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:
Great observation David. Ever read the lyrics to “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones? Thank you for your amazing website. It’s nice to know we (Feminists) have a cool guy on our side:) Keep exposing the ugly reality of patriarchy…
These Dizzee Rascal lyrics infuriated me when I first heard them a few years back- the song may as well be called “Alpha Male Cock Carousel Rider” but I suppose it’s pretty fitting having a Bible reference as the title:
DIZZEE RASCAL- “Jezebel”
Yo, look, look, look
They call her Jezebel
you might find her in your neighbourhood
Always in some shit
Up to no good
Constant boasting bragging to her friends
Juiced every boy in the ends
Didn’t finish school
She would truant every day
Always on the link
Different boy every day
Missed mathematics she was doing acrobatics
But not gym class
She was gettin’ doggy fast
Yo, they call her Jezebel
Friends call her sket behind her back
She never knew the plot
She was born of track
Tight top short skirt thinks she’s to nice
Hates love but she’s been deep in twice
Pass with, whoe can’t keep her legs closed
Always on the creep
Now she’s in too deep
Now she face’s neglect, abuse and rape
Man said that he’d kill her
If she try to escape
[Chorus]
Whats your name?
I’ve seen you about
I think your choong (Boom ting)
I really hope your not a grim
I really hope your not a jezzy, jezzy
Where you from?
Hot stuff (Buff ting)
I really hope your not a grim
I really hope your not a jezzy, jezzy
I’ve seen you about
I think your tromp (Boom ting)
I really hope your not a grim
I really hope your not a jezzy, jezzy
Where you from?
Hot stuff (Boom ting)
I really hope your not grim
I really hope your not a Jezebel
You might find her at a house rave
For the fifth time
She’s gettin’ whind from behind
Had a bit of drink
So she’s acting kinda slow
She came with Natasha
But she’s leavin with Joe
Ricky loves jezzy but jezzy loves bling
Ricky means well but Ricky ain’t got a thing
Joe’s got a name
And jezzy loves fame
She wants a man to show
So it’s all about Joe
They call her Jezebel
On her way to get walked out
Get battery
And get kicked out
Jezzy weren’t expecting more then four
What could she say
She just did it anyway
Messed up caught a kinda STD
Gonorrhea, Herpes, no VD
Left bitter, left angry, left vex
But still loves sex
Passed it on to the next
[Chorus]
Pretty but
Ain’t got a brain
Got no shame
Got juiced on the train
Went from daddy’s little girl
To daddy’s heart attack
House wreck a side
She could never go back
Raised in the church
Not knowing anything
Learned about boys
Ruined every thing
Aged 16
She was never full grown
She was in a family
Now she’s got one of her own
Two kids
Even worse
Two little girls
Two more of her
That’s two Jezebels
Two fatherless kids
One single mum
No longer young
But the boys still come
Yo, wishin’ she could take it back to the old school
And make better choice’s
Oh what a fool
But all by her side
But she wonder man
Only if she was six years younger
Damn
Has anyone covered Nice Guy lyrics yet? Two which spring to mind are Avril Lavigne’s Skater Boy (“he wasn’t good enough for her…” we have another female misogynist right there) and Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag”. A lot of Pulp’s lyrics too- Disco 2000 springs to mind. I can’t think of any more right now but I’m surprised by how often I find myself listening to the radio and realising just how many lyricists seem to be Nice Guys!
We covered Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me”, which is a Nice Gal song. Elvis Costello is great but has a slight Nice Guyish tendancy lyrically too…
We Are Scientists have a nice anti-Nice Guy song with an entertaining video:
Most indie bands have a Nice Guy feel to their lyrics. Part of the reason I hated nu-metal (trust me, there were lots of reasons) was that those bands frequently tipped over from Nice Guy whining into full-on MRA-style “how dare that bitch $#%$#$%?”.
@Stepford Knife
I’ve never been offended by that song, YMMV but I’ve always heard it as a song about a young, naive girl who’s not a bad person but is given so few opportunities and so little respect that there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do but to try make people respect her in the only way she can think how, and ends up being a single teenage mother, who’s daughters will also be so poor and disadvantaged they repeat the cycle. I always found it to be sad rather than judgemental.
Like I say though, YMMV.
@CassandraSays
Oh, come on, it’s a broad field.
Most lyrics in general lean either Nice Guy or Blatantly Sexist. Indie bands just tend towards the whiny approach to it.
I think age might be part of it, bands who’re pretty young often lean towards the whyyyyy doesn’t she like me that’s so meeaaannnn thing because that’s just something people do a lot in their late teens and early twenties. Not that older people don’t do it too, but it’s super-common in young people.
Like, imagine what would happen if Mr Al wrote a song…obviously he’d probably be sexist and unreasonable at any age, but the particular form that takes is definitely an adolescent thing.
(And this is why so many of the trolls get really mad at me, because it’s meaannn to point thing like that out.)
“Teenage Dirtbag” akways made me laugh. It’s kind of a send-up of the whle Nice Guy thing.
“I Want You” may be his Nice Guy magnum opus.
This one is another Nice Guy classic, though I have to give props for “her CD changer’s full of guys who are mad at their dad”, which is a pretty good way to describe the genre in question.
So … I don’t tend to voice this opinion around my friends much because I run in geeky New England circles, but …
I sorta feel like JoCo’s songs about romance all have a distinctly creepy/Nice Guyish feel to them. I can’t listen to more than a couple in a row before I need to listen to something else.
(and yes, I know that some are supposed to be creepy, but I’m pretty sure that ‘Code Monkey’ is supposed to be relatable rather than Nice Guyish.)
I can see how the code monkey could very easily slip into blaming the secretary for denying him his dream, so yeah, I can see the potential Nice Guy strains in the song.
It’s not helped by the fact that the code monkey only daydreams.
I’m not exhaustively familiar with JoCo’s work. “Shop Vac” has awful implications.
So, like, the obvious defense for depressing and creepy JoCo songs are that they’re supposed to be depressing and creepy in a funny/cute/twee sorta way. Like ‘Shop Vac’. And ‘Skullcrusher Mountain’. And ‘The Future Soon’. And ‘My Monkey’. And ‘Alone at Home’. And ‘Big Bad World One’. And ‘I Crush Everything’. And ‘Nobody Loves You Like Me’.
But after, like, the fourth or fifth depressing/creepy song about relating to women really badly, you start to wonder how many of those songs you need and why his fans, all of whom come from a culture that stereotypically relates poorly to women, love those songs so much.
I dunno. Just makes me sort of uncomfortable after a while.
I was turned on to JoCo by women. I see them as commentary, but that’s me. YMMV.
So… what’s your definition of “nice guy” then? I think lots of people of BOTH sexes have experienced hanging around someone hoping that zie will eventually fall in love with you, but zie just keeps falling in love with other people, and that makes you sad. And you wonder WHY zie doesn’t love you, since you can clearly see that you’re made for each other.
Okay. The above doesn’t make you a bad person!
You become a bad person if you start hating on your crush for not returning your love though. Or if you start hating on an entire gender because you can’t get the one you love (all women just want bad boys/all men just want bimbos) But merely being hopelessly in love, and being too insecure to actually explain how you feel, that doesn’t make you a bad person.
Yeah, I’ve got a problem with Jonathan Coulton for the reasons already mentioned; Shop Vac in particular. I don’t see anything that makes those songs a sendup or a deconstruction rather than actually promoting a modus operandi of keeping yourself in shit relationships and then whining about it.
Mandelbrot Set, however, is a wonderful song.
That was always my take as well.
Regarding Shop Vac: That’s actually my favorite song of his. I realize the implications of it not good at all, but I discovered it when I was a teeager stuck in a household with parents in an abusive, hateful marriage, the exact sort of marriage where both people involved are waiting for their kids to leave and crying in separate rooms without doing a damn thing about it. There’s something about that song (and Eminen’s “Love the Way You Lie,” now that I think of it) that really gets me, even if it doesn’t explicitly condemn or deconstruct the notion. Just knowing that my situation was not isolated, that there were other people out there with that same experience, really meant something to me, and it still does. Depressed, unhappy marriages were not discussed where I was growing up, and now that I’m an adult, they’re still taboo here. That song gave me an outlet, I guess.
And the post button gets clicked before I’m done, of course. None of my reaction to it removes the problematic elements, I know that, but I think there can be merit in songs or other works of art that just present an awful situation without condemning or commenting on it, if only to let people in such a situation know that they aren’t alone.
Not criticizing Pecunium or Lauralot’s opinions, just asking: What about JoCo suggests commentary to you?
Well, with Skullcrusher Mountain, for example, the narrator goes on about how he’s so nice and kind and holding his temper with this girl even though he’s so powerful and way too smart for her and could do any number of horrible things to her. While the song is pointing out that he’s a super villain who wants to cause genocide and/or the apocalypse and thinks pony/monkey monsters make good gifts. I’ve always seen that as taking the “I’m such a nice guy” complaint and saying, No, no you aren’t.
Urgh, today seems to be my day for inadvertently posting my thoughts before I’m done tweaking them. The moment that underscores the song as mocking the Nice Guy attitude for me is the verse where the narrator talks about how patient and gracious he’s been while implicitly threatening to kill his hostage if she’s not more civil. I can’t imagine writing that without irony.
Dvarghundspossen: it’s your second paragraph that talks about the Nice Guy (TM) rather than someone who’s actually a nice guy but who may be shy. Shakesville has a good rundown of the type. The TL:DR is that they aren’t actually nice at all. These are the blokes who whine about the horrors of being friendzoned, because they’re not remotely interested in being friends with women, they are only after sexual relationships.