Or maybe also "ad nauseum." Okay, I know that it's ridiculous to single out one song in the history of music and call it "the worst ever, even worse than anything that might yet come." But that's how I felt the first time I heard the execrable God Made Girls, and I think I hafta stick with that assessment.
This is the time of year when I spend as much time as possible in my excavator, thinning the woods around my house (God did a terrible job: there's just too much of everything, and it doesn't look at all like a park, so it's left to me to make it look the way it's s'posed to), building brush piles, cleaning up debris from ice storms, etc. I wear radio headphones while I work, but the damn things are so twitchy, and I get so many stations up here on top of the hills, that the station keeps changing depending, often, simply on how I turn my head. Consequently, I'm exposed to some pretty horrible music, stuff I'd never hear otherwise. That's how I found God Made Girls.
It's "sung" by someone named Raelynn, who was apparently an American Idol non-winner. The first time, I just heard a verse or two, not the whole thing, but enough to simultaneously make me dumfounded and enraged. Then last weekend, within the space of 15 minutes or so I heard the damn thing 3 times on three different country stations (and shouldn't there be a limit to how many of those things there are? It's aural waterboarding, is what it is.). So I did some research, and herewith are the "lyrics," reprinted without permission:
"God Made Girls"
Somebody's gotta wear a pretty skirt,
Somebody's gotta be the one to flirt,
Somebody's gotta wanna hold his hand so God Made Girls
Somebody's gotta make him get dressed up,
Give him a reason to wash that truck,
Somebody's gotta teach him how to dance,
So God made girls.
He needed something soft and loud and sweet and proud
But tough enough to break a heart
Something beautiful and breakable that lights up in the dark
So God made girls, God made girls
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls (for singing in your front seat)
God made girls (for dancin' to our own beat)
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls.
Somebody's gotta be the one to cry
Somebody's gotta let him drive
Give him a reason to hold that door so God made girls
Somebody's gotta put up a fight,
Make him wait on a Saturday night
To walk downstairs and blow his mind,
So God made girls.
Something that can wake him up and call his bluff and drag his butt to church
Something that is hard to handle
Somethin' fragile to hold him when he hurts
So God made girls, God made girls
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls (for singin' in your front seat)
God made girls (for dancin' to our own beat)
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls
Somebody's gotta wear a pretty skirt,
Somebody's gotta be the one to flirt,
Somebody's gotta wanna hold his hand
So God made girls, God made girls
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls (for singin' in your front seat)
God made girls (for dancin' to our own beat)
He stood back and told the boys, "I'm 'bout to rock your world."
And God made girls
Somebody's gotta wear a pretty skirt,
Somebody's gotta be the one to flirt (and God made girls, yeah)
Somebody's gotta wanna hold his hand
So God made girls
I did immediately check the calendar, and apparently it's still 2015, and so all that I remember having happened in women's struggles in the last 50 years did happen, and the glass ceiling is there and real, and women's healthcare and reproductive rights are still in jeopardy, and the ERA still can't be passed, and women still earn way less than men for the same work, and on and on and on. Turns out, though that many are stubbornly trying to hold on to 1958 ("Goddam it, we had 'em all in a box once, but somuvem leaked out. Let's see if we cain't get 'em back fer good, now") and all you have to do, "girls," is be cute/pretty, flirtatious, coy, and just rock that poor, emotionally vacant, slovenly-except-for-your-influence, tough-as-nails-except-when-you-allow-him-not-to-be Marlboro Man's world. It's often said that men's brains are between their legs, but so, evidently, is women's power. Maybe that's the great equalizer we've been looking for in the Battle Of The Sexes. Glass ceiling? It's just another (wo)man's floor: stand up there, girls, like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, give the guys a good view, and they'll fall all over themselves to give you, still, what they want.
Jesus, you can't make this stuff up--except someone did. Her name is Lori McKenna, a singer/songwriter from Stoughton, MA, of all places. I figured it (prejudicial thinking fully exposed here) had to be someone from the South, and not necessarily a woman. But no, it's a woman from the Northeast, someone who's received pretty good notices over the years for her songs and performances. And she's totally in denial about what this song says, does, implies, is about. In an article in Rolling Stone, McKenna says, "We were careful to champion the things that we loved about that girl
[in the song] and it being so RaeLynn," says McKenna, who notes the
song isn't about being subservient to or looking good for men. "To me,
it's way more powerful than that. If we're making him do anything, we're
making him be a better person," she says with a laugh. "And we tried
to say that in a fun way...."Yesterday, I picked up seven 13-year-old girls to come over here for
lunch with my daughter, and right when they got in my car 'God Made
Girls' came on the radio. I videotaped them all screaming it in my car
and sent it to Raelynn. To those girls, that song is empowering."
And that's just the point, isn't it? That's still the way for girls to see themselves as empowered, now, in 2015, after all that's happened in women's struggles? It's like Jamie Foxx today making a biopic of Stepin' Fetchit and using that to show black empowerment: through, somehow, total subservience to whites? How can McKenna be so disingenuous as to say "the song isn't about being subservient to or looking good for men?" All she's gotta do is read her own words to see how ridiculous that assertion is. And God's apparently in on this whole deal, conspiratorially smug as he tells the boys he's " 'bout to rock (their) world." How fucked is that? Clearly it's time for women to just give up; the fix is in all the way to the Top.
Unfortunately, too, the song has one of those insidiously catchy melodies and choruses, and the boilerplate arrangement so pervasive in pop/country. I'm bettin' that those factors, along with the fact that so many innocent/unthinking boobs (not sexual slang, there) will love it such that it'll be a bazillion-seller and on every jukebox left in the country. And how long before Ford or Chevy buys it for a truck commercial? All guy's drive 'em, I guess, and only wash 'em when forced to by some manipulative, withholding, controlling sweet young girl, around whom they are helpless otherwise. Paints a beautiful picture of us, huh? We crawled from the ocean, despoiled the earth, and became nothing more than we'd really always been: walking genitalia, looking to manipulate each other by "virtue" of the power vested in our crotches. How pathetically cynical to perpetuate that stereotype.
And so, labia and genitals, I chose a bunch of songs to play this week which have a rather unclear or at best loosely-tied theme: something about girls, and what that term means and how it's worn and how it affects, at least in my mind. Here they are:
Big Girls Don't Cry Four Seasons
Boys & Girls Alabama Shakes
Catholic Girls Frank Zappa
Disney Girls (1957) Beach Boys
Fat Bottomed Girls Queen
Don't Give That Girl A Gun Indigo Girls
Girls Got It Bad Amy Rigby
Girls Just Want To Have Fun Cyndi Lauper
Girls Talk Dave Edmunds
Girls!Girls!Girls! Liz Phair
Girls... Marshall Crenshaw
American Girl Tom Petty
The Busy Girl Buys Beauty Billy Bragg
City Girl Joan Armatrading
In My Girlish Days Maria Muldaur
Perfect Girl Sarah McLachlan
Stupid Girl Neil Young
Unhappy Girl The Doors
Cynical Girl Marshall Crenshaw
Daddy's Little Girl Al Martino
Factory Girl Rolling Stones
The Fat Girl Lyle Lovett
Girl Fabs
Girl Tori Amos
Girl The Wild Colonials
Girl Blue Stevie Wonder
The Girl In The Other Room Diana Krall
The Girl Stands Up To Me Now Jonathan Richman
Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon Neil Diamond
Girl to Be On My Mind Crosby & Nash
I Kissed A Girl Katy Perry
It's Different For Girls Joe Jackson
Last Of The Good Straight Girls Susan Werner
Local Girl Neko Case
Lonely Girls Lucinda Williams
Pretty Girls Neko Case
Stupid Girl Garbage
(You're) Having My Baby Paul Anka
What a motley crew, or murderer's row, depending on your view. You'll note that, in spite of some of the dreck that is here, conspicuous by its absence is the song that started it all. I couldn't bring myself to play it, so you have to go to YouTube or your own music collection (and please don't tell me if that's your source) to hear it. It's a great blueprint for raising a daughter, is all I know.
Hope to see you Tuesday on the radio: it'll be a fun-filled two hours, with a chance to win a dream date with Annette Funicello or Sandra Dee.
No comments:
Post a Comment