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:
About the only thing I HATE is reggae. Also, I have discovered that Gary Numan songs sound surprisingly good when played on an acoustic guitar.
I am generally a fan of just about any 80’s ballad, cheesy (as I feel most 80’s ballads are) or not. Which of course means I am an avid Journey fan and have a special place in my heart for Heart (hehe, see what I did there?). Neither of whom seem to have a crapton of super problematic lyrics, though I admit I generally tend to have a hard time sussing out actual words of songs so don’t always know all lyrics unless I google them. My sister is even worse with this, she used to think the Pearl Jam song “Daughter” chorus lyric was “Don’t call me butter”. When I realized that’s what she was singing much mockery and giggling ensued.
From an MRA perspective, I guess Heart’s “All I Wanna Do” is probably super misandric, what with all the spermjacking and slutty slut-ness going on.
I like just about everything, but for whatever reason, goddamn Mumford & Sons flips my bitch switch.
Ooh, how about “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base? It’s about spermjacking! Although the woman in the song is planning to have a one-night stand and leave rather than hit a guy up for child support, so maybe it’s okay.
Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” brings up an interesting question: what about songs that have been covered by both sexes? “Hound Dog,” for instance, was originally a woman singing about a cheating man, until Elvis covered it and turned it into a man singing about a cheating woman. Which version is the misandric one?
(Correct MRA answer: both versions! The Elvis version because a woman is cruelly oppressing Elvis with her womanly evil, and the original because a woman is showing dissatisfaction with a man, and anyway she wouldn’t have these problems if she’d gone out with a nice guy like me.)
Speaking of the Murphys, they have a holiday song out (NSFW. It’s the Dropkick Murphys, so that may go without saying):
This conversation led me to look for one of my favourite albums (Raised On Synthetic Bitch Milk by Husbands n Knives) and I can’t find it anywheeeeeerrrrreeeeee. How am I supposed to listen to my bestest purveyors of misandry now?!
I almost mentioned “All that she wants”. But it’s not quite evil… well unless you realise that a single woman will become a “welfare mother” and steal from ALL MEN, because taxes.
Today in EvoDevo we learned about sperm-burgling lizards, who at least don’t hit you up for child support–because they steal your sperm to activate their parthenogenic eggs, not to fertilize your eggs.
It’s called kleptogenesis: http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1-general-topics/f5-general-discussion-news-members/f1165-glossary-project/f1168-glossary-completed-words/67223-kleptogenesis-cc-amphib-glossary.html
It is not the weirdest thing that has come up in that class. That honor goes to meiotic drive, where genes alter meiosis to make themselves more likely to be passed on. If they end up on the X chromosome, they can drive the population extinct by eliminating all the males.
… You know, it seems like biology might be misandrist.
Celtic folk-punk. (Pogues, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, et al.) Rockabilly Punk. Weird shit.
I’m quite sure that all of it is misandry, because when you get down to it, everything MRAs examine turns out to be misandrist.
Ok, I can give you “Stupid Girl” (thoughts on the Garbage song by the same name, similar themes about a shallow, social climbing person?). I can hand you “Under My Thumb” with a big bow on top. “Mother’s Little Helper” though, I thought was about the all-too common phenomena in the 50’s and 60’s of prescribing women tranquilizers and sedatives as a means of silencing their complaints – a form of misogyny on behalf of the medical industry. The bit about “burning the frozen steak”? Literal and metaphoric – pre-prackaged steak, pre-packaged emotions(via the scrips). Burning the steak parallels with the overdose in the last verse (she’s “burnt out”) I see it more as an indictment of the social expectations of women and things it led to. Though by no means am I suggesting the Stones were feminist, I think they just sort of stumbled on a feminist statement there.
“American Woman” – personifying a land or country as feminine didn’t start with this, but given that the bulk of our society no longer subscribes to animistic world views where that’s seen as sacred, maybe it’s time to put that metaphor on the shelf for now. Our current culture does not provide the context for this. BTW, the American system personified as a woman is used far more viciously (though with a point) in the Bakshi film most commonly found under the name “Street Fight”.
The Paul Revere & The Raiders song – honestly sounds like a double whammy. Changing it to a girl almost makes me wonder if they or their record company were concerned that if they sung this about a guy, it might be perceived as gay? So, sexism & possibly homophobia.
I would give American Woman a pass because (apologies if this was mentioned before) it was written on the spot on stage, which it is why it is so repetitive and basically non-sensical.
The Offspring’s Why Don’t You Get A Job: “I guess all his money, well it isn’t enough
To keep her bill collectors at bay
I guess all his money, well it isn’t enough
Cause that girl’s got expensive taste”
… but then they also reverse the sexes and his other (female) friend also has a boyfriend who is a mooching dick. So I guess the first half is telling it like it is, and the other half is misandry?
Up The Junction by Squeeze is clearly misandry:
As you can see, it’s about a beta male who
gets his girlfriend pregnantsleeps with a spermjacking layabout. He has to get a job to support her and the baby, but within a couple of years she has left him, taken the baby and shacked up with an alpha soldier becausethe singer’s an alcoholicshe’s a bitch.I think Nickleback and Kid Rock are my “bitch switch” bands. Though on principle, I hate just about all country and all of Toby Keith after that monstrosity “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” was blared from many a car back in the early 2000’s. Even people I knew who didn’t seem to care much for country music would be all “AMERICAAAA! FUCK YEAH!” when that song came on the radio. It always made for a deeply grumpily ostara who would then get accused of being “anti-America”. I’d then have to explain my reasons for particularly caring for a song about killing people that had lyrics like, “we’ll put a boot in yer ass, it’s the American way”, which IMHO made the entirety of the American population look like a bunch of barbaric, warmongering douchebags. FUN TIMES (not).
I used to not mind country so much, even liked a bit of it, but now I have an intensely, visceral feeling of loathing whenever I hear country. This mostly extends to Ms. Swift as well, who I mind slightly less since a lot of her stuff sounds more pop-ish to my ears, but still also dislike because even though she writes her own songs and good for her and all that, I feel like they all sound the same and I agree with others that she has a mediocre voice at best. I’m guilty of liking bands/artists who from what I can tell seem like they are mostly terrible live (Shiny Toy Guns, The Naked and Famous) but they strike me as at least a bit different and not totally unoriginal.
All the best stuff is in trad. folk music. Wife cheats on her husband? Murdered! Girl turns down young man? Murdered! Woman exists? probably gets murdered. Something happens? Someone gets murdered. There’s a lot of murder.
Trad. folk is pretty much summed up by songs about murder, drinking or sex. Much better than all the contemporary folk which is all love ballads/break up songs. Boooooooooring.
Motty–that’s why I have such a fondness for “The Outlandish Knight”. The plot goes a knight seduces a young lady, and she takes her dowery and runs off with him. Then he reveals that he plans on drowning her and taking her dowery, and she ends up drowning him instead. She gets back home before anyone knows she’s gone.
So, yeah, murder, but it isn’t the woman who gets murdered, and she gets away with it and with running off with a guy.
I always find it funny when people complain about how rock/pop/rap is all about violence and drinking and sex, ‘unlike all the old music’.
Things Wot I Have Got on my
ipodSony Walkman mp3 player:The Beatles
Tom Waits
Tori Amos
They Might Be Giants
Oyster Band
Steeleye Span
Fairport Convention
“Weird Al” Yankovic*
Aaron Copeland
Bob Dylan
Edvard Grieg
Frank Zappa
George Gershwin
Gorillaz
Old Blind Dogs
Paul Simon
Randy Newman
And that’s not my entire collection.
*Apparently it’s misspelled if you leave out the quotation marks.
I’ve been going to Fairport’s festival since a couple of years ago, it’s great fun.
I was trying to think whether I had anything truly misandric — and I suddenly remembered Leon Rosselson! I couldn’t find video of him playing this song, but here’s someone covering it (lyrics below):
And of course Billy Bragg, pretending that ALL MEN ARE ALWAYS VIOLENT ALL OF THE TIME, THAT LYING LIAR:
I actually agree with jennydevildoll about Mother’s Little Helper. Don’t get me wrong, The Stones are giant assholes (every single one of them). but I don’t think “women suck!” was where they were going with that song. I think it was their attempt to be, like, serious adults for a moment.
The fact that it doesn’t entirely work is proof that the whole serious adults with a point to make thing is still a bit much for them to handle, even now that they’re retirees.
RE Nickelback, you know you can play multiple songs of theirs at once and you will discover that it’s pretty much all the same song? They are the band whose success I find most infuriating, and any time a musician says that zie likes them I lose all respect for that person. It’s like being a visual artist and saying that your favorite painter is Thomas Kincaid.
@Cloudiah, that is amazing. Could we post it every time a M’G’HOW turns up to whine at us?
@CassandraSays, I don’t think the intended message was ‘women suck’, it was just the implied conclusion so often reached by over-privileged dudes who like playing the ‘revolutionary’ but have the social justice awareness of mildly bigoted amoebas (see: Atheist Fanboys).
*M’G’HOW = man ‘going’ his own way, in case it wasn’t clear. I don’t want to afford them the dignity of pretending that they’ve ever left instead of hanging around whining.
Oh and I don’t think my paragraph to CassandraSays makes sense. Uhm basically you know when dudes try and act all rebellious but they just end up reinforcing the dominant norms in society and propping up the system they claim to despise, because it works well for them? That.
Acting like whiny children doing the “You can’t tell me what to do!” shit. They want to be at the top of the heap, not change anything about its structure.
My god, I can actually contribute to manboobz comments! Emilie Autumn’s song, Thank God I’m Pretty could be MRA’s anthem for women if it was stripped of all the sarcasm.
Hoping for blockquotes not to fail..