What now makes you uncomfortable that didn't at the time

[drinkingwineoutofamug]

As a teenager I like listening to a certain rock band.
Just found their album on iTunes, downloaded and listened.
I was shocked. One of the songs - sung by grown men - ' she's a 13 yr tease , with bleach blonde hair. Let me eat your cookies , let me see your cookies '
Sat in the bath gob smacked. When I was 15 , this never made me question.

Has anyone else come across something that as a younger person it never crossed your mind but now it's a wtf moment

School friend of mine had a father who used to beat her and her brother with a belt on their bare buttocks .
I used to walk to school with her and on a Monday she would always tell us whether it had been a 'good' or 'bad' weekend.

Obviously I was shocked by it, but probably I mostly felt grateful that my dad wasn't like that. I didn't think I could do anything about it - never considered telling my parents or school or anything.

I think her about her sometimes and once looked her up on Facebook. I hope her father died a horrible painful death.

Haven't read full thread but I've always though "young girl get out of my mind , my live for go is way out of line " is so wrong. I still love the melody/ tune etc. Same with Blurred lines ( still love it )

First a PP the film where he auctioned his wife was ' Paint your wagon' .
The tables turn though. But it was portraying behaviour of the day which we cant hide, just learn from and progress!

One of the most horrifying is 'What do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?'

You're fooling around with me now
Well you lead me on and then you run away
Well that's all right, I'll get you alone some night
And baby you'll find, you're messing with dynamite
So what do ya wanna make those eyes at me for
If they don't mean what they say

And that dreadful early song by the Crystals, basically glorifying domestic violence:

*He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me but it didn't hurt me
He couldn't stand to hear me say
That I'd been with someone new
And when I told him I had been untrue

He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me and I knew he loved me
If he didn't care for me
I could have never made him mad
But he hit me and I was glad*

Think dirty dancing is a bit off as well.
Loved the film as a teenager.
Been interesting that most posts are about PE lessons.
And the differences in opinions about songs , films etc
For some people the lyrics can trigger a not so nice memory.
Summer of 1963 ( now I have the title) I was assaulted by 2 men. So whilst other people may dismiss , for me , makes me feel sick. It wasn't consensual and I never knew their names and they probably didn't know mine.
I tried to block out the memory, but the song is played on the radio frequently.

I always think these threads are interesting because they're so often about songs.

Rarely are books mentioned. I wonder if it's because we instinctively recognise that in books it's the fictional character thats creepy, whereas we don't think that way about songs. We sort of assume they're autobiographical but I don't know why that is.

We never think 'that singer is playing a character when he sings that song'.

A lot of the songs by The Police are creepy as hell. Every breath you take... I'll be watching you...

I think the person in that song is INTENDED to be creepy, though; not quite the same as when creepy behaviour is totally justified and seen as a sign of love.

As regards the song 'Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen'- while I don't like the song (dislike the tune; never liked age-milestone celebrations; and yes, do think it's depressingly sexist that a girl's 'future is sewn up' at 16 and consists just in who her man will be), I don't think it's creepy. The singer seems to be of similar age to the girl, probably a year or two older; not an adult predator grooming a child.

On the depressingly sexist front, does anyone else know that dreadful early 60s song, 'Bobby's Girl'?:

When people ask of me
What would you like to be,
Now that you're not a kid any more?
I know just what to say,
I answer right a away.
There's just one thing
I've been wishing for.
I wanna be Bobby's girl,
I wanna be Bobby's girl.
That's the most important thing to me.
And if I was Bobby's girl;
If I was Bobby's girl,
What a faithful, thankful girl I'd be.

She might as well just say that her life's ambition is to be a doormat!

The Police songs were meant to be creepy, is the thing. Or people struggling to be their better selves, anyway. Catchy tunes, uncomfortable topics. That used to be common and 'artistic'... Oingo Boingo "I like little girls" would get them banned if came out today... it was meant as a portrait of sickness not glorifying it.

Some art like this still exists (Oasis/Radiohead I'm a creep).

What's freaky is that anyone ever thought "Every Breath you take" was a romantic song.

Is Bobby,s girl not just about a teenage crush?
I remember having an all consuming crush at around fifteen
I much preferred I wanna be Smith's crisps 🤣

Sweet Sixteen
Tonight’s the Night

Love those songs but …! I have always enjoyed listening to the music of my youth in the car and never really thought about it. I am now worried what I have subjected my children to! I just hope they never understood the lyrics.

@billandben444 I remember the black baby’s too

He pursued her relentlessly, gifting her a Ferrari or some such before they’d even met. Romantic in some ways but how can someone not feel obligated esp at such a young age?

Is Bobby,s girl not just about a teenage crush?

I think I would not have the same problem with the song if it said, 'I want Bobby to be my boyfriend!' It's the implication that her ambition in life is to be Bobby's possession, and that she'd be sooooo thankful in return.

I agree about Smith's crisps!

Threads about ‘creepy’ stuff always feature a lot of pearl clutching about songs with faintly risqué lyrics eg Madonna Into the Groove. There’s a massive difference between something being about sex and it being creepy.

Lol at 2 become 1 being ‘absolutel filth’!

However, ‘murder she wrote’ by chaka demus and pliers, while being catchy is apparently about either chaka demus or pliers getting a 15 year old girl pregnant then having the audacity to write a song calling her a murderer when she had an abortion! That’s actually creepy!

I saw Father Ted as skewering the Catholic Church, including the sex abuse scandal and a different scandal involving a bishop. The “Lovely Girls” competition is a parody of the “Rose of Tralee” beauty pageant.

The priests are not aspirational characters! The jokes are usually on them.

We’re also supposed to laugh at the four boys in the Inbetweeners, not to copy their crude, gauche behaviour.

Anyone have “The Goodies File’ book from the 70s? They have a section in there which is supposed to be a magazine for tots. On the second page is a photo of a naked 3yr old girl from the waist up posing with a floppy hat on. It’s caption reads.... Playmate of the month!

“ Rarely are books mentioned. I wonder if it's because we instinctively recognise that in books it's the fictional character thats creepy, whereas we don't think that way about songs. We sort of assume they're autobiographical but I don't know why that is.”

Perhaps we shouldn’t assume any such thing about authors.
I stopped reading Graham Masterton books as they became progressively violently sexual. Then he started writing sex manuals...

@TherebytheGraceofGodgoI

Anyone have “The Goodies File’ book from the 70s? They have a section in there which is supposed to be a magazine for tots. On the second page is a photo of a naked 3yr old girl from the waist up posing with a floppy hat on. It’s caption reads.... Playmate of the month!

Eeeeeew

Band Aid 'Do they know it's Christmas'
Well meant but totally cringeworthy now.

The King and I - WTF?

The Breakfast Club and the casual sexual harassment that was meant to be funny

Is the gym knickers and being watched in the showers a British thing? I went to school in the 70s/80s in Ireland and neither of those were a thing. Our school didn't have any student/teacher relationships either as far as i know, though i have heard of them since in other schools.
I think the reason so much of this shit was seen as acceptable was because women and girls had so little value, a female should always be grateful for a man's attention, even if he was older, her teacher, or whatever.

All the Miss World, Miss Great Britain etc - all that strutting around in swimsuits and high heels . . .

Oh, and the fact that all the advertising for showers and baths had naked women posing in them

@DeathAndTaxis

Grease is awful, I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet.

They watched this the other year on Gogglebox and they were all taken aback a bit by how badly it had aged.. especially the lines about whether she'll 'put up a fight'

@Whippet

Oh, and the fact that all the advertising for showers and baths had naked women posing in them

Yes! Made.com beanbags had naked women on them www.freshdesignblog.com/2012/06/the-piggy-bag-giant-beanbag-seat/

The song 'Summer of 69' is about Bryan Adams getting his first guitar. "I got my first real six string, over at the five and dime.' That is what the song is about. He even gave an interview on it.

I'm glad someone said this. I was reading the thread last night and wondering WTF people were on about, even pointing out he was 9 years old in 1969. Thought the world had gone mad.

It's very ambiguous, though. Is he saying that he got his first guitar when he was 9 and his life was amazing then - and subsequent growing up and adulting made life a lot less fun, when contrasted to being 9 and carefree; or was the first verse not intended to occur long before the rest of the song - and it was all about sex all along?

I kind of think it might have been a bit about both of them - and maybe even designed that way so that it had an innocent 'deniability' factor to it. I was sure I'd seen an interview where he admitted it was about sex all along, but maybe I'm mistaken.

Threads about ‘creepy’ stuff always feature a lot of pearl clutching about songs with faintly risqué lyrics eg Madonna Into the Groove. There’s a massive difference between something being about sex and it being creepy.

Lol at 2 become 1 being ‘absolutel filth’!

There's nothing wrong per se with songs about sex - whether explicitly so or full of innuendo; but I think the issue is that they're released as pop songs - for all ages but inevitably going to of most interest to (often very young) children and teens - and played on radio stations, backing music to items on family TV programmes, school discos etc. What proportion of the Spice Girls biggest fans do you suppose were over 16? They certainly never came across as targeted at a more mature and sophisticated audience to me.

Line Of Duty is immensely popular right now, but it's adult TV, on at 9pm. Would you be happy with them showing it at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon, on the grounds that 'it's popular and this is a popular time for watching telly'?

Adult singers/producers putting out pop songs aimed at kids that are full of thinly-veiled allusions to having sex is just the thin end of the wedge to the adults we've read about upthread making sexual advances towards adolescents/teenagers.

Look, 12-16 year old think about sex. They have hormones, they're horny, they have crushes.

A song about safe consensual sex between adults, complete with condoms, is not the thin of the wedge on a scale that leads to grooming and child abuse. The teens listening to the song already know what sex is, so why not expose them to positive portrayals of it?

@drinkingwineoutofamug

Think dirty dancing is a bit off as well. Loved the film as a teenager. Been interesting that most posts are about PE lessons. And the differences in opinions about songs , films etc For some people the lyrics can trigger a not so nice memory. Summer of 1963 ( now I have the title) I was assaulted by 2 men. So whilst other people may dismiss , for me , makes me feel sick. It wasn't consensual and I never knew their names and they probably didn't know mine. I tried to block out the memory, but the song is played on the radio frequently.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

It sounds like "late December back in 63" is a PTSD trigger rather than anything wrong with the song. Therapy can help with triggers like that.