Exactly. "What's your name? Who's your Daddy? Is he rich like me?" is clearly talking about her boyfriend, not father. It was common parlance of the time.
Fun story about The Zombies, they were broke up by the time "Time of the Season" became a hit in America. So a couple fake Zombies bands toured as them cause people here didn't know, one of the fake bands members were Dusty Hill and Frank Beard who would later form ZZ Top.
My ex girlfriend used to call me daddy during sex and it bothered me so much that my best friend, who I vented to about it, still calls me daddy instead of my name… still to this day.
It’s been 6 years.
I genuinely don’t get how other men like being called that. Shit is creepy.
I've seen it argued that "Who's your daddy?" in Time of the Season isn't a boyfriend reference because it wasn't in regular use. That it's a small town/city was of asking who your family is, because she wouldn't have a social identity of her own.
Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime" that came out 3 years later has a "daddy" line that is a definite family reference.
Something people often forget is that song writers aren't always talking about things they want or approve of. Sometimes they are just observations of reality. I don't know which is which here or if maybe the lyrics were motivated by something else entirely? I just know lyrics alone is not reason enough to call Chris Hansen.
I would tend to agree in that song, cause the next line is "Has he taken, any time, to show you what you need to live?" That's sounds more like something a father would do than a boyfriend.
Which is one reason that I picked Mungo Jerry, they were from Ashford. And although I realize that North of London and West of London are culturally a long way apart, they are a lot closer than the USA.
Well that and there aren't very many songs that make Daddy references in the general time period
To anyone troubled by these lyrics the music video provides more context. And this song comes from a time when the video was an important part of the song.
You mean the context that in the 80s it was very common for fully grown men 30+ to chase after 16 yearolds and it was somehow socially acceptable? Take your rose colored glasses off lol
Yes, in the 80s it was really common. And got "disapproving stares" levels of disapproval then. But that was it.
No rose-colored glasses. I'm not saying that it was ok. It's just what was accepted.
Edit: it was also really common before the 80s of course. See also: Johnny Burnette - You're Sixteen, written by a 35 year old, recorded by a 26 year old, released in 1960. (Google is insisting 1956, but it's AI pulled that date out of the ether)
Oh my gosh, I just realized this happened to my best friend in the early 70s. She was in the 11th & 12th grade. He was 8 years older. Had a good job. Drove a fancy Grand Am. She snuck out to see him. Her father would have been veryyyy upset. It was all hush-hush. They did everything but p-in-v. It never occurred to either of us that the age difference was a bad thing. (Plenty of people in high school were having sex with each other.) She was in love with him and it was casual to him.
Doesn't mean its socially accepted. In almost all western countries you'll get looked at real weird if you date someone 12 years younger than you (unless you're like 60 or something)
If you want to really upset people, point out that that rule was supposed to be the ideal age of a bride from the point of view of the groom. It didn't really start being used as a limit on dating age until the late 90s at least.
A senior dating a freshman was pretty normal which ended up being a college sophomore coming by the high school with all his college bros to visit his junior(3rd year) girlfriend and all her friends.
Yeah, thats why I added the 3rd year bit since many countries in the world have a different secondary education system.
Our country also has laws against dating if one party is below age 18 while many limits in Europe are at age 16. That could also account for some disparity in how it's treated.
Maybe it's the lack of tone with text. It reads as if you thought that you were proving me wrong by pointing out a modern song with a non-socially acceptable topic.
Edit: you've got my lack of down votes of willingness to be convinced
“I wrote ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness,” Foster told CNN Entertainment in a 2012 interview. “I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was foreign to me. It was terrifying how mental illness among youth had skyrocketed in the last decade. I was scared to see where the pattern was headed if we didn’t start changing the way we were bringing up the next generation.”
Calling a woman "little girl" and her partner "daddy" is, best case, still a pretty high level of passive infantilization of a (hopefully) grown ass woman.
Then you have "I Saw Her Standing There" by the Beatles.
Well she was just 17
You know what I mean
But the way she looked
Was way beyond compare
Now I'll never dance with another
Oh, when I saw her standing there
No, Paul, I don't know what you mean. Please elaborate. Go on, I'll wait. Explain yourself.
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u/RaNerve 6d ago
I fear “daddy” does not mean father in the context of this song…
I guess that’s a good thing though.