There’s no need to get Tipper Gore involved or anything. No need to relive that old Twisted Sister mess. But neither MySpace, Fox, nor the band in question has returned requests for comment, and usually, if somebody doesn’t want to talk about it, then it probably should be talked about.
MySpace, Say Anything But That
So, my future stepson’s fourteen. Big YouTube fan. Likes his music irreverent, edgy, antiestablishment. I think that’s healthy and normal. His mother’s taught him right. He calls me over to the computer and says, “Have you heard of ‘Say Anything?'”
And I’m like, “Duh!” John Cusack with that stupid boombox over his head. And he’s like, “What’s a boombox?”
He says, “No, old dude,” (I’m 30), and he brings up a YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because I’m sure it will be DMCA’d as soon as I do. It’s a tribute video, not the studio production of the band Say Anything’s song “Little Girls,” with the lyrics appearing in sync with the audio, a Web 2.0 version of the old red bouncing ball, of which he probably also knows nothing.
The lyrics go:
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
It’s such a thrill, thrill, thrill to the world
when I kill, kill, kill little girls.
The video cycles through pictures of little girls at birthday parties and such.
As my stomach turns, he’s laughing his head off and looking at me like I should be laughing with him. If the teenagers in the comments section beneath the video were standing in the room with us, they’d all be lmaoing and wondering why I wasn’t too.
I’m not laughing because I’m at once disgusted and conflicted. I think of Columbine and Virginia Tech, of child predators, of all the sickos out there that these teenagers probably haven’t thought much about between Biology and English. They’re not having the visceral, sad, sickening feelings I am when I think of it – it’s just a bunch of nonsense to them. They don’t watch the news.
But I’m also a defender of the arts, of free speech, and I remember how unjust and crazy and un-American I thought it was that Dee Snider was yanked in front of Congress to talk about some stupid song lyrics that the kids seem to get but the adults were outraged by.
And here I am, with only a few white hairs parked amid my dark chocolate waves, just one foot into full-on adulthood and still breaking in a 401(k), thinking the world is about to end because of a rock band. I could stomach Ozzie, Marilyn Manson and Mudvayne, but not this?
To be fair, judging from other lyrics it does seem to be some sort of shock rock attack on prettiness – you know, all the glossy lipstick DUI insanity inflicted on us from the Lindsay Lohan absurdities out there.
Other Say Anything titles include “It’s a Metaphor, Fool” (okay, fine, you don’t really want to put sixteen bullets in my head) and “I Will Never Write An Obligatory Song About Being On The Road And Missing Someone” which is just hysterical.
With over 238,000 friends, the band is quite popular on MySpace, which is why I bring it up here. That, and by sheer coincidence, the day after I first heard their song about killing little girls, MySpace announced their first concert tour.
Guess who was headlining.
Weird, huh?
I tried to contact the band to ask them to explain the lyrics to me, but they have not responded.
I wanted to ask MySpace how promoting a band that sings songs about killing little girls fits into their aggressive campaign against child predation on their website, but neither MySpace nor Fox Interactive Media returned requests for comment.
