Also, when I was eighteen, I was insufferable. Thankfully, I had women of color in my life who took the time to educate me. They didn't have to do that. But, they did.
I think a really good test for me, personally is this: if someone is cool with this song, I don't want to their friend. Also this: there's nothing more tiring than a wrong being pointed out, and then someone else comes along and says, 'yeah, but these people do that wrong thing too!' Okay. Then those people are wrong. Congratulations - you found a new example of the wrong thing we're talking about. Well done. It's still wrong.
I wonder if in a few years when this dude is working in Walmart, he will look back and think just maybe he should have listened to some of this advice ,and realise he had a real platform on a big label and he squandered it to talk shit and verbally attack an ex girlfriend. Who knows, maybe he'll learn from this quickly enough to save his career. I doubt it though.
Huge mistake reading those lyrics, awful writing and terrible message... even the stuff we say from 2003 that is bad isn't as bad as this.
As that other batch of lyrics illustrated, they're SoCal trust fund babies. Their parents won't let them end up at Wal-Mart.
"They're kids!" :: Cool, let's educate them now while they're young before they do anything damaging. "They're adults!" :: They should know better, but its never to late to educate and stop further damaging behaviors. Any excuse to this basically translates to "I don't think this is a problem, misogyny is fine for everyone"
Absolutely. I was an angry idiotic 16/17 year old and I definitely used words, said things, and had opinions I am now a little ashamed of (certainly nothing as strong as this dude but it's relative). People like this dude all have reasons for being such a shit head, and all you can do is hope he takes in the information that's about to come his way. For the record I highly credit AP for informing me on a lot of these issues, alongside other platforms such as Tumblr, etc. I'm still not perfect and I think it's a constant method of evaluation, but I hope this guy truly learns from this.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: the upper middle class is the most reactionary class in the world.
The good news from all of this is I think most of us agree its terrible. Not everyone will agree on everything but we all seem to see the problem with these lyrics so I'll leave it at that.
Their first music vid from two months ago is only at 89k views so hopefully this band just goes nowhere
The song and band are obviously garbage, but I'm wondering why so many people are confused as to why John Feldmann wouldn't call this out. He's worked extensively with bands and artists I would consider misogynistic. Most notable to me are any of the Craig Owens projects, the Escape the Fate albums, even Panic! uses the word "whore" in their most popular song. Considering the 5SOS boys helped write this garbage, you can add them to the list too. This attitude has existed in this scene since the beginning. It barely changes. These men are the old guard and they continue to guide young artists down this track. We have to acknowledge their influence instead of continually having this "aw shucks I can't believe my fave is involved with this!" reaction.
Shit like this is a death sentence for most bands these days. As often as we see misogyny like this in our scene, I do think it's substantially improved. Ten years ago there's no way this would have been called out--that says a lot.
It's not necessarily about bands who get shut down as it is about who gets popular. Sexist shit like this doesn't resonate with as many people as it used to. Harder to think of examples of bands that lyrics have lost them support, but we've (thankfully) seen a few sink because of reports of abuse that probably would have gone unreported in the aughts.
Its not a death sentence for pop punk. This is expected and encouraged, even if people call it out they'll probably do fine being this bad.
Even before reading the lyrics, I clicked Jason's link to that Sam guy's tweet, and I immediately wanted to punch his face, no context permitted. His face screams out "please punch me" for some reason, almost instinctively inside my brain. Out of all the faces I pass by each & every day, that dude might have the most punchable face of them all. #LockMeUp?