Pop Psychology: The f-word in music: from proudly profane to just plain perverse
By Alex Goodman
Nov. 28, 2010 11:47 p.m.
Everyone knows profanity is cool. When I was in sixth grade, I distinctly remember an upperclassman sitting in the library with a group of girls, introducing one of his friends as “the only guy who cusses more than I do,” like it was a badge of honor.
George Carlin certainly knew it was cool, forever memorializing the seven words you can’t say on television back in 1972. Almost 40 years later, two recent hit singles have given center stage to one of those words, although you still can’t sing it on the radio or print it in this newspaper.
I’ll give you a few hints: It actually appears twice on Carlin’s list. It starts with the same letter as free speech and Federal Communications Commission. It rhymes with suck, as in: sucks for you, better find a synonym.
But as any connoisseur of cursing will tell you, it’s all about usage. Especially with this particular word, by far the most versatile of all the expletives, it’s easy to sound like an awkward tween trying for the first time to be foul-mouthed, or like a lazy grandstander who relies on vulgarity for its shock value.
I hate to say it, but it seems that Enrique Iglesias, at his best one of pop’s masters of seduction, has fallen into that latter category. In the radio edit version of his latest single, “Tonight,” he promises, “Tonight I’m loving you.” But in the explicit version, he says he’ll be doing something altogether less kid-friendly.
It’s a curious misstep for Iglesias, who, with hits such as “Hero” and “Escape,” established himself as the most sentimental kind of lover, given to devotion and sacrifice and excessive emoting. The brashness of “Tonight” fits into what seems to be a larger, desperate attempt to age backwards, using Auto-Tune and inviting Pitbull and Ludacris to rap in his songs. It appears to be working, at least; he looks younger now than he did five years ago.
With “Tonight,” he’s trying too hard. There is no reason for an explicit version of the song: Against its dreamy, reverberating production, the word “loving” not only seems more appropriate, its syllables sound better. The sharpness of the “f” and “k” in that other verb just emphasize the awkwardness.
To make matters worse, the song comes to us just months after Cee Lo Green’s exuberant “F*** You,” the runaway smash of late summer and one of the all-time most effective droppings of the f-bomb.
Green is operating within an entirely different context, of course. His song is a rebuke aimed at the woman who scorned him, and the man who took her away; he uses his expletive as an insult, not as a dirty placeholder for sex.
It’s still a matter of tone, and “F*** You” is pitch-perfect in that respect.
Co-written by Green and Bruno Mars, the song is built on the brightness and energy of ’70s soul, with a buoyantly melodious chorus punctuated by cheerful “ooh-ooh-oohs.”
And Green sings like he’s having the time of his life, clearly having emerged the victor from his period of emotional trauma. In such an oversized, maximalist song, it seems only right to use the English language’s most iconic send-off. In this case, the radio edit version, called “Forget You,” feels neutered.
I should point out, though, that Green’s video does prominently feature child actors, who really aren’t old enough to be using that word no matter how good it sounds. I can only hope that the young boy who plays Green’s grade school self doesn’t grow up to think it’s okay to talk like Enrique Iglesias.
If you think there’s a time and place for profanity in pop, e-mail Goodman at [email protected].
“Pop Psychology” runs every Monday.
Goodman’s blog, “The Good pick,” runs every Monday at dailybruin.com/ae.
