Healthiest and Unhealthiest relationships in songs?

There's a difference between depicting something and valorising it.

The beautiful South.
Don't marry her Fuck me. Toxic to both women.

I'll never grow so old and flabby,
that could never be.
Don't marry her, fuck me
And your love light shines like cardboard,
but your work shoes are glistening.
She's a Ph. D in 'I told you so',
you've a knighthood in 'I'm not listening'.
She'll grab your sweaty bollockes,
then slowly raise her knee.
Don't marry her, fuck me

There’s an Australian band called Weddings Parties Anything whose most famous song is Father’s Day. It was nominated for song of the year when it was released in 1993 and gets a lot of air time around Father’s Day, unsurprisingly.

It’s a jaunty upbeat catchy tune, but the lyrics are about a deadbeat dad living in a half way house with a load of other deadbeats who thinks he’s father of the year because he does the Disney dad thing every Saturday🙄.

It’s not really an aspirational father-son relationship, so I’ve never fathomed why it gets played as a celebratory Father’s Day song.

That is the point of Tom Lehrer though.

I ache for the touch of your lips, dear
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear
You can raise welts like nobody else
As we dance to the Masochism Tango

Let our love be a flame, not an ember
Say it's me that you want to dismember
Blacken my eye, set fire to my tie
As we dance to the Masochism Tango

etc

I've posted about this before and been told to get a grip it's just a song and "experiences should be expressed".

Dreadful lyrics from the 60s and 70s prevail, eg Hurt So Good, Oh Carol (two different songs with the same title), Piece of my Heart, Just Be Good to Me. The male singers were as bad as the women. IOU by Gary Glitter should have been banned. There are dozens of examples.

Basically I'll stay with you even though you're abusive because I'm in love with you and just hope you change, or Watch Me Do The Pick Me Dance. I'll hang around and put my life on hold because You'll Come To Me When You Want To Settle Down.

Dreadful messaging. Stand by your man? I'll be your second fiddle, Sam? No, LTB.

Lesley Gore's 'You Don't Own Me' - yes! I'd forgotten about that, thanks squashyhat.
It would be 'brave' in 2026, but in 1963, wow!

Fairtytale of New York isn't supposed to be anything other than a tragedy.
It's about damaged people who started out with hopes and dreams and failed and were destroyed by emigration and substance abuse and poverty,
The pathetic clinging on to hope 'I've got a feeling this year's for you and me' is delusional and sad.

I think the realism, the crudeness and emotion is essential to telling the story of two sad, damaged, doomed people. It makes me cry, to tell you the truth.

(not Springsteen, her actual boyfriend)

Green flag

'All about that base' and 'no' by Meghan Trainor

Red flag

Strange and beautiful (stalker alert!) Aqualung.

Loved this song until I bought the album and was WTF when I realised what it was about!

On the positive side Ill offer 'Because the Night' by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen because she was obviously HOT 🔥 🔥 🔥 for that guy 🥵😁

Unhealthy
Bruce Springsteen - I'm on fire

"Hey little girl is your daddy home,
Did he go and leave you all alone,
I got a bad desire,
I'm on fire"

Healthy
Mike Scott - She is so beautiful

"She is so beautiful,
Light-filled, loving and wise,
Laughter dancing in her eyes.
All my road is before me,
And I never did plan on a wife,
But she's the most beautiful soul,
I ever have met in this life"

I'm in two minds about 'Paradise by the dashboard light'. On the one hand, it depicts a transactional – and ultimately dysfunctional – relationship....

But, OTOH, it makes me nostalgic for that sweet spot (after the Pill, before AIDS) when premarital sex wasn't a given, and men were expected to have some persuasive ... ahem ... skills (and I don't mean crying or threatening to dump you if you don't put out).

Yes, co-written by Carole King and, perhaps unsurprisingly, produced by Phil Spector. The song was apparently inspired by King’s babysitter telling them about being abused by her boyfriend - uuurgh.

Ah I won't hear a word against Tom Lehrer, he was utterly fabulous. Have a look for 'National Brotherhood Week' and (?) 'Christmas time is here by golly'

This was Tom Lehrer, who wrote the Masochism Tango -
feel free to criticise his very occasional
'humorous' references to violence, but c'mon, he wasn't being serious, and most of the time he was very very funny.

It's much easier to find unhealthy lyrics than healthy ones isn't it? Maybe 'You don't own me" by Lesley Gore, or "My Way"

Bloody hell @anewstartin2026 I 'd forgotten that one 😲😲. I know Carole King wrote songs for bands on the Phil Spector label (like the excellent song telling a boyfriend she won't have aex with him because she doesn't want to put a child through the same difficult childhood she had herself with her own single mother, can I remember the name of it? No.) But I ve an awful feeling she wrote that too...and some other shockers I think!

There are more problematic than good relationships in songs mostly because it's better drama I think.

Tom Odell has a few good ones, Grow Old With Me, Concrete or If You Want To Love Somebody. Also some stalker and other problems like I Know or Another Love.

Hozier has some really sweet, if slightly odd, relationship songs like Work Song or Jackie and Wilson.

Isn't it awful that it's so easy to think of unhealthy ones and quite hard to find good ones?

Top of the unhealthy list:
Fairytale of New York
Piece of my Heart by Irma Franklin. I love this song but OMG!

On the healthy list:
Lady in Red
Book of Love by Magnetic Fields - actually there's a lot of Magnetic Fields ones that would fit

Every Breath You Take and Don't Stand So Close To Me both come to mind.

Funny you should mention that, OP - I recently heard one of the Beatles' old hits, from 1963, She Loves You [Yeah Yeah Yeah] and I was thinking how nice it was - two teenage lads talking about a girl.

(I think all pop-y pop songs are about teenagers, even if written by OAPs - so Itchycoo Park is OK, he's a teenager too, he has a day off from work, teenagers worked in the 1960s, and he wants his teenage girlfriend to bunk off school, nothing sinister, that's my reading of it)

Back to the Beatles: Lad #1 says that he met up with lad #2's ex, and they had a good talk, and the girl is prepared to give lad #2 another chance, but he has to acknowledge that he behaved badly and hurt her.

Lad #1 tells him that he's lucky to have a girlfriend like that, and to be given a second chance, because she really loves lad #2, and that's not a given, so he really should apologise to her and patch things up, because she loves him yeah yeah yeah..

I think that's a really nice respectful conversation between two lads about a girl.

Better than Smack my Bitch Up, for sure😒