On a recent night out, I asked one of my friends about her 17-year-old daughter. I knew that she had just started college and was wondering how things were going. We talked about the number of life changes at that age and how difficult it was to keep priorities straight. We also talked about this being the age when people met their first love. The trials and tribulations of being 17, I was told, had led to a mother-daughter argument about time management. Mother had offered her daughter some unsolicited advice, and daughter had resented the interference. My friend told me that, mid-row, all she could think about was Alice Cooper's song, "I'm 18."
The song played in my head until the next day when I looked up the lyrics. Of course, I'd remembered the music and refrain, but, I confess, not the lyrics.
I got a baby´s brain and an old man´s heartTook eighteen years to get this farDon´t always know what I´m talkin´ aboutFeels like I´m livin´ in the middle of doubtCause I´m eighteenI get confused every dayEighteenI just don´t know what to sayEighteenI gotta get awayWas it because I was too involved with being 18 to understand, or was it because I couldn't relate to Alice Cooper, an old guy, telling me what it was like to be 18?
At any rate, I may not have remembered the lyrics, but I certainly recall how important music was to me when I was growing up. Whether it was folk, new wave or progressive rock, music was my way to discover life and the outside world while growing up in a conservative small town. I was more inclined, however, to listen to the music rather than the lyrics, and I just recently discovered why.
I thought about the general theme of love and relationships in mainstream music, as they are often on the minds of young adults, and decided to research some of the lyrics to songs about hooking up when I was a teen. I was both amused and repulsed by what I discovered.
The first song that came to mind was an old folk rock tune, which probably still plays
ad nauseum on classic rock stations. This song must have turned off a lot of women in search of a monogamous relationship.
Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
If you're down and confusedAnd you don't remember who you're talkin' toConcentration slip awayCause your baby is so far away.Well, there's a rose in a fisted gloveAnd the eagle flies with the doveAnd if you can't be with the one you loveLove the one you're withLove the one you're withI had a good laugh at the "rose in a fisted glove." The rose, a symbol of love, but in a fisted glove. Scuse me, what's with the glove? Anyway...Correct me if you disagree, but I can't imagine a woman writing a song about a moment of weakness and it still getting airtime 40 years later. Some will say it was a time of free love...Whatever!
The other song that came to mind took me back to my early teens, and again, it received airtime for years after it was initially released in 1979--
You're All I've Got Tonight (the Cars). Here's some of it:
i don't care if you hurt me some morei don't care if you even the scoreyou can knock me and i don't careyou can mock me and i don't careyou can rock me just about anywhereit's alright'cus you're all i've got tonightyou're all i've got tonightyou're all i've got tonightNow, as I recall, a lot of women liked the Cars and new wave music. However, this song did not offer a very appealing picture of hooking up for either party. I'm starting to see why I remembered the music, but not the lyrics.
The next song, a progressive rock tune by the hugely popular Supertramp, was loved by everyone. Even our parents used to sing along to these songs on AM radio, but listen to the opener of the title song from
Breakfast in America.
Take a look at my girlfriendShe's the only one I gotNot much of a girlfriendI never seem to get enoughHello! Sounds to me like love and relationships were strictly male focused, and these three songs were tame AM radio material. Wait a minute? Weren't most of the musicians and songwriters male? Yep. The record producers? Yep. The people who decided how much airtime these songs received? Yep. No wonder I couldn't remember the lyrics. I couldn't relate to the point of view.
Have things changed since then? Not according to Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, the authors of
Packaging Girlhood:Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes. To counter the objectifying and degrading portrayal of women in pop music, they suggest that parents explain to their daughters that the music industry is overwhelmingly made up of men.
Point out the maleness of the world of pop music. For the most part, men own the companies and produce the artists and the CDs, control what gets airtime, and film the MTV videos. They're also overwhelmingly the ones in bands (U2, Green Day, Simple Plan, Yellowcard, Death Cab for Cutie, Maroon 5, Korn, and so on). (p.154)
Yes, there were women in pop music when I was a teen, but they were not nearly as successful or had the same longevity or amount of airtime as their male counterparts. There are, however, more women making money and enjoying success in the music industry today. The Madonnas, Christinas, Brittneys and Avrils have indeed become superstars, but how many of their equally successful male counterparts have had to sex it up, take off some clothes or go blond to maintain their market shares? Ah, none.
But this post was about lyrics wasn't it? Are there lyrics about love in mainstream music today that are written from a woman's perspective? Are these lyrics sex-positive without objectifying women? Please tell me about them. Maybe I will be able to remember them for once.
Related posts:
More Impossible Beauty StandardsWhat if Bill Gates Had Been Born A Poor Black GirlOur Hypersexualized Media: How to Help Our ChildrenThe Gold Standard of Beauty: Targetting InsecuritiesDora the Explorer: The Power of A PetitionCookie-Cutter Plain
On Saturday night at about 6:00 pm, I took out a lamb and ninja warrior for some trick-or-treating in our hood. It was a cold dark moonlit October 31st with a wind strong enough to whistle and stir the leaves. Some of our festive neighbours on Drolet Street had created a haunted walk for passing ghouls with a spooky soundtrack in the background. The lamb clung to my thigh, as did my otherwise brave ninja, but the lady with the cape and Freddy Kruger mask was more than my lamb could bear. We had to back out into the street at the last minute--to hell with the candies, she was scary. My ninja was also frightened, but she was still reeling from the embarrassment of coming face to face with her first crush from daycare. Just minutes earlier, we had run into the rocker with his mother. Now aged 10 and 7, our kids stood beside us looking sideways so that their eyes wouldn't meet.
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