The One In Which I Break My Own Blog Rule and Curse. A Bunch.
I know I'm getting old. The evidence is everywhere. The scattered invasion of random gray hairs . . . the body parts that are slowly giving up the never-ending fight against gravity . . . the strong urge to literally yell, "GET OFF MY LAWN!" when a group of neighborhood teenagers lingers too long on the grass in the front yard that we are working so hard to get growing. And, now, I have my granny panties in a bunch over some swearing.
I think one of two things happens when you have kids. Either you keep on cursing and don't ever give it a second thought, or you wake up one day and envision your preshussssss baby saying THAT word and flip out. There's nothing really wrong with either path, but flipping out is SO VERY STRESSFUL.
Needless to say, I'm a flipper outer. It's cute and adorable and hysterical if your preshusssss swears, but just thinking about Alexis doing it elicits the same response in me as thinking about Tiger Woods flirting with her. It's not pretty.
In order to avoid having laser beams shooting out of my eyes, I monitor the music we listen to in the car. Alexis thinks she's a teenager. She wants music that is upbeat and happy, music that makes you want to jump up and dance. It's just who she is, and I happen to like who she is. So, when she decided she luuuuuurves The Black-Eyed Peas, I spent an evening hunting down the album on iTunes (I know iTunes isn't the best place to get music, but I had a gift card).
The only thing was I had been burned by iTunes before. I have two copies of a P!nk album because the first one I bought was filled with cursing and such. It was properly labeled, I just somehow bought the wrong one. I wasn't about to make the same mistake a second time, so I carefully examined the album description and reviews. No mention of cursing. Yay!
Then we put the album in the CD player and . . . shit. Literally. They must say "shit" 3513450985 times on the album.
I thought about just letting it go and not mentioning anything to Alexis, but then she started to sing the entire first chorus of Boom Boom Pow.
Shit.
Literally, like ten times.
So, back to the drawing board. I scoured iTunes some more. Nothing that was definitely swear-free. I checked Amazon. Nothing, unless you count hundreds of pissed off reviews by parents who bought the album not realizing that it was not exactly appropriate content for a small child. I scoped out Best Buy and a few other places, trying -oh- so hard to just find the couple of radio-edited versions of the singles that I needed. NOTHING.
Finally, I looked to the heavens and asked myself, "Self, what company is all sorts of high and mighty and wouldn't dare sell you shit?" Myself jumped for joy as she thought of Walmart. Wooo! The goody two-shoes company that refuse to sell anything with a parental advisory label!
I found the singles, but was dubious when I realized there were no reviews or descriptions. There was no parental advisory label, either. Finally, after reviewing the company policy on music content a few dozen times, I decided that Walmart is Too "Good" to be selling curses, so I went for it.
SHIT.
LOTS OF IT.
The songs were the exact same ones I already had--the ones that we had determined were not OK for Alexis to listen to. I rushed back over to the website to figure out what had happened. How did WALMART sell me two songs full of cussing? HOW?
A few dozen emails back-and-forth with customer service, and now I get it. Parental advisory labels? ARE A JOKE. It's a completely voluntary program and it's up to record labels and artists to decide if they want to put them on an album.
Uh, Black-Eyed Peas? Clearly don't have any kids. There is no ifs and or buts about it, that album should have an advisory. We're not just talking about Fergie dropping a bunch of comments about her poop. There's an entire song about 2:00am booty calls that's so explicit that I deleted it right away so that I didn't have to deal with Alexis catching any of the words.
It's all part of a conspiracy, I'm sure. Walmart is trying to make me buy Kidz Bop (IT'S NOT HAPPENING) and The Black-Eyed Peas are trying to make me feel old. er. Older. OLDER.
Shit, I'm old.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Reader Comments (23)
That's kind of weird that the Black-Eyed Peas would choose to opt out of a parental advisory label - I bought Fergie's album when it came out a few years ago and it had a label on it. Wonder why she wouldn't want to extend the same courtesy with her bandmates. And Walmart?! I thought you could always count on them for appropriate music?! While I don't have any children (yet), I hate listening to songs that are completely littered with profanity - if you can't get your message out without swearing every other word, then maybe your message isn't very important.
@Lauren--Totally agreed. Even when I buy music for myself, I tend to gravitate towards edited versions. There are some exceptions (Linkin Park and Nine Inch Nails come to mind) when I don't mind the profanity because it seems like part of the music, but I really don't want a lot of swearing when I'm listening to music. Ever.
FWIW, Lady Gaga has cleaner lyrics than Black-Eyed Peas. SO CONFUSING.
I met the BEP - the guys, before they had Fergie. A long time ago. And they weren't like that. They were really nice guys who autographed an imitation record cover that they produced and has all kinds of "to ME" love BEP members on it.
Sad that they sold out and you can't allow Alexis to have her fave songs. Big, big bummer.
BTW. When are you bringing my little friend to a rugby game. We're at Boyce Park this Sat from 10:30am (women) through after 3pm (all boys after noon). I'm available to play with little folk after 1:30pm. Just sayin'
@pghrugbyangel-Is it even selling out? I can't think of anyone who would hear that song on the radio, buy the album, and then be happy to find out what the real words were to a couple of songs. I don't get how it makes it any better. :-/
Will email you re: the rugby stuff.
E has recently decided to only want to listen to BEP, so I found myself on that same hunt for clean lyrics. Only, I'm cheap, so we just listen to things over and over and over again from youtube.
It makes absolutely no sense for them to not label their album. All it leads to is a bunch of pissed off parents in the end.
And for that matter, why on earth is it so hard to find clean lyrics in the first place?
I was listening to Pink while painting the other day. I guess I was immune to the swearing. Until Boo requested I turn it off because she was saying bad words.
Mummy fail.
we were burned by the BEP when we bought an old album and realized the real words to Let's Get it Started were "Let's get Retarded". i'm sorry, but that's not okay with me. even worse then cursing in my book. but i'm very sorry Walmart let you down and Alexis can't listen to her favorite songs :-(
hm, you know, Taylor Swift doesn't swear... neither do most country artists... ;)
More seriously though- I'd be mad too. Swearing isn't The End Of The World, but if we can shelter our kids just a LITTLE BIT longer, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If these singers were really artists, they could sing their songs & get their points across without all the swears.
Why not try a little metal, where you have no idea what the lyrics are?
I about had a coronary when riding in the car with my 16yo son, him singing along to the radio, and he drops the 'f-bomb' that was bleeped out of the station version. You can't escape it, no matter how hard you try. Any more even radio stations are cutting less and less swearing. Soon there will be no 'clean versions'.
YOU SO CRACK ME UP.
When my kids were little my sister gave us the Back to the Future trilogy. I'd seen them in high school, they were PG, so I left them to watch. When the youngest (four?) came to me and asked, "Mama, what's shit mean?" as sweet as you please, we turned it off and put it away.
Also? Check out the Kids Rock video on yesterday's Funny Bone Monday. You'll want that one for Alexis. :)
I loved They Might Be Giants in high school, and turns out, they have really great kids albums. My neighbor loves music, and is heavy into kiddie music now, and reads lots of blogs and things. That is where you need to head for reviews.
Here is one to try:
http://kidsmusicthatrocks.blogspot.com/
zooglooble is also a big one. I would check those for some pop sounding music appropriate for little ears. It is a huge genre, you just have to hunt it up.
Barenaked Ladies has a good children's album called Snacktime! D loves listening to that one (though I'm not looking forward to explaining the Crazy ABCs to him). He's also a really big fan of Taylor Swift and Shakira (I couldn't explain it if I tried).
He dances to BEP when their music comes on, but I bought the album with Let's Get it Started on it and I just . . . flipped out. I cannot figure out why they wouldn't put the advisory labels on their stuff. It just doesn't make sense.
It's nuts that BEP is on Nick's KId's Choice Awards, but won't put out a clean/edited version of their music for kids.
My kid's are a little older than A.(5,7,12) maybe it's because they are all boys, or maybe it's just me, but I don't censor their music. Well,except for Kid Rock's American Badass, even I couldn't let that one cross their ears...at least until they are 13. What they don't hear from music or from Mom and Dad, they WILL learn from their friends at school.
Protect her from it while you still can, it all goes down the shitter once she starts Elementary school.
I already told you my birthday party favor story. Sigh. I try to keep the really bad stuff away from the kids, but it gets harder when they are 13.
@Kaytabug--We're already "those" parents who introduced High School Musical to the entire preschool class, so I'd like to avoid being the ones who introduced new language. I'll let somebody else take the blame for that one. I hope.
And, yeah, if a song is redone for Kidz Bop and you're on the Kids Choice Awards, you probably should release the radio-edited version of your songs. It's crazy that 90% of the album is clean, but the singles they've released aren't.
Check out Group 1 Crew... they have a similar sound to the Black Eyed Peas but they are a Christian group. (no swearing) My daughter loves singing along to their music!
http://www.group1crew.com/
Just say no to KidzBop. If you don't have satellite radio (where I heard Steven Tyler singing Oscar the Grouch's "I Love Trash" in true Aerosmith fashion), then check out www.sparetherock.com. They have a podcast with kid appropriate 'non-kid' music that you both might like.
OMG I can't believe you cussed in your blog!! Ok, someone had to do it and I'm a little late to the party.
As far as BEP? After the "Let's Get it Started" issue (and I had MAJOR!!!!!! issues with it) I refuse to listen to them. My teenagers listen to a lot of questionable music. My 17 year old step daughter had a ringtone for her phone that was a song about being on an MF'ing boat. I gave her 10 seconds to change it or I was throwing her phone. Her 5 year old brother heard that. I don't get music today anymore. It's not even music if they have to swear so much.
I'm just going to go crawl back into my corner and listen to my Neil Diamond's greatest hits now. After that? Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Walmart can suck it. I do love me some B.E.P. But yeah, the boys don't get to listen to most of it. At least not until they are 30. ;-)
I guess I can understand that you'd prefer the courtesy of a warning label, but I can't understand why you would expect an artist to make a censored version of their work for you because you don't like their choice of words. I have accidentally rented an improperly labelled censored DVD. I think that is the stuff that needs a huge warning label on it!
I had the same problem with that same album. My kids are a little older so I told them I'd play "Boom Boom Pow" for them in the house once in a while but they were absolutely NOT allowed to sing along and say that word. Dancing with various other artists (or something with a similar title) and I just didn't like the other songs on that album enough to buy it. I draw the line at that word though. Any other cuss words and the song does not get played in my house. I also am very choosy about the content of lyrics as I don't need my girls walking around singing "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" (thanks Lady Gaga). Radio Disney, as annoying as it can get, is about the only safe music we can play in our house.
whoops, guess I should have previewed my post above as something was left out that I know I typed! Part of it should have said "Dancing only is allowed when it comes to that music. There is a radio edit version but you can only find it on one of those Radio Now CD's with various other artists (or something with a similar title) and I just didn't like the other songs on that album enough to buy it."
Sorry!