Sonic Boom: The Oversexed Songs Of Rihanna, Young Money And David Guetta (And Everything Else On The Radio)

Rihanna is one of many artists whose lyrics have offended Mike's delicate sensibilities.

Seeing as how I write about music, my job requires that I listen to music. I mean, I’d listen to music anyway, because it’s pretty much my favorite thing in the world, but if you’re writing about music, you should probably listen to a lot of it, right? I think you really have to. But just because you listen to a lot of music doesn’t mean you listen to all kinds of music. Here’s what I mean: If you want to criticize music intelligently, you need a strong contextual understanding, and a strong contextual understanding demands immersion, and immersion dictates a certain focus that precludes a universal range of tastes. E.g., if I’m going to write about Bob Dylan, then I’d better know Bob Dylan’s career back and forth, and that means I’d better spend a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan because he has like 500 records, but if I have to listen to 500 Bob Dylan records, I probably won’t have time to listen to a lot of other records.

I suppose this is why I don’t write about Bob Dylan.

But that’s not the point of this story. No, all this introductory blather is a just a roundabout way of explaining to you that I don’t listen to Top 40 radio as much as perhaps I should. Which leads into the fact that I occasionally do listen to Top 40 radio—not as a critic, but as a dilettante, a bystander, a curious interloper.

And when I do, I am almost invariably shocked—shocked!—at what I hear.

Before I go on, I’d like to point out that I don’t think I’m a prude. I listen to lots of music that’s horribly, outstandingly, nauseatingly offensive. And I love it! When I was growing up, everything I listened to was labeled with those useless PMRC stickers that mostly served to identify for teenage boys which albums were and weren’t worth buying. And now, as an adult, I listen to many records with lyrics that are nothing less than…disturbing. Take, for instance, this verse by one of my favorite heavy metal bands, Watain, from Sweden:

The mighty Watain, laying waste to some lucky audience

“The luring lament of a witch/The psalms of angels fallen/The chanting of the undead/They echo in the wind/Sanity and senses with darkness now aligned/Like tentacles and angel wings/In foulest love entwined/And the graves begin to open…”

That’s from “Satan’s Hunger,” off 2007’s Sworn to the Dark. A GREAT song.

But I also understand that this music is, you know, intended to horrify. That is essential to its appeal. The audience for this stuff expects the vile, the sickening, the strange. On the other hand, pop music is for, like, 13-year-olds, right? Little kids? Right? (BTW, the answer to this question, from a corporate point of view, is: Yes.) So am I wrong in wondering if I’m hearing these words right when I’m listening to Z100? You listen, and you tell me:

“I like the way you touch me there/I like the way you pull my hair/Babe, if I don’t feel it I ain’t faking, no, no/I like when you tell me, ‘Kiss you here’/I like when you tell me, ‘Move it there’/So get it up, time to get it up…”

That is the bridge from Rihanna’s current hit “Rude Boy” (from her 2009 release, appropriately titled Rated R). It is not necessarily the most overtly sexual section of the song. (Frankly, it’s hard to identify one section as being more overtly sexual than any other—I also considered going with the first verse, which includes the lines: “Tonight I’ma let you be the captain/Tonight I’ma let you do your thing/Tonight I’ma let you be a rider/Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up babe…”) Ignoring the fact that Rihanna is a victim of domestic abuse (which might call into question the taste level of the line “I like the way you pull my hair”), what I find so amazing about it is that there is no thinly veiled double entendre here: This is simply a song about sex and nothing else—the command to her “rude boy” to “get it up” is pretty straightforward, is it not? Am I crazy? Am I old and out of touch?

It’s OK. I don’t mind. And like I said, I regularly listen to songs with lyrics like: “Burn me down, shoot me in the chest/Let’s fuck one last time, in a burning bed” (from the 2009 track “Arsonry” by the band Cobalt. AMAZING song).

But that is written for an audience that expects such themes in music—consider, on the other hand, the Top 40 hit “Bed Rock,” by Young Money, whose chorus goes:

“My room is the G-spot/Call me Mr. Flintstone/I can make your bed rock…”

To be crystal clear: The Top 40 demographic is traditionally considered to be people ages 12 to 18, and while adolescents certainly have a healthy curiosity regarding sex (if not active sex lives) and probably also know who the Flintstones are, I just don’t see how those lyrics can be considered appropriate! (For maximum effect, picture me saying that last sentence in the same tone that Chloë Sevigny would read it as puritanical Mormon mother Nicki Grant on Big Love.) Are they funny? Yes, I suppose, if you like broad sexual humor and cartoon references. Which I do. But still. I’m appalled! </Nicki Grant>

I know, I know, I’m lame, grouchy, a hypocrite. Please understand, though, that I am not a parent and I have no intentions of becoming a parent, so I’m not trying to protect my own interests/offspring here—I am genuinely, as a working stiff and citizen of Planet Earth, stunned when I hear this stuff. One more:

“She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before/Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore/I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful…”

This is from the hit song “Sexy Bitch,” by David Guetta and Akon. Two things: (1) Here we have a lyric that is appropriately demure—the narrator is actually looking for words that will not demean the object of his affections; and (2) the song is called “Sexy Bitch.” That’s what he came up with after “trying to find the words…” Is that not slightly disrespectful? By definition? I dunno. Maybe it is not. Regardless, I kind of feel like…maybe it is.

And maybe I’m an old softie, or an old crank, or an old fogey. I guess it goes without saying that I am indeed all of these things. So now I’m going to bathe in the nostalgia of my own childhood by listening to “Crepitating Bowel Erosion” from Carcass’ 1989 classic Symphonies of Sickness, as I recall a more innocent time for children, America, the world.