Recently, while listening to Ben and Dave's Sixpack, I was tipped to a new artist that used a lot of video game-like sounds in his music. Never one to shy away from 8-bit samples, or speak and spell-as-a-musical-instrument (see my erasure or depeche mode collection for proof), I hopped right on it. And it was a free download to boot! sweet!
I am very happy with the sounds on the new album by Simon Curtis, but I can't play it in public.
You see, it has "the F word" predominantly featured several times in not one, not two, but three songs. Maybe more. I stopped counting and just put it all in the "don't play this in public" file. Hence I'm listening to it a lot less than I would normally.
So you say, so what? That's his artist expression to use whatever language he likes in his music. I would agree with you. It is his prerogative. And as soon as the rest of the English speaking world catches up with his progressiveness, then I'm sure all will be o.k.
Personally, I don't get offended by words. The F word doesn't bug me in the least. Neither do a whole list of other words that are used by everyone all over the place.
What is offensive to one person may not be so to another. I remember when I was in high school, ABBA released a song called On and On and On and I was scandalized. My father was letting us play a song that said "sure as hell" in it. Hell, he was playing it too. :)
That same year on a Scout Trip, I was made and example of and punished by the scoutmaster for saying "hell was in the hymn we sang this morning in church".
In Middle School, I was scandalized by the Charlie Daniels Band for saying "son of a bitch". I was more pissed off that I lost a bet about it than the fact that they said it. You see, in conservative Dallas, they were protecting us from ourselves by playing a different version on the radio that actually said "son of a gun".
In my present life, I find guns much more offensive than bitches.
Blondie had a song that referred to "a pain in the ass". That was 9th grade. We would never in a million years have ever noticed except that the local radio station in San Angelo TX was protecting us by actually blipping the word "ass" out of the song. So Blondie sang "Once I had a love and it was a gas, soon turned out to be a pain in the [BEEEEEEEP]". not disruptive at all.
When I Moved to San Francisco, they were playing a certain song by Nine Inch Nails in heavy rotation. They didn't bleep the F word completely, but they bleeped most of it so there was no question about what was being said. You can download almost any song by NIN to hear the F word.
When I moved to Portland, a local family in my apartment complex got mad at me for using the word "stupid", because all four of their kids had been taught that it was a curse word.
I guess my point is this: who cares? Why is the F word offensive? Why is "stupid" offensive?
I can't say. But I do know that because the F word is so prevalent in the new album, I couldn't play it in the car on the way to the beach with the kids from the church over the weekend – even though the music is bouncy and fun. Oddly, the kid's are listening to music with the exact same language peppered all through it (and don't even ask me what I caught one of the googling on an iPod touch) – and I do mean ALL through it. But it's more of the NIN variety with screaming and anger and not the bouncy pop-goodness that I couldn't play for them.
