Accountability in Music • Page 100

Being spiteful is definitely part of toxic masculinity, and also lyrics about manipulation, control, ownership. And those whiny vocals are pretty grating but that's a personal issue.

 

A lot of these songs definitely are context as well. When you look at a song like tell that mick by fall out boy and if this tour doesnt kill you by pup, on surface level it can seem similar, but context and voice make it very different. I don't know exactly what tell that mick was written about and i can't tell you the ins and outs of fall out boys intentions, but it was written in a time when everyone in the scene wrote the most extreme lyrics for the ultimate crime of a girl not wanting to be with them. Glancing at the lyrics it seems its anger and jealousy with lines such as joking about the kid you used to see and his jealousy (assuming the narrator) and then telling her to crash her car. If This Tour by pup is also a song laced with very extreme threats, in some ways the extremity also comes off as humor, but its about the people involved with writing it who they confirmed theyre on good terms with.

It can come off as "oh, you can't write angry songs about your ex to vent because theyre a girl?" but the thing is that the lyrics don't exist in a vacuum and you are putting them out there for public consumption. I do not think we have an epidemic of band members killing each other, but we do have an epidemic of men killing their ex girlfriends out of jealousy. Even if you couldn't picture yourself doing it, putting it out there continues to validate and feed into the mindset and is still a part of the misogyny that does kill.

Also I hope this doesn't come off completely left field, I was trying to compare regular angry and spiteful lyrics to those that can be harmful, from those both written by those in a privileged position. There's also a lot to consider about how our culture shifted as these songs were written more than ten years apart. Lastly, I wanna clarify this isn't me going ones better than the other or pup has no misogyny or anything like that, was a casual listener to fall out boy for a time and casually listen to pup now and honestly most of this comment is how it looks on surface level. I like a lot of bands who had very toxic and misogynistic lyrics before. I really don't know anything Jeanae situation and out of respect for her I'm not going to speculate, so this is looking only at lyrics. But I'm just gonna stress im REALLY not doing this to try and tell anyone what they should or shouldn't listen to or call any band superior, just always promoting to look at the things we love critically.

 

I remember being a teenage girl and listening to those songs and it led to some serious internalized misogyny. It led to me thinking that tons of girls were bitches or whores or manipulative and I wasn't gonna be like one of THOSE girls. I'd take this stance like they were these evil liars hurting these precious musicians or something. I'd hear lyrics describing violence towards women or calling them whores and think it was clever and they deserved it. It took a loooong time to undo. Like I specifically remember listening to old fall out boy and laughing at the violent lyrics because I thought it was so clever and edgy. I thought them sounding so poppy and upbeat while having dark and violent lyrics was so ~deep and ~subversive. But looking back at many of the artists of that time, I can pinpoint how the violence and lyrics fed into my existing insecurities and my perceived place as a woman.

 

i'm trying to think of a good song about an ex and i'm blanking.

 

I mean, there are plenty of artists that talk about breakups and former partners without lines like "when you catch fire, I wouldn't piss to put you out"

 

well ya lol.

 

they just tend to not be my favorite kind of song.

 

I thought Integrity Blues had a lot of really bittersweet and beautiful songs about a failed relationship, like The End is Beautiful.

 

There are a ton of songs about breakups that are very good and also not about hating the other person/how shitty they are for breaking up with the narrator. Breakups can be painful or bittersweet but also necessary and plenty of artists write about that.

 

Staircase Spirits do it great.

 

Hope I'm not overstepping but this is definitely something I can relate to. Specifically when it came to listen to music in the kind of alt rock/emo/whatever you wanna call it scene, when i was younger and listening to it i definitely saw these songs as different and vulnerable and emotional. Part of it I think is how in general these behaviors are normalized in basically every environment, but there was a kind of disconnect between the men i encountered daily and heard about who were abusive in some kind of way or violent, and the ones singing these lyrics. Part of it is because we're told not to blame men as a social class and that these abusive behaviors are a individual problem and not a social problem, and also how we're told to absolutely ignore any signs of danger in intimate/personal settings. As I got older, learned more, heard more, and the talk about these got louder, I realized that nothing about these lyrics were special or different from any other kind of violent fantasies. However, the damage they and many other things have done in self image and insecurities did not and will not go away as easy.

 

ya that's true. I guess when I think of songs about an ex I don't necessarily think of breakup songs but more of lyrics that actually talk about the person.

 

I remember as a teenager being drawn to some of the more disgusting, shocking lyrics in the scene because it felt like the antithesis to what was on the radio. I felt rebellious listening and singing along to songs about "cold hearted whores" and "feeling someone's blood dripping down your throat".

I internalized a lot of that shit and it took a lot of very intentional work to disassociate myself from those thoughts.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I think it's important to talk about how fucked up and unacceptable lyrics can be... especially when it's bands we love.

 

Whenever I think about breakup records without gross lyrics Damage is what comes to mind first.

Jimmy Eat World is really just the best band

 

Surprise, Surprise by The Starting Line is p good

 

I'll throw out Motion City Soundtrack as being similar to Jimmy Eat World in that sense for me.

 

Our Worlds Divorce by This Providence and We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes by Death Cab for Cutie are both very tasteful albums in my opinion that focus almost entirely on breakups as the subject matter

 

I just posted this in another thread, but wow what an incredible break up song

"And when you find a lover that you wanna keep
I think you'll talk to her first
Before you tell her you don't love her
Decide things are fucked and then leave
I've got the same name as everybody else
Call a cab, you can keep the change
Just get out of my house"

uhh maybe having less men running music scenes would lead to less toxic shit being exposed to kids and defining their sense of what's normal and how to treat people?

 

"White Ferrari" - Best break up song I've heard in a while

 

The last Death Cab album too.

 

Best break up song?

 

How about an entire record? Look no further than "The Midnight Organ Fight" by Frightened Rabbit

 

BrokeNCYDE return to remind us the world is still a terrible place - News - Alternative Press

 

why is this posted here?

 

Seems relevant considering that band are pretty problematic.