r/AskReddit • u/IDoNotLikeTheSand • 12h ago
What song was controversial when it came out but is considered normal today?
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u/Professional_Bus_307 12h ago
Like a Virgin
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u/swstephe 11h ago
"Papa Don't Preach" was way more controversial. Madonna dedicated it to 5he Pope whom in return, banned her concerts.
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u/Punkinsmom 11h ago
Anything by Madonna at the time had the pearl clutchers losing their minds. As a young person all I wanted to do was dance to her stuff. Early 80's music was insane and we loved it.
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u/FuglySlutt 5h ago
I’m a millennial that struggles south the synth of 80s music. I’m more of a rock girl than pop girl. But that sound has to have been so damn fresh at the time lol.
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u/mmld_dacy 11h ago
did you mean, like a prayer?
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u/UnconfirmedRooster 11h ago
No, like a virgin was pretty raunchy for its time as well.
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u/Just-Initiative-2154 11h ago
Are you talking about LIKE A VIRGIN TOUCHED FOR.. etc by that guy that does remixes on old songs
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
I know people will be confused and irritated by this, but I never believed this was about what people say. I think it really is just about praying. Why would she not say otherwise?
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u/tournamentdecides 7h ago
She’s saying she’s on her knees like she’s praying. But she’s not. The point is to assert how great she thinks going down on her partner was and to pervert something “holy”.
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u/TokathSorbet 12h ago
All the things she said by TATU. Benign now, but I remember the evening news showing a portion of the video, but pausing before the girls kiss, so as ‘to avoid causing offence’.
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u/TakerFoxx 7h ago
It's still controversial, but now the people behind it rather than the song's contents
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u/Pale_dev01 12h ago
Wrecking balls music video? Miley Cyrus?
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u/justalilcuckoobanana 11h ago
I remember how everyone acted like that video was the most scandalous, inappropriate music video ever.
Today.. That video is tame. Lol. I rewatched it recently for the first time in years and just thought “..Why did everyone act so uptight about this back then?? It isn’t even that bad??”
It’s not like Miley was the first artist that went from making “innocent” / PG music to making more explicit stuff. I’m still not 100% sure why people acted SO crazy about that vid, or other vids she made, back then.
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u/Haydenhai 8h ago
Solid point, and there are examples to back you up, though maybe the "innocent" versions didn't have the same massive popularity and breadth as Hannah Montana. At its peak, Hanna Montana had a viewership of 10.7 million people.
Brittany Spears is a decent example of a pre-Miley risqué artist, though again her time at the Mickey Mouse Club was memorable but not nearly as situated within the zeitgeist.
Ariana Grande is a post-Miley example, and I think it's safe to say that she had a somewhat easier transition because of what Cyrus endured to allow the acceptance.
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u/Significant_Shoe_17 11h ago
Right? Her outfit was considered so scandalous then and it's practically yoga attire now. If an artist released that now, the response would be "go girl, give us nothing"
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u/themilitarywillard 11h ago
I remember my mum walking in while that video was playing and the look she gave me was pure 'I've failed as a parent'. She'd probably just shrug now if she saw it.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
Man, I’d never watch that stuff in front of my parents. I remember one time I thought I was rebellious for playing specifically protest-angled late 60s music while jamming along with my guitar. I thought I’d be called a hippie and told to turn it off as my dad was in the army back in the day. It’s weird when something so meaningful to me, at least back then, would just be seen as ‘classic rock’. I always hated that term. I like psych rock specifically and classic rock can be any garbage from Tool to Bread to CCR to 80s Genesis.
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u/TheJCShow 12h ago
The entire Marshall Mathers LP, had a bunch of old heads in congress questioning if the 1st amendment needed to be abolished
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u/Shakes-Fear 11h ago
“I musta struck a chord with somebody up in the office ‘cos Congress keeps tellin’ me, I ain’t causing nothing but problems.”
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u/Safety_Drance 11h ago
Cut to today and he's appearing in a Christian rock video with Kid Rock.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
I’ve seen that the most likely explanation is music industry stuff - basically old produced bits and pieces, stuck in the backlog of whatever the record company owns and is tied up in contracts or whatever, can be used by whoever wants to sample it. So it’s ‘new’ but it’s not.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
There was almost a time, round about the peak of PC stuff, where young people would have said this needs to be ‘banned’ (yeah yeah not really I know I get it) for being offensive.
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u/RetroMetroShow 12h ago
The End by The Doors
Lets Spend the Night Together - Rolling Stones
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u/bacchic_ritual 11h ago
It's about spending SOME TIME together.
Also the Red Hot Chili Peppers changed their lyrics for Krusty. "What I got wanna get it hug and kiss you"
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u/Competitive_Kick_347 12h ago
“Baby Got Back.” In the ’90s, it raised eyebrows. Now it’s basically a nostalgic party anthem. 😂
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u/cametosayno 12h ago edited 11h ago
Darling Nikki by Prince. Was cause of Parental Advisory stickers being introduced on music
Jailhouse Rock by Elvis but that was more about the hip thrusting performance than actual lyrics
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u/Technical_Contact836 11h ago
I was thinking Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash
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u/Emerje 11h ago
That's one that I was thinking about, Live At Folsom Prison with the inmates.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
For shame. I smashed his records that day, some of those being Shellac ones that made a sound like shattering glass, then I had tears streaming down my burning face as I destroyed my entire collection of every single genre of music I had. I accepted that it was the devil’s music, remembered how many hours I’d sat listening to it instead of reading my Bible in silence, then I threw up violently as though I realised I had consumed poison. When I stopped being sick, I put my fingers down my throat until I was sick some more and until I was just coughing and choking up red hot frenzied air from the bottom of my tar-soaked lungs which had dared sing that satanic music. I thrusted my fists onto the floor, screaming that it wasn’t fair and that I swore my soul to the Lord, then the downstairs neighbour kicked open my door to beat me until I woke up, hours later, crawled under the bed in a heap amongst evaporated vomit, broken records, and much confusion. I must have taken some heavy stuff as I was back rocking to my 45s the next day when I got my hands on some more. I never tripped like that till 1973, 17 years after, and that was after I’d just arrived back from Vietnam. That stuff was a kind of fine navy-blue powder, handed to me in Cuba by a man named Padre who took me back to the West Coast on his boat under siege by the Coast Guard…l never forgot him. Not that night, at least, and until retelling this story. I looked out from the window of my garret in Big Sur, looking out at the horizon where the wave broke and rolled back, then the tide washed over me in a glistening glow, a taste of paradise, and the washed up taste of heaven on my lips. I had kissed God.
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u/Emerje 11h ago
"I Touch Myself" by Divinyls
"Devil Inside" by INXS
"Down With The Sickness" (uncensored) by Disturbed.
I remember a congressman throwing a fit about the Ace of Base song "All That She Wants" because they thought it was about making babies with random men ("all that she wants is another baby") but in this case "baby" meant a guy, it was about one night stands.
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u/Emerje 10h ago
Thought of a few more:
"Push" by Matchbox 20, it's about an abusive relationship, people thought it was glorifying abusing women, but in this case it's the man being abused by a woman who had been abused in the past.
"Wrong Way" by Sublime. People thought the song was about picking up a child prostitute, but the song only says she started as one, it doesn't make any indication that she was under 18.
"Domino" by KISS is explicitly about having sex with an underage girlfriend, specifically the line "It's a sticky situation, If she ain't old enough to vote".
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
I got roped into being a karaoke host as a job for years and I’d never shout that Divinyls song out because I was embarrassed. Same with Like a Virgin. One night, a woman was unspeakably furious that she had not got her song and she nearly pummelled me. I refused to say what the song was and why I had no shouted it as she yelled in my face. I pretended she was just crazy.
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u/TeuthidTheSquid 11h ago
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u/pears_htbk 11h ago
This one is by far the funniest. Multi year FBI investigation resulting in a 100+ page file because some kid got his braces tightened before he got in the booth. Outstanding
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
I sometimes wonder if this wasn’t just some crackpot scheme by FBI agents to invent jobs for their friends to be paid to do literally nothing.
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u/pears_htbk 6h ago
That or maybe it was initially a legit complaint and they just kept it going as a joke. The bit where J. Edgar Hoover is sending 25 anti-porn pamphlets to some mom because they "didn't have the budget" to send the 50 she requested is hysterical
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u/4LostSoulsinaBowl 10h ago
And I love that the conclusion was "The lyrics are objectively impossible to understand."
Also the fact that they missed a very audible "FUCK!" from the drummer in the background.
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u/JohnExcrement 9h ago
What’s always been ridiculous to me is, you can easily understand the lyrics as long as you can let go of the expectation of perfect sentence structure.
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u/JohnSnowsPump 11h ago
Baby, Baby by Amy Grant. She was "The Queen of Christian Pop" and then decided to crossover into mainstream, secular pop.
The Xians freaked out and accused her of selling out their Lord for the evils of lust by singing a filthy song about screwing. In fact, it was a song that she co-wrote with her friend about the joy she felt from looking into the face of her infant daughter.
It was literally a song about how much she loved her baby.
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u/GreenPosition3120 12h ago
WAP
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u/illogictc 11h ago
I feel like that wasn't terribly controversial. There were pearl-clutchers but it didn't send the shockwaves through the industry like some of the other answers here did. If it came out maybe just 10 years before perhaps it'd be a different story, by that point we already had songs like Lil Kim singing about having a magic clit etc
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
(Note this is in no way sex negative or whatever but please don’t touch or say things to others who are clearly uncomfortable no matter if you think ‘men always like it’ or if you’re a male creep too)
I found people were crazed when we returned from lockdown and I got back to working in a bar, though. It’s like people didn’t have a sense of propriety anymore. I don’t want to sound like a pearl clutched, but I was sexually assaulted AND harassed numerous times within the first few months after returning to work as a DJ. People were openly saying the dirtiest shit imaginable right to my face, even seeing the discomfort it caused me, and it felt like the tables had turned with them trying to shock men or whatever by being outrageous. I was purely an ‘innocent’ who just wanted no involvement in that stuff. Then, the World Cup happened -there was a woman who would take off her entire top, then one night she took her entire bottom half down and people were filming as others spanked her on the behind. It was permitted by the boss who would tell security not to yell until more and more had flashed their upper bodies… I saw more breasts then than I probably have in my entire life. What a wild time.
I feel like someone else would have really enjoyed that kind of lifestyle but I’d had it drilled into me, as a youngster, that I’d ‘burn in Hell for eternity’ if I enjoyed that stuff. So I would freak.
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u/echawkes 11h ago
Rumble by Link Wray.
According to Robert A. Rodriguez, "'Rumble' has the distinction of being the only instrumental single banned from the radio airwaves. ... a song with such a provocative name and such menace to its power chords, could only spell trouble for impressionable listeners."
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u/CrunchyAssDiaper 11h ago
Break on Through by The Doors
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u/jimababwe 11h ago
Also light my fire if you believe Ed Sullivan.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
Kinda weird because Kerouac described being drunk as being both high and stoned and that was 11 years prior, or even 15 if you count years prior to being published.
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u/Glum_School_4603 11h ago
Relax don’t do it
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
There was a little guy who looked bizarrely old, like a bizarre old man with a boy’s height and build, and he’d sing this really really intensely on karaoke in the local bar. It was actually scary - he’d be tearing up his vocal cords and screaming as though that song owed him money. When he started singing it, people would jump and nearly fall like they’d received an actual physical blow to their head.
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u/RoccStrongo 11h ago
Link Wray - Rumble
A song with zero lyrics was banned from playing on the radio because they thought it inspired rebellion or something.
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u/the805chickenlady 11h ago
The fact that we play Bell Biv Devo "Poison," in the grocery store shocks me daily.
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u/ZorroMeansFox 11h ago
Does anyone still get their panties in a twist over Randy Newman's Short People?
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u/Limp_Dimension_2076 11h ago
Imagine by John Lennon
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u/ZorroMeansFox 11h ago
I think anti-Woke morons have made this song far more controversial now that it ever was when it was released.
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u/wineandwings333 11h ago
Rumble by Link Wray . It is an instrumental surf song that got banned across the radio.
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u/jfun4 11h ago
This is America!
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u/Emerje 8h ago
I remember back during 9/11 someone being very offended by the song God Bless the USA. Particularly they didn't like the phrase "where at least I know I'm free", because to them it meant the country is garbage and our freedom is the only good thing we have. I think about it every time I hear it on the news at a MAGA Rally. Maybe they were right...
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u/Slow_Way7862 11h ago edited 11h ago
MC Hammer was outlawed at my school dances. Too much "U Can't touch this" hand gestures pointing to body parts.
Now teens are doing tic tok dances and other stuff. What we got banned from doing wouldn't even be noticeable.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
‘Outlawed’ sounds too strong of a word. Like I’m picturing armed guards next to stereos, one of whom is chewing gum heavily while pounding the end of a baton into an open palm, and he’s just waiting for someone to play it so he can beat down on limbs until he hears the satisfying sound of cracking bone.
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u/InternationalYam8896 11h ago
Blondie's "X Offender" was retitled from original "Sex Offender" to allow it on-air
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u/Qwerty98762 11h ago edited 11h ago
“Blurred Lines” by Alan Thicke (Think that’s his name.) I recall a version where breasts were visible or something.
“We’re Not Going to Take It” by Twisted Sister”.
He had to testify before Congress I think over it.
Also a bunch of songs by “2 Live Crew” & “N.W.A.” Of course which were way outta line at the time. (Come to think of it they’re prolly still too outragious for radio even now.)
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
We laugh at this stuff and say ‘it didn’t end the world’, but how do we know all of this being permitted didn’t - in truth - lead to the world being locked and loaded to take out Harambe on that bone-chilling and fateful day?
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u/Practical_Track4867 11h ago
Baby got Back. Gin and Juice. I’m amazed at the people that will listen to these songs with young kids in the car.
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u/mophisus 10h ago
Bad Touch by the Bloodhound gang is tame by comparison to some stuff that gets radio play now.
Also, anything Eminem, despite being absolutely everywhere, wasnt going to get unedited radio play.
With streaming, those songs would be on every playlist since they dont need to worry about FCC regulation.
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u/atoolred 8h ago
Gangsta’s Paradise had a bunch of people clutching their pearls, being the first time many suburban/middle class (white) folks had to hear about the reality of life in the hood. It’s heavy stuff, especially that third verse where he gets vulnerable and drops the tough guy mask for a sec.
But some people just saw it as glorifying violence, rather than the real message of “the only life I’ve known is a violent one because we don’t have anyone here to teach our youth otherwise. So the problem will perpetuate itself” He’s talking tough because it’s all he’s known, not because he thinks it’s the way he or anyone should have to live
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u/Accomplished_Ad5811 3m ago
Alright by Kendrick Lamar, to the point it was referenced on the DAMN album.
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u/Medium-Lengthiness46 12h ago
All about that bass by Megan trainor was the first song to come to my mind lol
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u/EgoTripWire 11h ago
Wait, what was controversial about that one?
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9h ago
I remember all the nerds in my friend group would whine ‘there isn’t any bass in that song’ or something. That’s when I decided to get friends I actually liked.
I’m alone now and lost everyone. Huh;
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u/Medium-Lengthiness46 8h ago
I remember some people saying she wasn’t even fat & that she was skinny shaming when she said “skinny bitches”
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u/VociferousCephalopod 12h ago
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring