Op-Ed By Sarah Katz
This past weekend I went to my little cousins Bar Mitzvah. I was walking past the dancefloor and I heard something that made me stop. The DJ was playing the song “Rockstar” by Post Malone, and just as I walked past, the chorus of the song came on and I heard the crowd of 13-year-olds scream out:
Ayy, I’ve been fuckin’ hoes and poppin’ pillies
Man, I feel just like a rockstar
I was stunned. How could these thirteen-year-olds be singing a song about drugs and misogyny? Did they even realise what they were singing? Furthermore, I knew that I had heard those very words sung before. This song, “Rockstar,” was a song I had listened to often. I even recommended it to a friend; but I had never payed attention to the lyrics. So I continued listening as they screamed some more:
Drankin’ Henny, bad b*tches jumpin’ in the pool
And they ain’t got on no bra
Hit her from the back, pullin’ on her tracks
And now she screamin’ out, “no más”
These lyrics clearly glorify sexual assault and I never realised it. It took a bunch of white suburban little kids singing this song for me to truly realise what a bad message it sends. My cousins friends and I weren’t the only ones listening to this song. “Rockstar” was released on September 15th and skyrocketed to the number one spot on the iTunes chart the very next day. s of December 17th, it’s still a top 5 most listened to song on the itunes top charts, and it not only romanticizes doing drugs, but brags about sexual assault. It made me wonder, did the millions of iphone users who paid for this song not realise what the lyrics stated, or even worse, did they not care?
But this is not a new thing, songs that normalize rape culture have been around for almost a century. In 1944 the hit single “baby it’s cold outside” starts with “I really can’t stay” but quickly escalates into “say what’s in this drink?” In the infamous musical, Grease the boys sing during the song “Summer Nights,” “did she put up a fight?” Both of these songs were songs I listened to on a regular basis in my childhood. I knew there is no way that my parents would willingly play songs for me that bragged about sexual assault. Sadly, I realised that they must have played them without taking the time to listen to the real messages of these songs.
I\We all have grown up in, and livein, a society that normalizes rape culture. And this problem has only worsened as the years passed. In “U.O.E.N.O,” a song released just three years ago, Rick Ross sings:
I put molly all in her Champagne
she ain’t even know it
I took her home and enjoyed that
she ain’t even know it.
There’s no way a song with lyrics that so explicitly speak about rape could be popular.. However, this song peaked at number 20 on the US Billboard Hot 100 list. How could a song like this be published? There were so many people involved in the process; those who helped write the song, who filmed the video, who edited the footage, who held the microphone, who recorded the single, who added the autotune, and more. So many people heard this song and never thought it was worth speaking up about it or never realised there was anything was wrong with it. This just shows how rape has become part of our everyday lives, part of our culture.
Some would say that these songs are just talking about sex–that by criticizing them one is trying to censor anything sexual. But this is not true. Artists can talk about sex but it has to be in a way that is respectful to everyone involved. Ed Sheeran, Troye Sivan, Michael Jackson, Prince and Sam Smith are all artists who do this well. The problem with the songs is not that they talk about sex; it’s that they glorify and even romanticize nonconsensual sex.
But things might be starting to change as the #metoo movement begins to grow. No longer are women staying silent, almost everyday there seems to be more men and even women accused of sexual assault. Not only that, people are listening. Harvey Weinstein, fired. Bill O’Reilly, fired. Kevin Spacey, fired. Louis C.K, fired. I am so proud to be living in a time where these victims feel supported enough to speak out about what happened to them.
So what does this mean for us as music consumers? It means that now is the time for us to become more aware. We need to actually listen to the songs we hear on the radio, look past the catchy tune and listen to what they are saying. Then it up to us. Do we want to support a song that hurts victims and normalizes rape culture? Is this the message we want to send to future generations, or even to ourselves?