Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)

Subject: ADDPOP: Gunpowder & Lead
From: wysiwyg
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:39 PM

Heard this (lyric below) on the radio, in the car last week. I find it VERY disturbing. IMO equality does not necessarily involve copycatting "male" roles. And speaking just for myself, as a woman, I am not eager to attain the "achievment" of being a domestic abuser! (My beliefs and my practice [I would hope] also involve not payback, but reconciliation.)

What do YOU think?

~Susan

======

GUNPOWDER & LEAD
sung by Miranda Lambert


County road 233, under my feet
Nothin' on this white rock but little ole me
I've got two miles till, he makes bail
And if I'm right we're headed straight for hell

[Chorus:]

I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
He slap my face and he shook me like a rag doll
Don't that sound like a real man
I'm going to show him what a little girls made of
Gunpowder and lead

It's half past ten, another six pack in
And I can feel the rumble like a cold black wind
He pulls in the drive, the gravel flies
He dont know what's waiting here this time

I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
He slap my face and he shook me like a rag doll
Don't that sound like a real man
I'm going to show him what a little girls made of
Gunpowder and lead

His fist is big but my gun's bigger
He'll find out when I pull the trigger

I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
He slap my face and he shook me like a rag doll
Don't that sound like a real man
I'm going to show him what a little girls made of
Gunpowder and lead

Source(s):
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mirandalambert/gunpowderlead.html

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: saulgoldie
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:24 PM

I have heard this song. I think it is an assertion of a woman's empowerment, even if it is not in the way some of us would like to see. Some abused women think that they have no other way out. And some of them are right. IMHO.

Saul

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 12:07 AM

He's stone cold dead in the market,
Stone cold dead in the market,
He's stone cold dead in the market
I kill nobody but me husband

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: PHJim
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 12:17 AM

It reminds me of the one the Dixie Chicks did about Earl.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 03:30 AM

WISIWYG, I love singing "Stone Cold Dead In The Market", even though, like you, I don't want to be seen as a domestic abuser. I see the song you quoted (and SCDITM) as songs about battered woman syndrome; the personas can't take the physical violence anymore, and lash out in anger/retribution. it's a complex situation, much more than what I described; if the two lines about the physical violence were ignored, the song would be just encouraging murder. I'd probably think it was strange if I didn't see those repeated lines.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 07:00 AM

But do we think we want our daughters hearing this song growing up, or while they're out drinking at the honkytonk?

The Dixie Chicks' "Earl" was, at least as a video, done tongue in cheek. This one has a different approach. I do not want it censored, but I am concerned about the airplay it has or may have. At a concert for adults, or on the performer's album-- that's for adults to decide about. But do I want it out there for little kids to hear in the carseats....? No....

Or picture this-- a honkytonk bar full of boisterous party-hearties... women making this their drinking chorus while several of the male party-ers store up a few more frustrations to take home to their wives or girlfriends.

Is that not a ratcheting UP of potential domestic violence?

~S~

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,deepdoc1
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 07:35 AM

Tom Russell's Hallie Lonnigan is in similar vein. If my grandkids heard one of these songs, I would sure like to open a discussion of domestic violence with them. I all too frequently hear news stories about a woman brutally murdered by a man with a restraining order against him. Sometimes a song like these just seems so inadequate.

Lot's of these abuse songs out there, for example. I hope that kids would be able to take away the message of these songs, not just see them as another "attitude" bar song. What do you do when reconcilliation has failed? JMHO.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 09:48 AM

I'm with you, Wysi. It's carefully calculated to upset and manipulate us, not to entertain. There's too much of that going on in the world already.

How much do you wanna bet that singer 'Miranda Lambert' has never been anywhere near the violence she's so flip about?

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 10:13 AM

It's only a song. What is your opinion of the ballad of Frankie Silver? no I don't really want to know. Just think of all those great old songs we sing and love regarding murder and mayhem over such trivialities as unwanted pregnancy, passing on of ceratin diseases, stealing a stetson hat, Frankie shooting Johnny for a brief dalliance with another. etc etc ad infinitum.
I don't know the song to which you refer but it is probably aimed at the pop market and will almost certainly only have a short life of it's own. Unless of course it has any merit.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 30 Nov 11 - 04:48 PM

BTW, there's another Wilmoth Houdini song about domestic violence called "Sweet Papa Willie."

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 11:20 AM

Q. "What do you do when reconciliation has failed?"

A. You don't get out a gun, you do one of the following:

In an emergency:

Call 911 or your country's emergency service number if you need immediate assistance or have already been hurt.

For advice and support:

In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE).
UK: call Women's Aid at 0808 2000 247.
Canada: National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-363-9010
Australia: National Domestic Violence Hotline [phone]
Or visit International Directory of Domestic Violence Agencies for a worldwide list of helplines, shelters, and crisis centers.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 01:43 PM

It's just a song, and I think it's a pretty good one. Just because a person sings a song, doesn't necessarily mean that's what they think or feel. A lot of times a singer is just trying to tell a story from another viewpoint.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 02:02 PM

Well, it's not folk but I quite like it.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 02:10 PM

There are quite a few songs I don't like, for one reason or another. The solution is simple: I don't listen to them.

Somebody else probably likes them. Fine with me.

I can't say I much like the lyrics in that Miranda Lambert song, just reading them...but I haven't heard the song itself, so...?

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Morris-ey
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 02:25 PM

Apart from the chorus it is a pretty poor song - but it is a song only and not an instruction.

Subject: ADDPOP: Never So Lonely (Garnet Rogers)
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 02:25 PM

Never So Lonely ©Garnet Rogers (on Night Drive)

NEVER SO LONELY
(Garnet Rogers)

Tommy swung a brush hook for the county all last year
Now he sits in some dark pool hall,
Pulling on a long necked beer
On one hand's tattooed the word""
On the other hand there is "hate"
He lights a smoke and rubs the scars on his knuckles

His wife is living here on borrowed time
She needs a place to call her own
Tommy's out; she can't stay here
Where she once called home
The marks of his "too-perfect" love are a shadow on her face
She shakes and waits beside him in the darkness

Never felt so lonely as when lying in his bed
The fear that lay between them
The brutal words he'd said
No more of flinching from his hands
No more of living with this fear
She's bought her ticket, she's made her plans
He's not worth another tear

She says she knows it's wrong
But while he's gone she sometimes misses him
The feeling comes too often
Stays too long, like phantom pain from a missing limb
She knows she's safer on her own
Thank God there were no kids
But had there been she till would
Find a way to leave him

Morning can't come too soon for her
She's up before the dawn
Tiptoes past him, locks his door
Waits out on the lawn
She looks back at the silent house
As the windows start to glow
And with her finger writes "Good-bye"
upon his windshield

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 02:30 PM

And then, there's Martina McBride's Independence Day

A lot of this is just fantasy. One hopes that in real life, abused partners would sing the song real loud when they're safely out of the situation and the cops have been called.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 04:45 PM

Revenge songs are great because you can sing about things you would never really do.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 05:26 PM

Somebody who's good with rhythm and rhyme should write a new country song:

I missed you dear,
Oh how I missed you.

[spoken] How was I to know an ordinary deer rifle is so powerful?

I missed you dear,
and the bullet plowed through the neighbor's wall.

[spoken] Yes, right THROUGH the wall,

then killed her two-year-old.
[Whiny guitar solo here]
Won't you come see in jail?
I miss you, dear.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Dec 11 - 05:36 PM

I wrote a whole long explanation, and GUEST with no name gets it all in 14 words.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 09:57 AM

gets it ALL? "things you would never do?"

Jeri, I see reports of innocent bystanders shot by amateurs every week.

Using the glamour of the media and the power of celebrity to urge a frightened woman to hold a gun on a man is stupid, calculating and nasty.

This kind of music, like jealousy, mocks the meat it feeds on.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 11:26 AM

First, get all the murder and incest songs taken out of the Child ballads. Then get rid of one of Max's favorites "Delia" by Johnny Cash, get rid of Frankie and Johnny, get rid of Stackolee, get rid of the rest of them, then come back and go for the modern ones.

It's illegal to murder someone. We all know that, and anybody who uses a song as an excuse or thinks it's a reason for murder is an idiot and probably needs full-time supervision anyway. I know some women believe they have no other choice. The songs about killing are NOT the problem. The fact that these folks don't know how to, or don't believe they can get help is. It's not the presence of one thing, but the absence of another and they are two ompletely different things.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 12:33 PM

it does seem to me that a story/scenario contained in a song is somewhat akin to that contained in a novel or on screen, unless it is clear that the writer has an agenda to push.certainly some abused by their opposite gender may wish retribution/revenge but unless it,s clear actual violence is promoted i tend to judge just on artistic merit-for what thats worth!

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Crowhugger
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 01:26 PM

I hear the song in the OP as a story and a fable, not at all as an instruction. Anyone who takes violent songs as a guide for life choices as Jeri said probably already needs full time supervision.

Certainly I don't believe that censorship will solve the complex patterns of abuse and battered women's syndrome. And I don't believe that preventing people from hearing violent songs will stop violence.

To the contrary, I think that epecially young people who are over protected in this way are being deprived of a safe opportunity to learn about society's boundaries. Parents who prevent their kids hearing age appropriate violent stories and songs deprive themselves of a wonderful vehicle to open a dialogue with their kids.

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 01:33 PM

See (or listen) for yourselves:-
"This was a college CLASS PROJECT...a music video for Miranda Lambert's song, Gunpowder and Lead"

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 04:35 PM

Oddly enough, this type of song doesn't bother me so much because it doesn't seem real. The violence is, but not the retribution part.

One song that bothers me more is "Before He Cheats", by Carrie Underwood. Because she keeps saying "probably" doing those things. She doesn't KNOW. And she wreaks a shitload of havoc on his stuff, mostly his car. I like cars and none of this was his car's fault. You know perfectly well it's gonna end with her getting arrested. Actually the song bothers me UNLESS I see it as a fantasy, but even so, it's a lot like the psycho stalker Glenn Close character boiling a bunny.

Some of this objection on my part comes from knowing someone whose car got torn up because the spouse THOUGHT the other person was cheating. The nut job who keyed the car and slashed its tires WAS cheating, which is why they were separated. So I guess what bothers us about songs is affected by our experiences.

Subject: ADDPOP: Before He Cheats
From: Genie
Date: 02 Dec 11 - 05:05 PM

Jeri, you beat me to the punch.

If songs about taking the law into your own hands to "deliver justice" to a wife beater may be a bit over-the-top (and seeming to endorse both illegal and excessive punitive measures), "Before He Cheats" really epitomizes such excess.

Before He Cheats
Artist: Carrie Underwood
Album: Miscellaneous

BEFORE HE CHEATS
Songwriters: Josh Kear, Chris Tompkins

Right now he's probably slow dancing
With a bleached-blond tramp
And she's probably getting frisky.
Right now he's probably buying
Her some fruity little drink
'Cause she can't shoot whiskey.

Right now, he's probably up behind her
With a pool stick
Showing her how to shoot a combo,
And he don't know

I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4-wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both head lights,
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Mybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Right now she's probably up singing some
White-trash version of Shania karaoke.
Right now she's probably saying, "I'm drunk,"
And he's a thinking that he's gonna get lucky.

Right now he's probably dabbing on
3 dollars' orth of that bathroom Polo,
Oh, and he don't know

That I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both head lights,
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

I might've saved a little trouble for the next girl,
'Cause the next time that he cheats,
Oh, you know it won't be on me,
No, not on me!

'Cause I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both head lights,
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
...

© Big Loud Songs, Mighty Underdog Music, Sony/atv Tunes D/b/a Cross Keys Pub


Not only does the narrator not know, but only suspects, that the guy is cheating, but since when does infidelity -- and presumably not even by a spouse (since the car is "his" -- justify vandalism and destruction of property?   

I agree that most people would take the song - like the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye, Earl" - as a sort of "venting" and not a prescription for action.   But I find it hard to identify, even in fantasy, with someone who thinks a boyfriend or girlfriend deserves this sort of "payback" for being a philanderer.   

There are many folk songs that tell of rejected or betrayed lovers murdering the one they thought cheated on them, but I see most of them as sort of theatrical narratives (not unlike Shakespeare's "Othello") and not recommendations for how to behave.   (And in some of these, the one who exacts such revenge ends up in the gallows after all.)

Subject: RE: Is It Just Me, Or....? (song ethics)
From: PHJim
Date: 03 Dec 11 - 01:54 AM

Miss Otis Regrets   - Cole Porter^^^

Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today, Madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.
She is sorry to be delayed,
But last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed, Madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.

When she woke up and found her dream of love gone away, Madam,
She ran to the man who had led her so far astray,
And from under her velvet gown,
She drew a gun and shot her lover down, Madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.

When the mob came and got her and dragged her from the jail, Madam,
They strung her upon the old willow along the trail,
And the moment before she died,
She lifted up her lovely head and cried, Madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.^^^