The 1990s were a wild era. We had riots, wars, celebrity court cases, and the rise of Reality TV. We also had lots of popular songs with questionable lyrics that we all just decided to collectively ignore.
I mean, sure, overwhelmingly most 90s songs were pretty direct. It was certainly a time of candor and honesty. Still, there were a few songs with uncomfortable subject matter, unclear themes, or just straight-up lazy writing, and we pretended not to notice. Like these.
“Around the World” by Red Hot Chili Peppers
“I know, I know for sure / Ding, dang, dong, dong, deng, deng, dong, dong, ding, dang / I know, I know it’s you / Ding, dang, dong, dong, deng, deng, dong, dong, ding, dang.”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have some very honest and sincere songs in their catalog. “Under the Bridge” and “Scar Tissue” come to mind. That has not always been the case, however.
Take the band’s 1999 song “Around the World”, for example. The song is Anthony Kedis’ tribute to the beautiful world he has been blessed to experience through his art. We know this because he mentions some of that beauty he’s witnessed by just randomly dropping “Ding, dang, dong, dong, deng,” by the end of the f***in’ song.
And somehow, we all just sang along to it like it was perfectly normal and not even remotely teetering on being potentially problematic.
“Macarena” by Los del Río
“Macarena has a boyfriend who’s called / Who’s called Vitorino by his last name / And when he left to sign up for the army, he / Saw her with two of his friends.”
If there was one song that had the tightest of strangleholds on the 90s, it was the “Macarena”. The original version of the song was released in 1992. Years later, in 1996, the Bayside Boys remix became the version of the song that took the entire world by storm.
We all just mindlessly danced and sang along (or attempted to), without really giving any of it a second thought. But you wanna know what most of those lyrics that we mostly ignored were actually about? A woman cheating on her military boyfriend with two of his friends. Yeah.
“Wrong Way” by Sublime
“Annie’s twelve years old, in two more, she’ll be a w**** / Nobody ever told her it’s the wrong way / Don’t be afraid with the quickness, you get laid / For your family, get paid / It’s the wrong way/ I gave her all that I had to give / I’m gonna make it hard to live / Salty tears running down to her chin / And it ruins up her makeup and never wan’ give / A cigarette pressed between her lips / But I’m staring at her tits / It’s the wrong way / Strong if I can, but I am only a man / So I take her to the can / It’s the wrong way.”
I have a 13-year-old daughter who loves a lot of older music. One of her favorites from the 90s (God help me) is Sublime, including the song “Wrong Way”. These are… among some of the most unbelievably terrible lyrics of any 90s song ever. Seriously. Just read those.
Late Sublime singer Bradley Nowell is singing about an older man having a sexual encounter/relationship with an adolescent girl whose father forced her into prostitution. Whenever this song comes on in the car, I like to emphasize my discomfort by staring at the radio and exclaiming, “How old, BRADLEY?! Huh?! How old is she?! Bradley?!” It gets a chuckle.
Still, back in 1997 when this was released, we were singing along in the car, on the beach, hanging out with friends… wherever we were, we just collectively ignored how tragically disgusting the subject matter is, and it seems, we kinda still do.
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