I completely blame thank my parents for not supervising me better as a child, and for letting me listen to music that my friends' parents had banned.
The Divinyls were an Australian band big in the eighties and nineties whose lyrics taught me, before I'd even kissed a boy, that there was a fine line between pleasure and pain. At least I wasn’t surprised by anything that’s come up since. Pun totally intended.
This is Pleasure and Pain:
My favourite line: "No please don't ask me how I've been getting off."
I still love I’m Jealous. Here is lead singer Chrissie Amphlett being the woman you wouldn’t want to cross back when Alannis Morrissette was still wearing pigtails.
(For some reason this video cuts out half the first line. It starts: You've got a new girlfriend...)
Favourite line: “I’m liable to do anything, I might kick her face in.”
And this is the song that I listened to with wide eyes, and turned off if I thought anyone might catch me listening. I Touch Myself:
Favourite line: "I don't want anybody else, and when I think about you I touch myself."
What songs shaped the teenage you? And do you still love them?
2 comments:
I got into music kind of late. As a teen I was memorizing every original Broadway cast recording ever. When I finally did start rocking to something besides Les Miz, I got super into classic rock. And there were definitely some lines that made an impression on me for reasons that don't require deep examination.
Van Halen - "Love Comes Walking In"
"To my master, I've become a slave"
Queen - "Hammer to Fall"
"Just surrender and it won't hurt at all"
Rough Trade "High School Confidential"
"She makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way" (a woman singing about another woman making her cream her jeans?? Get out of town!)
And yeah, I remember my best friend making me listen to "I Touch Myself." Good times.
I haven't heard "High School Confidential". Hello, iTunes!
I should have mentioned that I also grew up on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was my Dad's fault. He loved the movie so much he used to phone all the relations and let them know when it was showing. "A transvestite," I told a classmate when I was about seven, "is a man who wears pretty girl clothes. And Transylvania is a planet in space."
So, half right.
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