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!)

Thanks for that, I wouldn't have thought of that and would probably have placed Dylan in the 'unhealthy' camp, god he could be cutting
You got a lot of nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winning

But reading those lyrics carefully - his songs often so dense, it's easy to go te-tum te-tum past interesting bits - yeah, I like this, thanks

Thompson Twins - sister of Mercy, and the Chicks - Goodbye Earl are the only two that come to mind, and they were both abusive men

Oh yes to 'you were always on my mind' - makes me grab for the radio controls shouting 'LTB!' fgs, 'I had vaguely good intentions and meant well sometimes while I was making you miserable, so don't leave me'.

And that awful, bouncy, Michael Buble 'just haven't met you yet'....

'Oh you know it'll all turn out
And you'll make me work so we can work to work it out'

His imaginary girlfriend doing allllll the emotional labour and taking responsibility and he's quite upfront about it being her job to make him pull his weight.... there is a very, very good reason he hasn't met a potential girlfriend yet.

A PP mentioned Strange & Beautiful by Aqualung which I totally agree is weird and stalkery and obsessive - but I just looked it up and the background is kind of cool and very healthy! https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/20/aqualung-making-strange-and-beautiful-ill-put-a-spell-on-you-volkswagen

Oh yes to Lovely Day ❤

More Bill Withers, unhealthy this time but so beautiful, Ain't no Sunshine. Maybe this time he'll do what he knows he needs to do and leave her alone.

Great songs!

Bill Withers was great. Lean on Me, Grandma’s Hands, both great songs about positive relationships in their own different ways (friendship and family respectively).

In contrast, Use Me is the opposite 🤣:

is that I wanna spread the news
That if it feels this good getting used
Oh you just keep on using me until you use me up
Until you use me up

Thank you, these are great! Well found.

And on that note... love you to bits BernardBlacksMolluscs for the brill thread, but do you realist it's now ONE O'CLOCK 😱
and I've done nothing else this morning today, and it all your fault😁
See you later, 🐊s!

Yes, these are all such gorgeous, happy love songs!

(With the possible exception of let’s stay together)

But you have done something really important. You've spent a few hours feeling things and reconnecting with parts of yourself that maybe don't get out as much as they should.

At least, that's my excuse for why I've done nothing yet today 😂

Yes! The buble song makes me yell at the radio. He has a great voice but I really get the impression from his lyrics that he’s a total dick

Feist's Mushaboom is a sweet song with a great tune.

I've got a man to stick it out
And make a home from a rented house, oh
And we'll collect the moments one by one
I guess that's how the future's done, oh

And The Littlest Birds by the Be Good Tanyas.

But I love you so dearly, I love you so fearlessly
I wake you up in the morning so early, just to tell you
I've got the wandering blues, I've got the wandering blues
And I don't want to leave you, I love you through and through

But of course the best tune in the world is by Nick Cave:

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did, I would kneel down and ask him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Will not to touch a hair on your head
Leave you as you are
If he felt he had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms
And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did, I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
Well, to each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms, oh, Lord
Into my arms
But I believe in love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candles burning
Make her journey bright and pure
That she'll keep returning
Always and evermore

One I brought up in a previous thread on this was Everything Changes by Take That.

The rumours are true, there have been others, but they don't mean a thing. Then because she's considering Leaving the Bastard, he puts it on her, and tells her she's throwing their love away.

I was told to shut up and get a grip on here.

Is the lyric not, She’s so good looking, BUT she looks like a man, though?

‘Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman/But she was another man’ is a bit different.

If You’re Not The One by Daniel Bedingfield always struck me as the howl of an obsessive man who has been politely dumped, then impolitely dumped, then issued with a court order that he’s ignoring while standing outside his ex’s house having a breakdown.

Whereas Love Song by the Cure has always felt wholesome to me, in a gloomy Goth kind of way: Whenever I’m alone with you/You make me feel like I am home again.

Lady, you were right

The ultimate unhealthy relationship song might be "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush.

A sad one by Macy Gray:
In my last years with him, there were bruises on my face
In my dawn and new day
I finally got away
My head's all messed up and he knows just what to say
No more dawn and new days
I'm goin' back to stay

Ooh, you're right! I misheard!

Well, you should see Polythene Pam
She's so good-looking, but she looks like a man (Ah-ah-ah)
Well, you should see her in drag dressed in her polythene bag (Ohh-ohh)
Yes, you should see Polythene Pam (Ohh)

[Refrain]
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Get a dose of her in jackboots and kilt
She's killer-diller when she's dressed to the hilt (Ah-ah-ah)
She's the kind of a girl that makes The News of the World (Ohh-ohh)
Yes, you could say she was attractively built (Ohh)

Dear god yes. I loved the book as a teenager but never thought it was romantic.

Carole King's You've got a Friend has lovely lyrics, and an equally warm backstory

Well obviously it's a song that tells a horrific story, but somehow it's clear, to me at least, that Nick and Kylie are telling a story about other people; it's fairly obvious surely that the male character is an abusive monster and the female character is where our sympatheties lie. Indeed she sings about reclaiming her name which has been lost in her horrific murder. So although I accept that murdered women is a trope too often found in the arts, and I don't like it, there is actually a feminist reading of this song as trying to give some power back to an abused woman.

Whereas many of the songs on the unhealthy list seem wholly oblivious to the red flags contained in them.

Robert Smith wrote Love Song for his wife for her 30th birthday. They got together when they were teenagers and are still together.

🎵she came in through the bathroom window

heaven knows what they were on about half the time but I do enjoy a 90 minute car journey where I can listen to that album end to end. It’s kind of all or nothing with abbey road

Yes, I think it’s that obliviousness that interests me. ‘But I’m a good guy, I just really love her’ kind of stuff

To those that mentioned Bruce’s I’m on Fire earlier, there’s an amazing cover version by Bat for Lashes that reverses the sexes - not sure if that makes it any better though! Gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it though.