Robert Cheeks suggests in his comment on my last Songbook post that if there aren’t any, there’s really no point in me saying that Rock is ambivalent about or even resistant to modernity.
He has a point.
So, here are two possible candidates. The first is the most obvious choice, the barbaric punk song “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols, Given the glee it takes in giving offense and talking about the sheer gore of abortion, its hard to know how seriously to take it. It sure isn’t willing to be polite about abortion, even if we have reason to wish this little piece of our “culture” had itself been “aborted,” so base it is and yet so proud of its 9th-grade cleverness.
A truly beautiful song, whose civilized charms perhaps will cleanse our inner ears of the Pistols’ insinuating crudity, “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” by the Smiths is my second candidate, although it seems to take a studiously neutral stance towards the Choice itself: and I’m not happy, and I’m not sad.
Well, what do y’all make of these songs? Are they anti-abortion?
And surely, there have been others. At the least, songs or lyrics that display serious ambivalence about abortion. Can anyone think of more examples?
November 21st, 2011 | 11:25 pm
How about Creed’s “In America”?
November 21st, 2011 | 11:28 pm
Depending on where you draw the line between Rock/Pop, these are a few contenders:
“Brick” by Ben Folds Five
“The Freshman” bY The Verve Pipe
“The Icicle Melts,” by The Cranberries
“Unborn Child” by Seals and Crofts
“Abortion” by Kid Rock
November 22nd, 2011 | 12:12 am
“Brick” by Ben Folds. It’s not immediately obvious that it’s about an abortion, but he has been very open about the fact that it’s about his girlfriend aborting their child.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NJMTmz7pkg
November 22nd, 2011 | 5:33 am
Here is the last verse of Leonard Cohen’s “The Future”:
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder.
There was a discussion on the First Thoughts blog awhile back regarding some other of his songs that could be understood to condemn abortion.
November 22nd, 2011 | 6:40 am
It’s a Living Thing by Electric Light Orchestra
Barely rock, but:
It’s a livin’ thing,
It’s a terrible thing to lose
It’s a given thing
What a terrible thing to lose.
Making believe this is what you’ve conceived…
November 22nd, 2011 | 8:42 am
Graham Parker’s ‘You can’t be too strong’ on Squeezing Out Sparks (a line from the song).
November 22nd, 2011 | 10:07 am
In Bob Dylan’s version of “Dignity” on disc one of the “Tell Tale Signs” album, the concluding verse is:
Soul of a nation is under the knife
Death is standing in the doorway of life,
In the next room a man fighting with his wife over Dignity.
Eloquently concise.
November 22nd, 2011 | 3:43 pm
Joe, et. al.,
In regards to “The Icicle Melts”, it may or may not be about abortion. Apparently, the immediate inspiration for the song was the case in England a number of years back where two ten year old boys kidnapped and killed a three year old boy. The line “nine months is too long . . .” presumably refers to the grief of the little boy’s mother. On the other hand, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer and lyricist for The Cranberries stated her opposition to abortion and she was honored by Feminists For Life for her stand. So, the song could have multiple layers.
November 22nd, 2011 | 4:39 pm
Thanks all. I knew there had to be more, and this likely remains a small sampling of what’s out there. I liked the Ben Folds Five song especially.
E.L.O.!
And kudos to Ms. O’Riordan.
November 22nd, 2011 | 6:32 pm
Carl, we’re talking about less then a dozen songs here. Let’s say there’s three or four times as many ‘anti-abortion’ songs (even the term ‘anti-abortion’ is problematic in that a number of these songs are expressing the pain and sorrow of an individual or a couple of individuals who may not be advocating the societal prohibition of abortion).
I believe your statement was that rock music ‘resisted’ modernity. I don’t think a few dozen songs (assuming there are that many) over a forty year period can accurately be described as resisting the evil that is modernity. Perhaps I’m wrong.
I wonder how many pro-abortion rock songs there are?
November 22nd, 2011 | 10:14 pm
Robert, your basic argument is undeniable.
As for finding pro-abortion songs, well, the difficulty is going to be that even the official position is only “pro” the choice, or “pro” the government-out-of-the-bedroom. So as for songs, they’re probably only going to be pro-feminism, or pro-personal liberty. Thus, the only truly pro-abortion songs out there are probably pretty-sounding odes to liberation. A horrible thought, but a true one. Here’s the key lyric from the Stone Ponies’ “Different Drum,” for example, where explicitly the singer (L. Ronstadt) is only declining marriage, but where in spirit, she’s refusing much else:
All I’m sayin’ is I’m not ready, for any person, place, or thing, who’ll try to pull the reins in on me.
November 23rd, 2011 | 3:52 pm
Not exactly anti-abortion — but deeply profound about the visceral and fundamental impact of birth, love, loss and regret and new life.
Live — “Lighting Crashes”
And one of the best proggressive crescendos in modern music…
Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
her placenta falls to the floor
the angel opens her eyes
the confusion sets in
before the doctor can even close the door
…
oh now feel it comin’ back again
like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin’ from the center of the earth again
I can feel it.
November 27th, 2011 | 11:51 am
Rock songs? I don’t know. Rap songs? “Retrospect for Life” of course. Who was that by? Some guy Bill O’Reilly was attacking for his presence at the White House a short while back.
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