper” pretends to be something nobler: a social critique.
The blogger behind the wonderfully arch I Hate the New York Times blog pointed out to me in a tweet that a surprising number of old rock lyrics play this little trick. Taking the form of a “critique of today’s inauthentic & hedonistic society” they are in fact “directed at [a] specific shallow hussy.”
Along with Mother’s Little Helper, IHateNYT suggested I take another look at the lyrics to Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks.” And, yep, it’s basically the same thing: a critique of drug use in the form of a patronizing lecture to a young woman in search of “kicks,” starting out with this little bit of I-told-you-so, delivered with a sneer:
Girl, you thought you found the answer on that magic carpet ride last night
But when you wake up in the mornin’ the world still gets you uptight
It turns out that the song, written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, was inspired by the drug use of a male friend of theirs – though somehow in the song this specific man became a hypothetical “girl.”
And then of course there is the Guess Who’s American Woman, a sort-of critique of America’s “war machines” and “ghetto scenes” in the form of a long, sneering diatribe against a hypothetical woman:
Now woman, I said stay away
American woman, listen what I say
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
And on and on and on for a very long five minutes and nine seconds.
One of the reasons these songs sound so much like MRA rants is that MRAs like to play the same little game, dressing up their misogynistic sentiments in the form of “social critique.” Thus Paul Elam’s faux-environmentalist attack on female consumers, and all that talk about how single mothers and/or “picky women” are going to bring about the end of civilization. Heck, some manosphere fat-gal-bashers even pretend they fat-bash out of concern for the well-being of the women they’re ridiculing.
It might be entertaining to transform some of these old woman-hating songs into critiques of woman-haters. “Stupid Girl” by the Rolling Stones might be a good place to start. I mean, seriously?
Like a lady in waiting to a virgin queen
Look at that stupid girl
She bitches ’bout things that she’s never seen
Look at that stupid girl
Those are real Rolling Stone lyrics, not a comment from NWOslave. Have at it.
Here are videos of all the songs I mention above:
Ahahahahahaha
…I may have sung along.
(And yes, the King’s Singers make adorkable faces. Really most classical singers do; there’s a hilarious photo somewhere on Facebook of one chamber choir I was in, helpfully captioned, “[Group name] has a collective orgasm.” I cannot deny that that is, in fact, exactly what that photo looks like. :-p )
Oho! I outsmarted myself!
I also think the lute/oud distinction is semi-crap. Semi because the, somewhat, greater range of subtlety one has without frets exists, but the basic shape/tone is the same.
I am not arguing the music is the same, just that they belong to the same family of instruments. As the Viol family includes both the fretted viol de gamba, and the fretless Bass-viol
Polliwog – I’ll go to those links later (work? What work?). I LOVE crumhorns. They always make me think of the music David Munrow used for The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R in the 70s and played with The Early Music Consort of London. Crumhorns scream Tudor to me, and that was my first love in history (Anne Boleyn was my heroine – thank you Dorothy Tutin).
I knew it wasn’t a theorbo – not only because of the lack of the second course of strings (which make the most amazing deep sound) but the size. Every theorbo I’ve seen is massive.
Steeleboy, I had a teacher who picked on me something rotten in grade one. Miserable old character she was, and I’ve never known why, unless it was a case of a bully seeing a soft target. But guess what? Like Pecunium said, that was ONE teacher. She didn’t destroy my ability to read or write or do anything else.
And here’s an idea – wouldn’t learning to write decent English be your perfect revenge against the teacher you complain about? Hmmm? Why give her that much power over you?
Unless of course she never existed or you’re just pretending that being told once that your writing wasn’t very good was because of misandry, rather than an observation of fact. After all, if you’d had any sort of natural bent for it, it wouldn’t disappear so completely … writing is something that tends to flower if you a) have any talent at all and b) actually do some work developing it.
And, because he deserves a tribute: to the late Dave Brubeck:
Beyond Take Five
I’ll drop what I’ve been listening to here then. Just the first number, but it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up if anyone’s interested 😉
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnMsdOoNKRk&w=560&h=315%5D
Though it’s all-female theater, which I’m sure’ll have certain folk screaming misandry. Which is… totally wrong, but I’ve a long, long rant about that, which I am *not* writing up here.
Okay, so I fail at embedding. The link works at least…
just put the youtube link up, no html WordPress (usually) translates that to an embed.
Okay, so…
Yay it worked!
Whoever it was posted the Dropkick Murphy song, thanks! I’m building up a small collection of anti-Christmas songs, since I’m having welfare Christmas alone again, and want the stupid day to be over with as soon as possible.
@LBT I have a list of those, but I made it a couple of years ago and I’m not sure I have it on this computer. I’ll look for it in the morning (GMT!) and post it for you if I can find it.
RE: thenatfantastic
Thanks! I’d appreciate it! 😀
OK, I managed to find it before I went to bed. Disclaimer – this playlist was made by leaving my computer open at a party two years ago, and I haven’t listened to it since then. There might be some with horrible lyrics and so on. They should all be available on Spotify or Youtube. I’ve tried to take out all the ‘proper’ Christmas ones for you, but most of them I don’t recognise so sorry if some slipped through – there’s a couple that are on full anti-Christmas albums (Oi! To The World is definitely a full album’s worth):
Christmas Eve Montage (RJD2)
Merry Christmas (Laakso)
Is This Christmas? (The Wombats)
Jag Sag Mamma Kyssa Tomten (Lars Vegas Trio)
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher (Billy Elliot Cast)
Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis (Tom Waites)
Feliz Navidad (Bowling For Soup)
I Wish It Was Christmas Today (Julian Casablancas)
Heavy Christmas (220 Volt)
Spotlight on Christmas (Rufus Wainwright)
Dig That Crazy Santa Claus (The Brian Setzer Orchestra)
Boogie Woogie Santa Claus (“)
Take A Break Guys (“)
Christmas Day (Squeeze)
We Three Kings (Reverand Horton Heat)
Santa On The Roof (“)
Medley: Jingle Bell Rock/Jingle Bells (The Coffin Draggers)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers)
Holiday Twist (Los Straightjackets)
O! Santa (Chatham County Line)
Merry Christmas – I don’t want to fight tonight (The Ramones)
Kidnap The Sandy Claws (Korn)
Making Christmas (Rise Against)
Something Funny In Santa’s Lap (The Moaners)
Santa Gave You What You Gave To Me (Jake Brennan, The Confidence Men)
The Business of Christmas (American Princes)
Oi! To The World (The Vandals)
I Don’t Believe In Santa Claus (“)
Jenny Xmas (Tommy Tutone)
Don’t Shoot Me Santa (The Killers)
LBT: Fear’s “Fuck Christmas.”
Oh, and The Kinks’ “Father Christmas.”
Was just going to mention “Father Christmas”!
The Pogue’s “Fairytale of New York” is slightly romantic/schmaltzy but in a very twisted way.
Rilo Kiley’s “Xmas Cake” and The Sonic’s “Don’t Believe In Christmas” (FANTASTIC garage-rock number) would fit in too, and The Black Arts have “Christmas Number 1”, which is a little satire of the sort of the song that gets to be such a thing.
The Mynabird’s “All I Want Is Truth For Christmas”, The Ramone’s “I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight”, and The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” (or the excellent Summer Camp cover) are all pessimistic/slightly bah-humbug but do have more conventional Christmas messages and sleighbells and all the rest of it.
Shit, “I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight” was already mentioned. Consider my mention a seconding of the recommendation!
Beach House’s “I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun” and Hanoi Rocks’ “Dead By Xmas” could be suitable too.
And Marvin Gaye’s “Purple Snowflakes” is optimistic lyrically but you’d never guess it listening to the thing casually. Low’s “Just Like Christmas” is ambiguous lyrically and very downtempo and flat-sounding musically.
That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone else mention Hanoi Rocks in years. Bravo!
They’re reasonably overlooked, which is probably because of the way they get lumped in with the LA glam thing they inspired and later became a part of and people assume they were just another Motley Crue or whatever, but they definitely had their own thing. Probably not the coolest band, but charming.
@LBT – *waves* That was me. Bummer about your holiday, though. (I completely advocate people spending Christmas alone if they want to, but not doing it by choice kinda sucks.)
Are you 12 or are you an adult who has control over your ability to progress at things you aren’t very good at? God, if my education stopped after it was being force fed to me I might be as ignorant as you too.