Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Family-Unfriendly Aesops in Music include:

  • "Better the Devil You Know" by Kylie Minogue is about going back to the guy who treated you badly because "better the devil you know." This was probably meant to creep the listener out. Nick Cave called it the most disturbing song he had heard, in part because of Kylie's innocent image.
    • Kylie and Nick went on to sing a duet, "Where the Wild Roses Grow," about a girl falling for a man who then bashes her head in with a rock so no one else can have her. Kylie is a very creepy soul in a very cute body.
  • Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is a really-very sarcastic song that, taken unironically, would have one of the most family unfriendly aesops ever. "If you're a girl who follows the Rule of Cool and likes a taken boy, it's okay to throw yourself at the guy and steal him away because you know he likes you back, and his girlfriend is "like, so whatever." And the video points out it's okay to humiliate said girlfriend because she's a nerdy girl with glasses." Lavigne's Word of God points out how it's criticizing shallow boy-crazy girls who act like that, but tell that to the song's Misaimed Fandom.
    • And to everyone who thinks she's dead serious and hates that song accordingly.
      • The song "One of Those Girls" from the same album seems to confront the subject from the other girl's perspective. It almost makes it a Chekhov's song.
    • Another song on the same album features the lyrics 'I hate it when a guy/doesn't get the tab/I have to get my money out/and that looks bad'.
  • Kingdom Hearts' opening theme song, "Simple and Clean," suggests some very dubious morals. For example, "Don't get me wrong I love you, But does that mean I have to meet your father?" suggests that the narrator's lover doesn't want to put out the effort to get acquainted with her family, and that, although the lover "wishes he could prove he loves her, he doesn't want to have to walk on water; when she's older she'll understand that it's enough when he says so." Apparently, "Hikari," the Japanese version of the song, makes much more sense, and is almost the complete opposite: "I'll introduce my family, You'll surely get along well."
    • As far as relating the two - "Simple and Clean" and "Hikari" - they are not even translations of each other. At best, they tend to be vaguely similar.
    • The "wish I could prove I love you" line may be him saying, when he says 'I love you' to her, it's because he actually loves her, and she shouldn't always force him to prove this (Or at least, to go to ridiculous lengths to do so). Plus, looking at the 'when you are older' line in context within the game, then it could be seen as, rather than a romance between two adults, a romance between two teenagers who don't entirely understand romantic love. Hence, it's more of a 'I love you, I really do, believe me when I say so'. Given the last bridge, 'whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on', and 'regardless of heartaches, the future doesn't scare me at all; nothing's like before', you could almost interpret "Simple and Clean" as being about a young couple having sex for the first time; he did so because genuinely loves her, she loves him too, and she's worried that he's only with her for the sex, but by the end of the song, she's clued in that he really does care about her, meaning we could also possibly interpret it as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, rather than a Family-Unfriendly Aesop.
  • The Script's popular ballad The Man Who Can't Be Moved is about a guy who was left by his ex, and is willing to stand on the corner of the street until she comes back. Though it's certainly a desperate romantic gesture (which a lot of people go mushy about) others really wish that he'd get on with his life. There's absolutely no way she's coming back, he's probably going to make himself ill, the chances of the news picking him up are absurd and it's probably not his fault that she went away anyway.
  • These come up a fair few times in Lily Allen's music, prominent among them her singles "Fuck You" ("Conservatives are inherently tyrannical/hateful/war-mongering/generally terrible people who don't deserve to express their opinions") and "Not Fair" ("If your boyfriend is bad in bed, it more or less negates any positive traits he may have").
    • Similar to Avril Lavigne, she also gets criticism for a couple of songs that are intended as ironic but would have Family Unfriendly messages if taken straight, particularly "22" ("Women are no longer important to society when they reach 30") and "The Fear," about vacuous materialism and celebrity worship: "I wanna be rich and I want lots of money. I don't care about clever, I don't care about funny ..."
    • To be absolutely fair, the overall message of "Not Fair" is supposed to be that "physical intimacy is partly an expression of emotional intimacy in a healthy relationship," which isn't quite as Family Unfriendly; the boyfriend is suggested to be less an inherently bad lover and more just a bit too thoughtless and selfish to actually take the trouble to find out how to go about satisfying the narrator, being more concerned with his own gratification ("All you do is take!"), particularly in light of the fact that the narrator apparently puts herself out to pleasure him ("I spent ages giving head!"); the narrator in turn is clearly torn about the issue (i.e. she clearly digs her boyfriend and his positive traits, but just can't get over this whole bedroom thing).
    • And "Fuck You" never actually mentions conservatives, and is mostly about intolerant people, probably more of the homophobic/xenophobic populist rhetoric that is basically operating through derailing arguments to discussion of freedom of speech or symbolic politics. This doesn't have much in common with what most Americans, or indeed anyone think of as conservative - it's a growing problem in western Europe that may very well invoke the kind of reaction that "Fuck You" describes among the people who are struggling with it.
  • The punk rock band NOFX's song "Drug Free America" is actually promoting an America where drugs are free of cost. Their song "Don't drink and drive" warns about the danger of spilling your drink while driving, and argues that drunk people are better drivers (NOFX use a lot of satire and believe that it should be offensive).
  • Dolly Parton's song "What Is It, My Love?" has the moral, "occasional moments of happiness in a bad relationship justify being in said relationship." Cue my forehead in great pain.
  • "A Boy Named Sue" could be this trope's theme tune. The heartwarming reveal at the end is that the father gave his son an embarrassing girl's name, not as a stupid joke, but so that a lifetime of bullying would teach him to fight and make him strong. The aesop may be more along the lines of "sometimes people are just trying to help, and holding misdeeds against them in pursuit of revenge is wrong." After all, in the end, while the singer admits finally understanding his father's actions, he also points out that there's no way in hell he was going do the same to his own son.
  • The Crystals' "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was controversial due to its seeming Family-Unfriendly Aesop that Domestic Abuse is okay when the woman deserves it for cheating, and in fact is a man's way of showing that he cares. It was based on a true story about the songwriters' young babysitter, and was apparently meant to document that victims of abuse sometimes feel that way, not to actually support that view, but still carries Unfortunate Implications. Even at the time of release (the early sixties) it was quickly pulled due to negative public reaction. Surprisingly it's gotten a lot of modern covers or lyrical shout outs, seemingly specifically because the lyrics are fairly ripe for The Cover Changes the Meaning.
  • Cerrone's 1977 song "Supernature" is a lovely danceable disco tune that insists that science is so inherently bad that using it to feed the hungry will make angry monsters rise up from the bowels of the earth to eat everyone. Really.
  • O.C. Smith's song "The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp" has a very, very clear message that being a prostitute doesn't make a woman evil or contemptible. Not family unfriendly, per se, but very unusual.
  • Fergie's song "Glamorous." One of the lyrics has Fergie reminiscing, "Like my daddy told me so, he let his daughter know, 'If you ain't go no money, take your broke ass home.'" What the hell, Fergie's dad? What a great lesson to teach your daughter.
    • Bad delivery, sure, but not really a bad message. If you don't have any money, you probably should go home instead of shopping, partying, spending money you don't have.
      • Within the context of the lyrics, it sounds more like her father is telling her not to come home if she doesn't become a success in show business.
  • The Aesop of Lemon Demon's "Geeks in Love" seems to be that geeks are naturally better people with better relationships, and everyone else is just jealous of their perfect lives.
  • The music video for Drake's Find Your Love. The song is a positive message about putting everything on the line for love which Drake does in the video to a woman...who's also connected to a gang leader. He crosses the line and attempts to woo her...and he's eventually caught by the gang, beaten and (presumably) shot in the back of the head by the same girl he was putting his heart on the line for. The video ends in a Bolivian Army Ending (the girl could have shot the gang leader) but there is a clear message about not even love is worth crossing a line over.
    • Or, arguably, don't throw your life away for a romantic fantasy? Or 'don't let fantasy blind you to reality'?
  • P!nk's "Perfect" takes a good aesop ("Be proud of who you are and don't let the nay-sayers get to you") and turns it Up to Eleven with the line "Don't you ever ever feel like you're less than perfect" and you get the aesop "You are absolutely perfect the way you are right now. Don't try to change anything and don't accept any form of criticism, even constructive ones."
    • The video for "Stupid Girls" mangles the song's message by equating stupidity with makeup, fashion and anything pink while presenting playing football and being physically strong as being smart. Playing football all the time will not make you any smarter than putting makeup on. While the smart side of the table does have a book, a keyboard, microscope and dance shoes the message is undermined by having the little girl choose the football at the end. The point of the song is that girls should be smart, not physically strong.
  • Indica's song "In Passing" is about a the dead singer telling her sister that her pain will go away and everything passes. Not quite unfriendly until the last few lines where she tells her sister that she also will pass. Extremely true and not something most children are equipped with or taught.
  • Jim Croce's "You Don't Mess Around With Jim." Big Jim Walker hustled Slim McCoy in a pool game, taking all Slim's money, so Slim followed him to Chicago, murdered him, and is highly respected for this. At no point does the song say Jim cheated—he was just a more skilled pool player than he at first pretended to be. In other words, the moral is: being a sore loser and stealing back the money that was fairly won from you is cool if you get away with it.
    • Alternatively, could be the perfectly solid Aesop of not being dishonest because it can come back to bite you in the ass, especially with psychotic murderers. But then that makes the title rather ironic.
  • Taylor Swift's song "The Way I Loved You". All in all, the Aesop here is "Nice guys that respect you are boring, the best relationships are the ones that keep you up all night crying and cursing the other person." That's just a terrible message in general, but it's even worse when you consider that her biggest fans are teen girls.
  • The New Kingston Trio's "Jug Town" is surprisingly pro-alcoholism: Basically the moral amounts to "if you're a family man with a menial low-paying job, alcohol will provide a release from your miserable life".
  • Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" shows the audience how cool it is to get drunk to alcoholic amnesia and then break the law, perform amateur table-dancing and sleep with strangers. You know, that sort of things which should be done again and again every Friday.
  • Nelly's "Ride Wit Me" starts off with the classic rap Aesop "Materialism is good" ("Oh why must I feel this good ... Hey, must be the money!"). Luckily though it sorts itself out and ends up with the rather more palatable, if still questionable, message "Materialism is perfectly fine, as long as you worked for your money" ("It feel strange now, makin' a livin' off my brain instead of 'caine now")
  • Carly Simon's "Jesse" begins with the speaker declaring that she's through with the title character after he "cut out her heart like a paper doll" and "set me up/just to see me fall" (which would seemingly making it clear that Jesse is a Jerkass). Within a couple stanzas, the basic moral seems to be, "Go ahead and ignore your better judgement, and that of your friends, and your own mother, and hook up with the guy again so you can wait on him hand and foot." "I'll always cut fresh flowers for you...I will make the wine cold for you...I will change the sheets for you..."
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