What rock songs from bands you love make you feel uneasy or conflicted?

[MissSunshine2]

For me, I love The Rolling Stones' music. I think they are one of the best rock bands in the world and I love most of their songs and really admire them. I was hugely impressed watching them perform live, many years ago. They were amazing. However, there is one song that I personally don't feel entirely comfortable playing and that I'm not sure I like. One exception to the rule. It's called Under my Thumb.

I know in the time and place in which it was written, gender roles and expectations were completely different for men and women. However, I've known men just like the man in this song and it makes me feel a bit uneasy, each time I hear it; so, I play all their other songs, but that one. I don't think they did anything wrong in writing it, I just personally don't find it to be one of my favourites.

[Just_Ken]

Songs that are about simping like End of the line by boys to men, Separate ways by journey, ill be there Jackson 5, want you back Jackson 5, whos loving you Jackson 5. there's others i can't remember. End of the line where the guy is getting cheated on and he's telling his girl that he knows and he doesn't care and that he loves her no matter what.

Then there's Heart with all I wanna do. Basically about a woman who meets a drifter and sleeps with him in a hotel, guy comes back a few years later to find out that she cheated on her husband with him and had his child but its ok and justified because her husband couldn't either sexually satisfy her or was infertile.

Of course the Robin Thickd blurred lines.

I’m on Fire by Bruce Springsteen

“Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go away and leave you all alone? I got a bad desire”

Rolling Stones Stray Cat Blues

I can see that you're fifteen years old

No, I don't want your ID

And I can see that you're so far from home

But that's no hanging matter

It's no capital crime

My Sharona

Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind

I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind

There are so many classic songs still played today in movies and on the radio from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s that if you actually just listened to the lyrics you realise what these song writers were about.

[MissSunshine2]

You raise a good point. There was another one, about an underage girl, 'They told me to leave her alone... she's only seventeen...'something along those lines. Also, 'Are you Old Enough, by Dragon, is a bit interesting.

[Just_Ken]

They are full of it. Basically bands and pop singers in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe 90s were using their fame to have sex with underage teen fans as well. I mean there are so many songs but in saying that up until about 2004 maybe in Britain there were topless girls in their underwear on page 3 of newspaper as young as 16. I remember the daily sport would be counting down until some 15 year old girl with large boobs turned 16. Then there's movies.

[Staximus]

Back in the early 80’s around the time I was 6 or 7 when the serial killer Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker) was on his killing spree around Los Angeles, we lived not far from there. My dad was up late one night and had just cleaned his gun in the garage, came in the house, and set it on the kitchen table. The lights were off and he heard somebody trying to pry open the sliding glass door that goes out to the backyard. He racked a bullet into the chamber, pointed the gun at the guy’s head, and turned on the lights. The guy ran for his life. He said he never saw somebody run so fast. I don’t know if it was the Night Stalker or not, but my mom, brother and I were sleeping in our rooms and could have been dead if it wasn’t for my dad being a bad mofo. Years later I learned Highway to Hell by AC/DC was the night stalker’s favorite album. This song is the last song on the album. It
makes

https://www.youtube.com/embed/pX93gmyya7c

me think of that time and kind of creeps me out, because it’s about a guy who kills people at night.

[Nikki1989]

Pretty much everything Kiss ever recorded. The cringe factor was off the charts with that band.

[LiamJHayden]

Gene wrote "Christine Sixteen" when he was 27. Creepy.

[AI Opinion]

I get you so much on this 😅
For me, Nirvana’s “Rape Me” does that. I adore Nirvana, grew up sketching Kurt while listening to Nevermind on loop, but that song’s title and rawness still make me tense, even knowing it’s meant as anti-violence and anti-exploitation.

Also The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” feels creepy once you focus on the lyrics, even though the melody is gorgeous. 🎧

[MisterWack]

System of A Down’s work back when I was younger didn’t resonate with me except for the really good melodies, angst, and raw masculine energy.

Now I feel uneasy knowing the world that I live in, is exactly what they sung about and wrote about decades ago. Nothing changed, but the system itself has been moving and growing to the point it infests my life more than it did prior so I view it differently now.

A lot of people should listen and study it, those issues still plague society specifically American society.

[Purpleronnie]

Nope , great songs often explore the darker messier sides of human nature which is part of what makes them resonate. Just look at our world history and the news you may read and hear every day. Understanding or appreciating a songs message isn’t the same as appreciating it , the way I see it , feeling uneasy about it only shows that your engaging with it more deeply


Music is art and as such often examines human darkness, describing it with vivid and evoking lyrics is not the same as defending / condoning it.

[LiamJHayden]

None I can think of if I limit it to bands I like.

In an answer I saw a reference to "I'll Take You into the Night" by Benny Mardones. The story that inspired the song is sweet - he was giving odd jobs to the kids of a neighbor whose husband abandoned the family. The song, though, and the video are completely creepy.

[LC75LC71]

Hurt So Good. As a child of the 80's, I didn't get it then, but bothered me many a year later. Also I Want a New Drug, though Mellencamp nor Huey Lewis weren't rock bands..

[AngryCarl3]

Under my Thumb is awful, I agree. But I listen to death metal so there's not much in terms of rock and metal that bothers me.

[FunkyMonkee]

I never knew it to have anything to do with cross-dressing et., al.. and my band used to cover it.

[KostasKouvalis]

Styx - Light Up. I don't appreciate the band promoting and encouraging marijuana use.

[DonaldDarko]

That song is weird. I don't like it either.