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:
I want a troll, dammit. When do I get my troll?
@ lowquacks
Yep. I suspect it’s the combination of snarky and relatively self-confident that ticks them off.
@ clairedammit
If NWO comes back you may have a chance! I think his particular hate-crush trigger is when women write about sex, though.
And daring to be both those things while feeeemale and over 25.
I’m not much into the Rolling Stones, but it can’t be denied that Paint It Black is a classic. And if you don’t like the Stones, you can listen to the song as covered by other artists, such as Inkubus Sukkubus:
http://youtu.be/LCjq-3g9ewU
I’ve never actually heard “Stupid Girl” by Rolling Stones, but you certainly can’t be against this unrelated song of the same name:
http://youtu.be/sCNPXpehoCM
If I would just learn to hate myself like a good woman should I would be so much more popular with sexist dudes. Maybe I should write a few comments bemoaning my wrinkles?
I’ve never had a troll here. (Unless you count kladle, that one time, but that was just a sheer WTF moment, more than anything.) I consider this an accomplishment.
Also, WTF ‘destroyed my reading comprehension.’ Guy, reading comprehension isn’t something that if you don’t get it set up by the age of seven, you’re doomed. Hyperbolic much?
I did say “arguably.” 😉
Honestly, she just bugs me because, as a musician by trade, I know a huge number of people who are vastly, vastly, vastly better singers than she is, but who will never have a fraction of her fame because they did not have the fortune to be born a skinny, rich, conventionally attractive white girl. My irritation is less at the girl herself – she’s really just one more pop star who can’t actually sing, and there’s no shortage of those in recent years – than at her as a symbol of the quintessence of “Person Who Got Famous For Being Privileged and Pretty.” Combine that with her frequently problematic lyrics, and you’ve got a recipe for a grumbly Polliwog.
(Also, her ridiculous, over-the-top faux-modesty schtick at every awards show kind of makes me want to throw tomatoes at her. :-p )
But really, I’m never going to be the person saying “YOU CANNOT LIKE THIS THING.” I’ve got too much of a background in music not to be the person saying, “…objectively, the girl cannot sing very well at all,” but what we like has very little to do with objective truths, and so if you like Taylor Swift, more power to you. 🙂
The odd thing about Steele is that he reads and writes quite a lot, which usually leads to getting better at both. I’m not quite sure how anyone can manage to write as much as he does without the quality of their writing improving in any way.
Enh, Taylor Swift is just dull to me. I prefer a Youtuber’s revamped version of ‘You Belong With Me,’ entitled ‘Fuck Heteronormativity.’ 😀
Not that I can claim superiority. I still have a Good Charlotte album and really like it.
I like this:
I kind of hate “no one may like this thing” conversations about art in general. A lot of times there’s icky stuff rolled up with stuff that’s pretty great, because most cultures are full of icky stuff and it tends to make its way into most forms of art. It’s very hard to find music, movies, and so on that don’t contain any sketchy elements at all. So most people end up liking some stuff that has questionable elements and just sort of choosing to ignore the bits they don’t like.
(This is definitely what happens with me and heavy metal.)
@Polliwog
Eh, she’s getting better at that and most of my famous singers aren’t technically much chop at all, so I don’t care too much (big technical music background here too, but I like a lot of “crap”). Taylor sounds a bit like a teenage girl singing karaoke and I think it actually adds a bit.
As far as I can tell, the extreme patience for dealing with fans and shock-and-awe at awards ceremonies aren’t fake either, though you’d suspect them to be.
….This is really enough Taylor-defence for now, lowquacks
Actually LBTs comment made me think. I think that when most of us really want to go on a rant about how much X sucks it’s because we feel some sense of ownership or attachment towards X-like things. I had a temporary urge to rant about how much I dislike Good Charlotte, and then I realized that it was because they’re more or less a part of a genre that I tend to like and so I’m harder on them than I would be on any given band in a genre that I don’t care about at all, whereas part of the reason my response to Swift is just “meh” is that I don’t care much about either country music or radio-friendly pop. No sense of attachment = it’s easy not to care.
Says – I have nothing approaching any sort of particular animus for you; you merely have behaved egregiously stupidly in this instance. Indeed, I generally find you to one of the more invigorating Boobzers.
Yeah, I have a love for superhero comics and HELLOOOOOOOO issues. The racism ALONE could fill a book, never mind all the gender and mental illness crap.
@CassandraSays
re: no one may like this thing
Exactly. We can’t all listen to The Indigo Girls and vegan anarcho-queercore groups while eating organic food and admiring patriarchy-challenging artwork featuring giant vaginas all the time. Some great art is also deeply problematic, and as long as you consciously realise that, it’s all good.
re: good charlotte and such
Does the term “false metal” and the level of anger associated with it come to mind?
Hehe. I remain dubious of the genuineness of her eternal ZOMG-I-WON-A-THING-HOW-CAN-THIS-BE face, but patience with fans is definitely an admirable quality.
And, in all honestly, her newest song is kinda catchy. Not really my style, but I can at least see the appeal there more than I did with “You Belong With Me.” 🙂
Ew.
Steele, honey, do you really expect me to care?
(Or for anyone else to care either.)
@ LBT
Exactly, and yet you still love comics, you just want them to be better. Which leads to a tendency to want to pick at the problems that do exist, so that they can be fixed.
(At least in smart, self-aware people. In less self-aware people it leads to OMG THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH X BECAUSE I LOVE IT FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE IT YOU BIG MEANIE.)
I fail at blockquotes.
That makes a lot of sense. I couldn’t care less about Taylor Swift (I’m not sure I’ve even heard her) but do not even get me started on how much I hate The Dirty Projectors. No. Don’t get me started. And most of the hate is because they’re played on KCRW and The Current, where they play most of the other music I love.
@ lowquacks
Also, honestly, I don’t like Indigo Girls, and I do like meat, and…you know? Personal preferences don’t always align neatly with political ideals. I try to avoid really egregious examples of “wow the person who created this is fucked up”, but I tend to let the small stuff slide.
When doing blockquotes, don’t forget about the slash in the second tag.