If you're a parent and you turn on the radio or watch a pop music video on YouTube these days, you might spit out your Cheerios in shock.
While pop hits have always featured some kind of sexual innuendo, it seems like today's artists have dumped the insinuations in favour of going straight-up sexual.
Take these lyrics from Katy Perry's "Friday Night" as an example:
We went streaking in the park
Skinny dipping in the dark
Then had a ménage-a-trois
Last Friday night
Or how about this piece of stunning poetic genius from megastar Rihanna in her hit song S&M?
Sex in the air
I don't care
I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But chains and whips
Excite me
Now, when we consider that Rihanna and Katy Perry basically make music for eight-and-nine-year-old girls, how can this kind of content be appropriate? More importantly, how can the major record labels and the corporate radio conglomerates justify pumping this stuff into the mainstream?
According to Jason Keller, a music critic and writer from Toronto's Now Magazine, there's been a noticeable shift over the past five decades of recorded music, taking us from the apparently clean-cut 1950s to the sex-and-money vibe of the 1980s.
"Well, the Rolling Stones released 'Let's Spend the Night Together' in 1967 and famously, they had to change the lyrics to play the tune on TV. Same with the Doors that year with 'Light My Fire.' I would tend to give the Stones a lot of credit when it comes to dirty lyrics."
Sure, while the Stones and the Doors were being censored by Ed Sullivan for sex and drug references, the fact is, other lyrical content that was deemed acceptable in those years would be immediately banned from commercial play in today's cultural climate.
Here are a few examples:
Exhibit A: The Beatles' "Run For Your Life" and Elvis Presley's "Baby Let's Play House"
Released on 1965's "Rubber Soul," this tune takes the voice of a jealous boyfriend who threatens to literally kill his girlfriend if she cheats on him. The first line of the song spells it out clearly: "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man."
Interestingly, John Lennon directly lifted the murderous boyfriend line from another megastar: Elvis Presley's "Baby Let's Play House." The tune was written by Arthur Gunter and recorded by The King in 1954. And to think that it was Elvis' gyrating hips that frightened parents.
Exhibit B: The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp"
This song was one of 1961's biggest hits, and the first line mentions a gun: "The Kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol, when they do the Bristol Stomp." You wouldn't find that on the radio these days. Indeed, in today's hyper-sensitive world, where schools regularly go on lockdown if a student brings a pellet gun to class, this song would be barred from the radio.
While parents and grandparents may see today's youth as vulgar and sex-crazed, the truth is, values have simply changed. Talking explicitly about sex wasn't cool in the 1950s and 60s, but overt songs about domestic violence were relatively appropriate.
According to Keller, the true shift occurred in the 1980s, with the rise of music videos.
"With the exception of R&B and disco, pop music lyrics seem to clean up a lot in the 70s, which seems ironic considering society was out of its mind with drugs, sex and war. The 80s, however, got right dirty with the advent of MTV, Madonna, and of course all the L.A. glam rock bands."
It makes sense, right? Since we all know that sex sells, the obvious conclusion is that as record companies began to rely on visual elements like videos to move units, music likewise became more overtly sexual and sensual.
(It also helps that our society has become more open about sex, starting with condoms in high schools two decades ago and continuing with frank discussion about AIDS in the 1980s and 90s.)
All of this takes us to another 80s superstar, Prince.
Exhibit C: Prince's "Sister" and "Darling Nikki"
While Prince hit it big with the multi-million selling, 1984 landmark LP "Purple Rain," his material could better be defined as "blue." Take the incest-celebrating "Sister," from the 1980 LP "Dirty Mind."
I was only 16 but I guess that's no excuse
My sister was 32, lovely, and loose
She don't wear no underwear
She says it only gets in her hair
And it's got a funny way of stoppin' the juice
My sister never made love to anyone else but me
She's the reason for my, uh, sexuality
Here we have an older woman taking advantage of her teenage brother. By comparison, Rihanna doesn't sound so bad now, does she?
A few years later on the aforementioned "Purple Rain," which also became a major motion picture, Prince showed us that he hadn't been tamed by his growing fame. The tune "Darling Nikki" was wonderfully filthy, even by Prince's lurid standards.
I knew a girl named Nikki
I guess you could say she was a sex fiend
I met her in a hotel lobby
Masturbating with a magazine
Actually, "Darling Nikki" was so naughty that it motivated Washington wife Tipper Gore to start the Parents Music Resource Centre, which would later put all those parental warning stickers on rap CDs.
Exhibit D: Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing"
Another case of shifting values caused a minor media frenzy last year, when the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banned Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" because of this line:
The little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he's a millionaire
Yes, the song ruffled some feathers when it was released in 1985, but it was nonetheless a huge radio smash that became a rock-radio staple. Fast-forward to 2010, however, and homophobia, gay rights and sexually equality have become major topics of concern in our society. In short, what had passed for satire in the 1980s had been deemed, in hindsight, as unacceptable.
In truth, then, pop music has been raunchy for decades.
Heck, back in the late 80s, it wasn't uncommon to find gangsta rap like N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude) in the Walkmans of kids as young as 10. Trust me, I was one of them. I gingerly rapped along to songs like "F*ck tha Police" and listened to lyrics about sex, drug use and murder.
Likewise, the first piece of recorded music I owned was a cassette copy of Van Halen's "1984," which caused some controversy because its front cover features a smoking baby.
The album's biggest hit, "Jump," is ostensibly about suicide, with Van Halen singer David Lee Roth telling a suicidal man on a building ledge that he "might as well jump."
Today, with the tragic suicide of teens making headlines, would "Jump" make it to the top of the pop charts?
But the truth is, I didn't really listen to the lyrics back then, because I was too enthralled by the all-out-bombast of Eddie Van Halen's guitar solos and the riotous drums of his brother Alex.
Likewise, something tells me that today's kids are too busy watching the outfits and the choreographed dance steps to notice what's being said by Rihanna and Katy Perry.
To sum it up, the old cliché of "the more things change, the more things stay the same" seems to ring true in the case of pop music. Perhaps more appropriately is the lyric from The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" from 1971: "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss."
Jered Stuffco is a freelance writer with CTVNews.ca, a DJ and a self-described "musical archivist"
