Healthiest and Unhealthiest relationships in songs?

[BernardBlacksMolluscs]

As I was cleaning the house this morning I was musing on those songs that come on the radio that you've been singing along with for years where you suddenly actually listen to the lyrics and either think 'well you sound very sensible' or 'intervention. NOW'. Any one got any suggestions? The ones I came up with first were

Healthy - Respect by Aretha Franklin. I know it's a cliche, and the guy she's singing about sounds like borderline not a keeper frankly, but I love the line 'I ain't gonna do you wrong, cause I don't want to'. She's all in, but she's still telling him how she expects to be treated

Red buntingtastic - Never Gonna Give You Up - why wouldn't she get a full commitment from any other guy Rick, you gaslighting bastard?

Anyone else fancy whiling away some weekend time thinking up some examples?

(mumsnet's AI suggested a thread title of 'Songs that sound sensible or alarming once you really hear the lyrics' which I kind of love but decided not to go with!)

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).

I rather love Real Dead Ringer for Love

Ever since I can remember you've been hanging around this joint
You've been trying to look away but now you finally got the point
I don't have to know your name and I won't tell you what to do
But a girl, she doesn't live by only rock 'n roll and brew

I mean I don't think they were going to get to the alter but it sounds like they probably had a lot of fun

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"

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

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!

(not Springsteen, her actual boyfriend)

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.

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.

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 knew it from Dub be Good to Me in the 90's, but

People always talking 'bout "reputation"
I don't care about your other girls
Just be good to me

jesus woman, listen to yourself

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.

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 a difference between depicting something and valorising it.

It's like people having 'The One I Love' by REM as their wedding song

A simple prop to occupy my time

err, listen to the lyrics people!

An old song -

Let him go
Let him tarry
Let him sink
Or let him swim
He does not care for me
And I don't care for him
Let him go and find another
Which I hope he will enjoy
For I'm going to marry
A far nicer boy

yeah, I've always hated this song. the 'pick me' dance to music. both women just need to get rid of the toxic man in their life

'Lover Du Jour' counterbalanced this a little!

Also very unhealthy: No One Else by Weezer

My girl's got a big mouth
With which she blabbers a lot
She laughs at most everything
Whether it's funny or not

And if you see her
Tell her it's over now

I want a girl who will laugh for no one else
When I'm away, she puts her make-up on the shelf
When I'm away, she never leaves the house
I want a girl who laughs for no one else

yes indeed. it's the ones where it's a love song, and the person writing it probably meant it as a love song, but they casually say something like 'you wouldn't get [a full commitment] from any other guy', and you just think, what??

it can be quite revealing sometimes I think

I love this!

jesus. The narrator of this song is extremely bad news

On the subject of wedding songs, DH and I had this at ours. It just speaks to me of a lovely warm relationship, someone who feels so happy to be with who he is with

I wrote the song two hours before we met
I didn't know your name or what you looked like yet
Oh, I could have stayed at home and gone to bed
I could have gone to see a film instead
You might have changed your mind and seen your friends
Life could have been very different but then
Something changed
Do you believe that there's someone up above?
And does he have a timetable directing acts of love?
Why did I write this song on that one day?
Why did you touch my hand and softly say
"Stop asking questions that don't matter anyway
Just give us a kiss to celebrate here today"
Something changed
When we woke up that morning we had no way of knowing
That in a matter of hours we'd change the way we were going
Where would I be now, where would I be now if we'd never met?
Would I be singing this song to someone else instead?
I don't know but like you just said
Something changed

I was just thinking aboit Meatloaf and where his songs fit!

Two out of three ain't bad - healthy or unhealthy? He doesn't love her but he's honest and seems to want to be with her...

Dead Ringer For Love - i was a bit worried she's using him to piss off her father

@BernardBlacksMolluscs if you are only just discovering Magnetic Fields you are in for such a treat! Plenty of songs for the unhealthy list as well ... Stephin Merritt is an amazing lyricist. Can say the most complex things with the simplest words.

Healthy again - Papa was a Rodeo . Magnetic Fields again. I'm not posting the lyrics because I don't want to spoil the song's journey for a first time listener!

It really is the ultimate f*ck you breakup folksong!

Let him go to his old mother now and set her mind at ease
I hear she is an old, old woman, very hard to please
Ah ’tis fighting me and talking ill is what she’s always doing
Because that I was courting her great big ugly son.

You go gurl!😁

Ballad of a Teenage queen by Jonny Cash confuses me a little. Is it good that the successful young woman married the guy who worked at the candy store rather than one of her admirers? I suppose it is true love if she did! Or did she feel obligated...Hmm I like to think it was the former. A bit like 'teenage dirtbag'. She chooses the nice guy she relates to--but is this women settling?

I quite like 'Little Green Apples' by Roger Miller. He appreciates her love albeit acknowledges that he's a bit crap sometimes.

'Baby is a headfuck' by the Wildhearts sends a good message in a more cryptic way. I guess just making a catchy song out of a toxic relationship without valorising or glamourising it as a PP said.