Offensive song lyrics

Offensive song lyrics January 15th, 2007

Inspired by a post on oscarandre.wordpress.com about offensive humour I decided to pull out some old Brit Punk music which needed some airing as it was sulking in the corner, looking like it was going to go out ‘do’ the local corner shop and possibly in need for a good wash and fresh clothes.

This being a recording of them live and therefore, being a punk band, also drunk and high- their normal lack of clear articulation, in dodgy northern accents, was exacerbated to the point that you needed the lyrics available to know what they were singing. So I went and got them.

I find the Macc Lads entertaining and callously funny, I understand many wouldn’t. They are somewhat vicious, as the British sense of humour tends to be. If you watch Blackadder it is, for the most part, a stream of original, entertaining insults. If the British had to give up beating the hell out of most of the world in empire building wars, were made to stop going abroad and beating up other country’s footballers and can’t even provoke South American military juntas to attack small, pointless pieces of land they own around the world anymore they are damn well going to be miserable and mean to each other. It is, after all, the natural British state of being.

The thing that made me connect them with the word “offensive”, because I do not find them so, was the “is there offensive or adult content?” type question placed in front of me as I submitted it to my favoured social bookmarking site. Understanding, as I am, of the vagaries of others I marked “yes”.

Here those lyrics are.

    Sweaty Betty- The Macc Lads

    She wore big knickers and she worked at the sewage farm.
    Got my hands down her jeans and I nearly lost half my arm.
    But after ten pints, she looked quite fit,
    Couldn’t wait to get my hands on her flabby tits.
    So I said, Slap that and ride the ripples,
    I just got to get my gob round her greasy nipples.
    Flabby arse, sweaty breasts, thirty eight chins,
    she was a mound of flesh.
    Sweaty Betty, she eats a lot of pies,
    Sweaty Betty, she’s got enormous thighs,
    Sweaty Betty, have you smelled her breath?
    Sweaty Betty, she’d crush a man to death.

    I knew that she wanted me to shag her,
    so I stabbed her cunt with my mutton dagger.
    I couldn’t believe the size of her bum,
    She used to play for Wigan at the back of the scrum.
    I’ve seen nowt like it since the day I was born,
    But you know me, I’ll shag owt that’s warm.

    Sweaty Betty, she eats a lot of chips,
    Sweaty Betty, she’s got massive tits,
    Sweaty Betty, she’s got a huge vagina,
    Sweaty Betty, you’d fit a bus inside her,
    She’s so obscene, three tons of margarine,
    She’s like a lump of lard
    But Sweaty Betty makes my willy hard.

That evening I am settling doen to watch a program on my tragically under-used television and they have a video playing. “Fergalicious”. And, being in ‘lyric listening’ mode that’s what I did. I have never heard such drivel (and I once worked with the mentally deranged) in all my life. I cannot bear to print the entire thing in this post so I have linked it instead. Here is a joyous sample:

    I’m Fergalicious (so delicious)
    My body stay vicious
    I be up in the gym just working on my fitness
    He’s my witness (oooh wee)
    I put yo’ boy on rock rock
    And he be lining down the block just to watch what I got (four, tres, two, uno)

Ignoring her inability to count down from four in Spanish for a moment I would like, in order to show balance, to compliment her on effort in the last throes of the song whichs are, presumably, designed help the current generation with their spelling (D to the E to the L I C I O U S, to the D to the E to the, to the, to the) even if she comes a little unstuck toward the end. Possibly some grit got behind a contact lens meant she could no longer read the cue card.

So, her song I find offensive. It has no intelligent, witty or even edgy or controversial content. It is a narcissistic, misogynistic*, vacuous and (most criminally) terminally dull pile of doggie-doo. The same goes for anything by Britney (”Get it get it, get it get it (WHOOOOOA) (Do you like it)”).

The rule is, I firmly believe, if your lyrics are inane and questionable you had better be an incredibly talented musician to make up for it (”de-doo-doo-doo, de-dah-dah-dah, that’s all i want to say to you..?” really Sting? really**?). Alternatively- be living an incredibly fatuous lifestyle that we can all admire or, as a last result, die in a gross or intriguing way like Jimmy Hendrix or Michael Hutchens of INXS.

I am not a parent, but if I was I would rather come home to find my young teenage daughter drunk, dressed as a goth, smoking, surrounded by empty condom packets and listening to the Macc Lads than standing in front of MTV trying to mimic Britney Spears. Okay, that’s extreme. Smoking is a bit much, it’s stupid. I would hate to raise an imbecile.

At least Britney got an answer to her pleading question in her song ‘Slave’: “Always saying little girl don’t step into the club. Well I’m just tryin’ to find out why cause dancing’s what I love.”:

“Because you’re and idiotic, white trash brat who, the second she gets a whiff of alcohol will drop the dancing, get married on a whim, bloat up like a blowfish in a panic attack and squeeze out a couple of white trash puppies. And mommy doesn’t want to lose her meal ticket just yet.”

    * yes, actually, it is. Any misogynist could use it tas evidence that men are better than women. it’s a stretch, I know but I liked the flavour of the word placed just there. what can i say… “am I bovvered? Do I look bovvered…”

    ** maybe he should have stopped there before he got all rainforesty and tantricy.

ref: http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Britney-Spears/I-m-A-Slave-4-U.html
ref: http://www.mp3lyrics.org/f/fergie/fergalicious/