You can write a song about love, or about a breakup, or about revenge. Or you can write
a song about your ding-a-ling. The times, they are a-changing, and these former hits
just don't hit like they used to. The Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar was a smash hit in 1971, topping the Billboard Hot 100
chart, the perfect lead single for their studio album Sticky Fingers. Since then, the song
has become well-established as one of the band's classic cuts. It has appeared on several
of the Stones' greatest hit collections, and has remained a crowd-pleasing fixture of their
live shows for decades. These days, could you get away with singing brown sugar, brown sugar
Probably not. In 2021, the Stones announced that the song was being retired from their set lists
In a radio interview, Mick Jagger admitted that the song, which invokes images of enslavement
alongside equally objectionable choruses, was written to be intentionally provocative, explaining, The early days were the days of shock and awe. Things can't stay like that forever
While Jagger seemed to resign to the demise of brown sugar, Keith Richards struck a mortifying
tone, telling the Los Angeles Times that he was still trying to fully understand the nature of
the controversy, and that he hopes to bring the song back sometime in the future. Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl and Liked It is an undeniable earworm
but its risque lyrics created a wave of pearl-clutching among certain commentators
Well, isn't that special? Conservative disapproval had the opposite effect on Perry's career. It actually boosted her public
profile. But I Kissed a Girl wasn't Perry's first brush with controversy. The year before
Perry released the EP You're So Gay, in which the title track hits hard at an ex. The lyrics go
I hope you f*** yourself with your H&M scarf while j***ing off listening to Mozart
The refrain then doubles down, diss track style, declaring, You're so gay and you don't even like boys. The song goes on to mock the man in question
for being too skinny, too pale, too sad, and for wearing makeup. I'm just kidding
Though the song is arguably meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it was criticized at the the time for being homophobic, and we can't in good conscience disagree. It's unlikely that using
the word gay to insult a straight man would fly in a pop song today. Nevertheless, as recently as
2018, You're So Gay was defended by co-writer Greg Wells, who claimed to Billboard
A lot of people didn't get the intent with which we wrote it. Amy Winehouse had already established herself long before the 2006 release of her chart-topping
sophomore album Back to Black, but when Rehab hit the airwaves, her popularity exploded
The single charted in numerous countries, including the U.S., where it peaked at number
nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed in the charts for an impressive 20 weeks
Thanks in part to the song's catchy, if dark, refrain, tried to make me go to rehab I said no no no You who heard the song could have imagined how central addiction would be to the rest of the Amy Winehouse story and how publicly her drug and alcohol use would be chronicled in the tabloid press The song tells the story of Winehouse management team efforts
to convince her to seek treatment, which was undermined by her own father, who reportedly
swallowed Winehouse's excuse that she was lovesick. Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning in 2011
at the age of 27, making rehab an uncanny precursor to her tragic final years
John Lennon was the most controversial Beatle both during his lifetime and in recent years
as problematic behavior in his private life has come under increased scrutiny
It was Lennon who arguably created the biggest crisis for the band in their seven years together
when his claim that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus led to a widespread U.S. boycott of their music
If it had said television is more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it
In terms of songwriting, the dark side of Lennon's personality was evident early on
In the fall of 1965, at the start of the recording sessions for what would be the Rubber Soul album
Lennon arrived with the song Run For Your Life. The song was inspired by two lines from the 1955
Elvis Presley single Baby Let's Play House. Lennon directly lifts the lines and uses them
in his song, singing, I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than see you with another man
Gross and in bad taste at the time, for Elvis and for Lennon, but it's all kinds of wrong today
Lennon later admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone that he was dissatisfied with
Run For Your Life, disowning the song. Our critics have identified it as one of his artistic low
points, and certainly the weakest song on the otherwise classic Rubber Soul
There's no doubt about rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry's influence on popular music from the 1950s
on. Even Marty McFly knows it, choosing Berry's 1958 classic Johnny B. Goode for his prom antics
in Back to the Future. But it took Berry 14 long years after his first release to hit the top of
the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and when he did, it wasn't with a song of his own. Berry's biggest
single was 1972's My Ding-A-Ling, a song that pretends to be about a boy ringing a bell
but which is laced with innuendo throughout. You could argue that the song is just a bit
of harmless fun, but Berry's recording seems far seedier today, considering revelations
about his own sexual misconduct, including child trafficking in 1959, for which he served two
years in prison and, in 1989, allegedly filming women going to the toilet in the bathrooms of a
restaurant he owned, which resulted in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving 59 women
One of the biggest songs of the early 2010s was also one of the decade's most controversial
Under the direction of super-producer extraordinaire Pharrell Williams, the undeniably danceable blurred lines temporarily turned Robin Thicke from a forgettable nepo baby
into one of the biggest names in the world of pop especially after his shall we say memorable performance of the song with Miley Cyrus at the 2013 VMAs The song drew instant criticism for its themes with commentators noting that the lyrics seemingly
celebrated the blurred nature of the boundaries of sexual consent. And then there was the explicit
music video featuring nude models, which critics nailed for being sexist and dehumanizing
Sexist or not, the song enjoyed near-constant radio play in the summer of 2013 and beyond
but its themes have only become more uncomfortable in recent years. Who wrote I Know You Want It? Was that you
Yeah, sir. Williams has since admitted that the song promotes chauvinistic behavior, telling GQ in 2019
I would never write or sing it today. The song's reputation has also been damaged by claims that
parts of it were plagiarized from Marvin Gaye's Got to Give It Up. Dick and Williams were on the
losing end of a copyright infringement trial and were ordered to pay millions as well as 50
of all future royalties from the song to Gaye's estate. Neil Diamond's 1967 ballad Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon is one of the best-remembered songs
in his oeuvre. It had a second life with younger listeners thanks to a cover version by Urge
Overkill, which was prominently featured in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction back in 1994
Diamond, who was in his mid-20s when he wrote the song, described the inspiration behind it
in a 2018 interview with Billboard, saying, "'At the point of my career I wrote it, my audience was teenage girls. The song came out
of that context.'" Though written supposedly to titillate his underage audience, Diamond's crooning of
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Soon You'll Need a Man during the chorus sounds pretty
repulsive by today's standards, implying that the narrator is perhaps waiting for the object
of his affection, who's legally a minor, to reach the age of consent
And there's more. The lyrics, Don't Let Them Make Up Your Mind, and If They Get Their Chance, They'll End It
For Sure, certainly sound like he's talking about the influence of a parent or two, which
ups the ick factor several more degrees. Shaggy became a megastar in the late 90s thanks to his breakthrough single
Mr. Bombastic, but it was his collaboration with Rick Rock, It Wasn't Me, that took the dance hall hitmaker into the stratosphere
The song, in which Rick Rock describes being caught by his girlfriend creeping with the girl
next door and Shaggy advising him to flat-out deny it with the phrase, It Wasn't Me, spent two weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2001
Apparently, nobody objected to the storyline of infidelity and what today might be known
as gaslighting — not that such a concept was in mainstream use around the turn of the millennium
More recently, the blockheadedness of Shaggy's advice — going down the road of pure denialism
when all evidence points to the contrary — has seeped into the legal lexicon
It wasn't you! That's what Shaggy said, it wasn't me. In 2008, Slate journalist Josh Levine used the phrase the shaggy defense when covering the case
of R Kelly who was then on trial for possession of child sexual abuse material By 2010 the phrase was being used in other legal cases outside of the world of pop and the so innocence of Shaggy Just a Joke song has been further perverted in recent years by the post nature of political discourse
Post-truth is clearly just a rip-off of my 2006 word of the year, truthiness
Whatever you call it, denialism and misinformation are now rampant in modern life, and even
frustratingly in the mainstream media. Whether Shaggy did it or not, the song's hook is undeniably
catchy and is always a good addition to a nostalgic playlist. It's usually listeners who
are first to argue that music has aged badly, but in the case of the Beastie Boys, who aren't
particularly well-known for doing things by the book, it was actually the band members themselves
who were happy to disown their early work. In particular, their breakthrough hit, 1987's You
Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party. As outlined in Alan Light's Skills To Pay The Bills, The Story
of the Beastie Boys, the band intended the song to be a joke, a parody of the frat boy hard rock
that was dominating the airwaves at the time. When the rock turned up to 11 by producer Rick Rubin
however, the song had massive commercial appeal, and it was released as a single
making stars of the band. The problem was not many of their millions of new listeners were in
on the joke. The trio managed to ditch their frat boy image with their kaleidoscopic sophomore album
Paul's Boutique, which has gone down in history as a hip-hop classic, and the Beasties never looked
back. Light notes, though, that in the sleeve notes of their greatest hits collection, The Sound
of science, they make no secret of how much they hate the song that made them famous
There are just a handful of classic songs that continue to herald the beginning of summer after
more than half a century of perpetual airplay, and Mungo Jerry's 1970 hit In the Summertime is
one of them. Released as the British band's debut single, the previously unknown musicians
led by the charismatic Ray Dorsett, were given a huge break thanks to a fortuitous appearance at
the UK's Hollywood Music Festival the week the single was released. Contrasting markedly with
the heavier rock sound of the other bands on the bill, including The Grateful Dead and Ginger
Baker's Air Force, In the Summertime was warmly appreciated by the festival's hippie crowd
and word of mouth helped propel it to number one in the British singles chart. It went on
to become a worldwide smash, selling an estimated 30 million copies. So suddenly I had to ask my boss for the afternoon off work to do Top of the Pops
While the track's joyous up-tempo vibe remains undimmed, the lyrics to In the Summertime hit a
little differently nowadays. The opening verse starts out by inviting the listener to have a
drink, have a drive — behavior that's strenuously discouraged in the 21st century — then go on the
prowl looking for women. Vorsett later makes a joke about how to date women you might pick up
while driving, advising, If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal. If her daddy's poor, you just do what you feel