Dec 022009
Healthy Hannah!
BOSTON — An initiative to encourage healthy teen relationships says songs by Jamie Foxx and Lady Gaga are the musical equivalent of junk food.
A teen panel working with the Boston Public Health Commission has determined that their songs are among the top 10 with “unhealthy relationship ingredients.”
The commission on Tuesday released its list based on a “nutrition label” rating popular songs on healthy relationship themes.
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This study is pretty stupid, but I thought we could have fun with it by including songs hits and non-hits from all genres and all years.
My vote is for “The One I Love,” by REM, or “I Used To Love Her,” by Guns & Roses, as the Junkiest Musical Junk Food
Miley munchies!
And here I’ve always liked songs that dealt with the darker emotional aspects of human relationships. Who knew I was ruining people’s lives?
“Under My Thumb”: pure junk food.
..and it’s 1980’s companion “Wrapped Around Your Finger” – The Police
A few days I was listening to Joe Jackson’s first album and it hit me how dated that pissy new-wave attitude towards women is. The equivalent of Sour Patch Kids.
Joe Jackson always struck me as the phoniest of all rockers who produced toe-tapping music. I don’t know what was worse, his being such a phony tough guy from the git-go or him then denouncing everything good that he’d done on his first three or four albums before becoming a new kind of phony. That guy needs a serious wedgie.
How about “You Belong to Me”, the doo wop song (The Duprees, I think. The Orioles perhaps). Talk about controlling and unhealthy. Great melody though!
And it’s only gonna get worse from here, Mr. Mod, considering his song “One More Time” is now being used on some fast food commercial. What a wanker!
My favorite unintentionally creepy lyric, from the Raspberries I Just Wanna Be With You:
“Hold me tight
Our love could live forever after tonight
If you believe that what we’re doing is right
Close your eyes and be still”
There’s obviously Good Girls Don’t by the Knack.
I’ve always thought “I Wanna Pick You Up” by The Beach Boys was wacky beyond desciption.
Alot of Paul McCartney’s output is pure “ear candy” to these ears. “Silly Love Songs” is so sweet that my teeth rot while listening to it. I know it’s bad for me, but I keep going back. The playout/disco version of “No More Lonely Nights” always brings a smile to my face. I recognize its unintentional horribleness, but I really do enjoy it. Disco bass!
Speaking of “disco bass”, ELO’s “Last Train To London” makes me want to boogie.
TB
I, too, like “Silly Love Songs.” Listening to it with others around at this age, though, is like eating cotton candy at a baseball game. Not right!
I’m pretty sure almost every Stones song about relationships is bad advice. Some Girls and Stupid Girl immediately come to mind as completely unhealthy attitudes towards women of all races. They’re still great songs, though.
As much as I like a lot of Joe Jackson’s music, I agree, the man needs an Atomic Wedgie and an afternoon hanging on a fencepost outside Jr. High in the rain. I was looking at his website a few months ago and he’s one of those smokers that still posts things from cigarette company funded studies from the 80’s that try to debunk all the awful things that smoking does to people and some right wing Climate Change nuttery. I have a hard time enjoying musicians that are polar opposites of me, but I can occasionally work through it. Actually, when I think about it, if I were a conservative, I’d probably only have a few Joe Jackson and Graham Parker albums and that would be all the music I listened to.
Finally one of these Last Man Standing games I actually want to play, and the post isn’t really LMS.
Sympathizing with the dude in “Amplifier”: really bad for you.
Just thought of my all-time favorite unhealthy relationship song: Lou Reed’s “Sad Song.” It’s like a long, lonely night eating corn dogs and nachos.
I have a feeling Rick James’ Super Freak and his production for Eddie Murphy (My Girl Wants To) Party All the Time wouldn’t get high healthy-relationship points from this Boston Public Health Commission.
Mr. Mod: OMG! You jus’ summed up the exact feeling that I’ve always had about “Sad Song,” but was never able to put into words. Thanx. It’s one of my faves too.
“If I Fell” is, as this conversation goes, the musical equivalent of marketing regular frozen yogurt as fat free frozen yogurt. On its surface, it pretends to be a ballad from an earnest, wounded-heart, emotionally vulnerable guy. The vocals – especially the backing vocals – and the upwardly yearning ending really help sell that idea.
But man, when you really think about what he’s singing, it’s an incredibly manipulative song. It starts to creep in from the edges with all the lines about loving him “more than her” and “don’t hurt my pride like her”, but it comes fully into focus with: “and that she will cry, when she learns we are two.”
That line is immediately followed up with more “oh, the pain I’m in” sentiment, but it’s become pretty obvious that our singer is using the girl to whom he’s singing purely as revenge on the third party, and he’s determined that just “holding hands” ain’t gonna cut it.
When you look at it like that, “If If Fell” is considerably less healthy than “Yes It Is” (which has its own reverse-scenario answer song in “Baby’s In Black”) and maybe even more morally suspect than “Run For Your Life”, where it’s at least possible that Lennon’s singer is full of shit.
It’s also kind of interesting (ok, maybe just to me) that Lennon wrote two songs rejecting hand-holding post “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, and gave the much more innocent one to George in “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You.”
To me, it seems that this panel is probably referring more to mass-market pop music aimed at the tween and teen markets. You know, 16 year old girls singing about how they were hurt so bad, or were going to avenge their cheating boyfriend.
This is one of the things I like about Philly Soul – the songs can be super-corny, but they sing about adult relationships.
It does seem to me that angry relationship songs make up the bulk of the Kelly Clarkson/Lady Gaga/Pink types of singers (If I can lump them together).