I have two things to say about my youth and the word "damn" in songs.
1) I have never been comfortable with lame substitutes for naughty words. If you are going to think "God damn", there is really no point in you bothering to say "Gol durn" instead. I mean, seriously, do you think that God is that easy to fool? To this end, I never ever sing the right words to "Mariah" when it says "And now I'm lost, so gol-durn lost, not even God can find me". (P.S. Yes he can. And feed you to a whale.) I always say "goddamn". And I think I will probably still go to heaven.
2) I never used to say naughty words. In fact I don't think I said a single naughty word until I was in sixth grade. Straight through fifth grade, I still got big eyes and gasped if one of my peers said a dirty word, and I was liable to find it so remarkable that I would mention it to my family that afternoon. Of course, once I hit sixth grade it was like a demon had been unleashed and I was cursing like a sailor, and this was greatly exacerbated by the nine months I spent in England where everybody curses and they even say words that we don't say here because England is just much better at cursing.
However, even in my tender elementary school years, I had been told that it was okay to say naughty words if they were part of an (un-naughty) song. Like "Someday Soon". I am extremely fond of "Someday Soon", and I always have been, and at one point Judy Collins says "He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me", and I was not too shy to sing that properly. In fact, since I knew it was okay to sing the wicked word because it was part of the song, I used to sit in the very front seat of the school bus, right behind the bus driver, and sing "Someday Soon". I was kind of hoping he would turn around and say "What is this language? I am shocked, shocked, that a nice little girl like you is using such revolting words!", at which point I would say with some superiority, "Excuse me, but that is part of a song. I am not saying a wicked word, I am just singing a song. Anyone who knows anything is well aware that you can say those things if they are part of a song."
But he never turned around and scolded me. I really couldn't understand why he was so reticent. I gave him several chances. I would sing that line a couple of times over, so that in case he missed it the first time, there'd be a rerun straight away for him, but nothing. Sometimes I even sang "damned" extra loud, so that maybe he'd only hear that word, and he'd try to get me in trouble, but I would be above it because it's in a song.
I guess he knew the rule too. Damn him.
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You probably know this, but when I was in elementary school, I was very sad that the Phantom of the Opera, whom I loved and admired greatly, could not possibly be a fundamentally good person (probably 'pure' was what I had in mind) because he said 'DAMN you!' to Christine. For the same reason, I was sad about Henry Higgins, whom I also loved and admired. I rationalized his lapses as 'dem' instead of 'damn' (because that's what the British say) until I read Pygmalion and could do so no longer. But at least Mrs Pearce yells at Higgins about his swearing. Nobody berates the Phantom, which gives the viewer the impression that Andrew Lloyd Webber was OKAY with swearing.
Anyway, I wish I'd known your rule about naughty words in songs back then; it might have consoled me a bit.
1) That's extremely funny.
2) You loved Henry Higgins? Henry Higgins? Humongous asshole Henry Higgins? Did you indeed seriously? Oh tim what a terrible tragedy may have been averted by Anna's system of id points!
Well, yes, he was an asshole, but it wasn't his FAULT. He was just LIKE that. He had a heart of gold, sort of. He and Eliza and Pickering were lifelong friends! I love stories of lifelong friendship. Personally, I find the Phantom to have been a much greater asshole.
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