Am I being a massive bloody prude or is this the hill to die on?

[Joulesdog]

We have a 4 children. 2DS aged 24 &21, DD1 who is 13 and dd2 who was a surprise is 4.

DD1 is very into Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpinter, Charlie xcx etc. she 14 and is obsessed.
I'm happy to let her listen to whatever (within reason)

As a family we have a shared Vinyl player that is DH's pride and joy. Each child wants to buy albums for the vinyl as they like the sound of it and whoever chooses the records on a Sunday gets to have them playing through Sunday dinner etc.

Oldest DD's birthday is coming up soon and she wants as part of her presents the Charlie XCX 'brat and it's complicated' release on vinyl and I said yes but Charlie xcx has released this vinyl album with white powder inside the record that moves around on the vinyl player and it's meant
To be like a bag of cocaine.

DH thinks it's hideous and sends the wrong message coming and I'd usually disagree and say things have changed since our generation but I think this is awful

If our daughter is correct then lots of her yr 9 friends will get a vinyl copy of an album where this is white powder inside the record that moves around when it's played?

Am I out of touch? I just think this is Insane

I’m reading this and fondly remembering the 80s, when we had Annie Lennox, Tracy Chapman, Kate Bush, Kirsty MacColl, Natalie Merchant, etc to admire.

The music industry has a lot to answer for. They take a talented woman and pay her enough to get her to agree to be this year’s Cocaine Barbie. And then 14 year olds are told that they’re having a ‘Brat summer’ and it’s cool to be ‘messy’.

Yuk.

Definitely the plain version. If it then came up, in your position I might be tempted to give her a detailed education on the cost of cocaine- as in, what the trade does to people in the countries where it is grown and along the supply routes. Even if it didn't turn people who take it into wankers*, the cost before it reaches the end customers is horrific.

• I have been that wanker, in the spirit of honesty!

Agree with this.

Unfortunately, if her friends have it then she'll be exposed to it through them so its the perfect time and opportunity to have a long talk about why this theme is problematic. She might even appreciate that you give her a more mature insight.

It's essentially a marketing gimmick and look......we're all talking about it. 😬

Yeah the PR and marketing push behind Brat Summer was enormous. Beaucoup bucks spent on that methinks.

I believe she's with Atlantic, she's had problems with them in the past: they gave her a lot of creative freedom but her records from say 2016 - 2022 really only connected with the 'gays and club girls' audience segment (which don't get me wrong that can be a lucrative market, look at Madonna and Gaga. But they had crossover appeal too).

I would bet that for Brat, which afaik is her last contracted release with Atlantic, they decided to put some massive marketing spend behind it to see if they could push it mainstream and recoup money they've invested in her in the past. I don't know whether they've made a decent ROI or not but it certainly won't have been for lack of trying, fair play to them.

The lyrics alone are a hard no from me unless it was the opener to discussion about them. I am very anti drug, ruins so many lives and kids used for county lines are the tiny fish

@Zapx right, but that's not what most people are pearl clutching about...

Agreed. Even the BBC ran an article on the news website about ‘messy pop girlies having a moment’ (puke) and Marina Hyde kept banging on about it on The Rest is Entertainment podcast. They even invented a bloody horrible colour.

Glad to hear that’s her last album with them. You never know, she might put some clothes on for her next album, and write thoughtful songs about classic literature 😂

Yeah, I remember the Sex Pistols…sample lyrics:
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb

God save the queen
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming

OP, you don’t have to get her the record if you are worried it will promote drug use, but you could buy it for yourself, keep it in its sleeve. It will probably be a collector’s item.

Then again, my dad offered to get my weed so I could see what it was like…the idea of smoking a spliff with him put me off drugs for life! (Which I think was his intention).

My two are all grown up now, but we'd have had laugh about this kind of thing. I would have explained it all to them and said it was a marketing gimmick designed to try and shock and make people want to buy it. We talked openly about drugs and I know that both mine have tried various drugs at parties and uni. I gave them every bit of advice I could about how not to be really bloody stupid about it and I didn't condone it, but I also thought it was pointless saying "never do drugs". Loads of my own generation dabbled and seemed to have survived. Drug addiction comes from something else entirely than trying a bit of Ketamine at a party. My two have also come out the other side of it and in their mid 20s it seems much less of a thing now.

However, I also appreciate that people feel really differently about these things and at the end of the day @Joulesdog it is your house and your rules. If this is something you feel really strongly about and it goes against your values and what you believe is ok, then it is fine to say that you don't want it in your home. Who cares if it makes you a prude or not! I was like some kind of Victorian martinet about manners - but in my own home with my own children, I felt that it was my prerogative!

Oh my god, I loved the Party Party albums!!

I seem to remember being about 14 in 1994 and the no.1 song being Wiggle Wiggle by the out there brothers:

"Put your ass on my face
I love the way your pussy tastes
Girl you know you are the one
Shake that ass and make me come"

Remember dancing to it at many a party! Anyone else? 😂

Although sung repetitively I'm now glad my niece knew all the lyrics to Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver.

Brat is an amazing album! It does contain sex & drug references as it's a reflection of the artists life - it also has lots of material about becoming an woman, self-doubt, love and loss. My favourite album of last year and the follow up/remix section is even better.

This

Nope.

find some age appropriate material on the damage cocaine trafficking has done to communities in Colombia. They need to realize this is not cool and should not be normalized.

No

It's a pretty sad, cynical and pathetic marketing stunt made worse because it's aimed at teenagers. Does Charlie XCX think she's cool because she's put "coke" on her records? What kind of moron does that?

People are really overreacting here and definitely haven't listened to the album. There is the none explicit version? And not all songs are like that anyways.

I played "Apple" from Brat at my 5 year olds birthday party 😂 didn't get any complaints

Also to the person who said the name XCX is about ecstasy, you've just made that up. It's been her stage name since she was 14 herself.

Deffo feel like I was listening to worse when I was younger

If she is going to do drugs, it won't be because of this.

Use it as a good opportunity to speak to her about the dangers of drugs and alcohol poisoning.

Can’t for the life of me see why Charli xcx is so feted - it’s all pretty derivative and weak as far as I can see. Anyway, OP, I agree about the album and drug use; but the lyrics are also awful. I hate anything that glorifies or normalises stripping/calling women bitches/sexism and misogyny/drugs etc.

My DD is 12 and she loves Sabrina Carpenter etc. but I don’t let her listen to all the album (and she only gets the “clean” lyrics on her phone!) I like the Chappell Roan album myself, but DD only gets to listen to the tracks I’ve vetted first - ditto for all these current singers to be honest. I’m not a prude nor do I mind a bit of swearing, but some of the lyrics are really not suitable for younger teenagers. Unless you want her singing along about oral sex and drugs.

Oh, dear.

This is not suitable for a 13 year old. Maybe you can use the cringey fake coke as a reason not to get it at all, OP.

Drug culture is doing massive damage in the UK too, drugs gangs preying on young men to do their dirty work for them. The podcast Hometown: A Killing is very sobering and disturbing. It’s about Huddersfield which is the presenter/journalist’s hometown.

I agree on the vinyl. Get the normal version.

But the thing about the lyrics...come on, please. Unless there are lots of 60+ year olds on this site, we've ALL been exposed to completely inappropriate lyrics and I'm sure for the vast majority it doesn't seem to have had any lasting impact.

Unless you're going to only allow your child to listen to Kids Bop, then I'm afraid they're going to be exposed, even if they only listen to the radio edits.

( @Saggyknickers yes I remember that song! Although I don't think I heard the non-edit version very often lol!)

The clutching of pearls on this post. It's music. It's art. It's subjective and evocative. Buy the standard version, but don't demonise her music taste. We're not supposed to enjoy the same music generationally.