How Today’s Young Women Learned to Sing the Truth About Hookup Culture
The hookup culture and the rock stars’ early songs
Back in 1995, Alanis Morissette’s jagged little pill shattered many rock records, and the lyrics are as well-known to my generation as “Summer Lovin’” and “Greased Lightening.” Jagged little pill might not have contained the first scorned woman song, but it was the first concept album about mistreated women. It was also the angriest to date.
Contrary to pop psychoanalysis, this anger was not empowering but did evidence a modicum of self-respect and greater expectation. We saw the transition to the hookup culture, which is so “essential” to women’s professional success today. We, therefore, still had expectations of traditional courtship. When our expectations of traditional dating and romance met the growing reality of untrustworthy men, we were given to bitterness and anger, which Alanis expressed with vigor. She had been Canada’s wholesome pop star who was used by men she had trusted. She sang the ugly truth of betrayal and, for every story of abused faith in Alanis’ lyrics, a Gen X woman could either directly relate or had a friend who could. Alanis was our primal scream.
But anger is hard to sustain. Women got used to men who were rarely ready for commitment or responsibility. What other option was there? And so anger melted into resignation. Compare the lyrics of “You Oughta Know,” released in 1995, to the video of P!nk’s “So What,” released in 2008.
The anger is evident in”You Oughta Know” before Alanis layers on the alternately cold and shrieking vocals.
You seem very well, things look peaceful/ I’m not quite as well, I thought you should know./ Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?/ I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner./ It was a slap in the face/ How quickly I was replaced,/ And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?
‘Cause the love that you gave that we made/ Wasn’t able to make it enough for you/ To be open wide, no./ And every time you speak her name/ Does she know how you told me/ You’d hold me until you died?/ ‘Til you died, but you’re still alive.
And I’m here, to remind you/ Of the mess you left when you went away./ It’s not fair, to deny me/ Of the cross I bear that you gave to me./ You, you, you oughta know.
“You Oughta Know” challenges the man to acknowledge the pain he caused, which she is laying bare. “So What,” however, is a song about burying the pain and acting like everything is fine when it is not.
P!nk makes us laugh with hair on fire, highway rides on a John Deere lawn mower, and naked red-carpet strutting. She gets a bit of childish revenge with the urine in the beer bottle. But the part that always gets me is when she shakes off tears while taking a chainsaw to the tree with the carved lovers’ heart.
Regardless, P!nk doesn’t actually move on.
Whooo!
what a tour!
Thanks!
A masterpiece, congratulations!
I just don’t listen to music much anymore, and even when I was a kid I figured these people were just singing about hooking up and breaking up or really about nothing at all–just inserting vague words into a catchy tune. For instance, I was amazed when I read that one of my old favorites, the Pretenders “Kid” was actually about a single mom confessing the truth to her angry young son who has just found out she’s a prostitute?!? What the hell, one can only make out half the lyrics at the best of times…
So it’s come to this, various aspects of which many had predicted as it unfolded over four decades. I had just recently assimilated the Cosmo Girl/Sex in the City formula–build your sh**t-hot career and have krazy sex in glamorous settings until sometime around age thirty, when Prince Charming will ride in and sweep you off your feet to domestic bliss. Be that as it may, I’ve noticed in my own so-called life that the happy couples tend to be those who did NOT conform to the prevailing cultural zeitgeist and just followed the old formula.
Again, congratulations on doing all that dubious reading and listening through all that music.
As a sometime lyricist I can tell you that it’s extremely unfair to assume you know anything about these women’s lives based on their lyrics. Lyric writing is a complicated process but it’s hardly fact based.
They’re talented women and many of their songs speak to me and I am certainly not of their generations. Go ahead and enjoy their music but base your cultural judgements on actual interviews with women who aren’t living in the spotlight.
this article contains different elements: 1)observations on modern culture 2)lyric interpretation and 3)application of that interpretation to known facts about the artists life, thus analyzing the artist’s possible motivations.
weird to call that “extremely unfair.” The author never said “this is all fact I just know it.” It’s written as subjective analysis, and open to debate. So, debate it if you want–perhaps your real beef here is that you disagree with the author’s “cultural judgements [sic]?”
cheers
Leslie here, on public computer (long story) so can’t log in as myself.
Like the guy who heard American Pie and realized that the references made sense to him, these songs about love and marriage are familiar. Conversations–with women not living in the spotlight–sound much like these songs, just less poetic. Furthermore, I did not base my assessments only on the songs. I find interviews with the artists. The videos often are another source of info, often confirming or shedding light upon an interpertation.
I grant that it isn’t wise to read too much detail into the lyrics. For instance, I would not assume that P!nk’s husband has problems in bed due to excessive drinking. She might have used the sick, whiskey dick line as a provocative and lyrical reference to the common, for my generation, sexless marriage post children. Usually it is women are too tired and focused on infants to be interested in sex and that has ripple effects in a marriage until the couple finds they aren’t having much sex at all. Sometimes it is the men who give up on sex, but that usually involves online porn and perhaps a Madonna Complex. Just a guess, but P!nk doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would stick around for that mess. I’ve had a few friends deal with these problems, and they are far more difficult to overcome than mere too tired for sex complications.
I also grant that not all songs are subject to interpertation. For instance, Coldplay songs seem to be whatever Martin was thinking about at the time. It is rare that his songs have a consistent theme, at least not that I can recognize. From interviews it seems he does this on purpose, which frankly annoys me. Sure songs might say something different to different people or take on new meaning with new events, but writing rambles for the sake of is just a bunch of self serving navel gazing. Personal preference, but it is far more interesting to listen and realize, ‘Did Brandon Flowers write a pop song about Catholic dogma? Oh my, he did.”
Regardless of the personal details, the trend exists. Women have moved from anger to resignation to blame the other. Even without the rock stars’ life details, we can hear that in the lyrics.
Great article, Leslie. Liz Phair’s lyrics in Why Can’t I are another good example of the hook up culture’s false bill of goods: “Isn’t this the best part of breakin’ up Finding someone else you can’t get enough of Someone who wants to be with you too It’s an itch we know we are gonna scratch.”
I really liked that song, so catchy, and I was sorry the day I paid attention to the lyrics, which thoroughly ruin it.
The recent hit by Gotye is interesting, too. The lyrics sound like the next stage in hookup culture: where it’s wrong to have an expectation of monogamy and security. If I understand the lyrics right, the guy got hung up on his old girlfriend. So his current gal leaves him. And the guy sounds truly puzzled: “but you didn’t have to cut me off.” “you said we could still be friends.” “I don’t even need your love but you treat me like a stranger and it feels so rough.”
What a lost lost world, in the hookup culture. Sad.
Best
Lin
The song that begins this whole cycle (for me) is “Passionate Kisses,” written by Lucinda Williams and given its most famous performance by Mary Chapin Carpenter back in ’93. The singer spins out a long list of demands, obviously to be met without conditions, for everything from the basic necessities (“food to fill me up”) to the downright silly (“I want a full house and a rock-and-roll band”), always ending with “Shouldn’t I have all of this AND passionate kisses from you?” No, my dear; life just isn’t like that and never will be. A wonderful, jaunty tune, but the words ruin it every time.
Spot on. “Passionate Kisses” works here, as does much of that album, think “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her.” I used to love that song. I was in a Shawn Colvin phase then too. At 25 I thought “Sonny Came Home” was so insightful. Now, I just see the women in The Atlantic article drinking wine and complaining about lightbulbs. (I still respect Shawn Colvin though for “I Want It Back” about her disillusion with Bill Clinton. She deserves credit for not pulling the ‘but he’s our womanizer’ or whatever it is that Gloria Steinem said.)
It’s the pill, ref 1960.
You’re welcome.
A couple both having their sexual and emotional needs fulfilled happens all the time, but it happens when the couple makes it happen.
Great essay!
I understood that there was something wrong with my music (alt gen X, I guess) when me and DH were getting married. We could not find songs for our wedding. We ended up with “Fly Me to the Moon” as our first dance. We both love Sinatra, and we loved the piece mark Steyn wrote about the song ages ago in The Atlantic. Much of our wedding music was from the 40s and 50s. Gen X doesn’t know how to do romance.
We can’t do romance because we saw the death of romance. But have you noticed that as we’ve moved farther from romance, romantic songs have gotten more fairy tale-ish? Someone here mentioned Taylor Swift. Perfect example.
I haven’t listened to her latest breakup stuff because I have to admit, her voice grates to me. I just don’t like it.
Yasha and I danced to an oldy too.
A little older song that also relates to this issue is “F***k and run” by Liz Phair http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6iYQB6nVwI&feature=related
where she sings “I want a boyfriend/the kind of guy who wins you over”.
So much for “hooking up”…..