are teens affected by sleazy songs?

[darkmoon]

please watch this film, how do your kids behave, have we lost the plot?

 

miley cyrus shocks me, even if you are not religious things look bad, see...

Edited December 15, 2014 by darkmoon

[preraph]

Teens seek out sleazy songs because they're feeling sleazy. Kids are influenced mostly by the role model their parents provide, so if the parents are bad role models, then some of the kids will follow their lead while others will rebel against it. By the time your kids are teens, they are just about beyond the point where you can jump in and try to change their perspective. The best thing is to just to lead by example in a way you wouldn't mind if they emulated, but know that they are their own person and are not you.

 

Kids are influenced by many forms of media: tv, movies, video games, music. For most, it's an outlet for how they already feel, not something that will change them into another person. But for those who didn't come from a solid upbringing with consistent good modeling from parents, they are more vulnerable to latching onto something and giving it more power than is normal.

 

In the case of Miley Cyrus, I often cringe watching her, but she's considered extremely mainstream. It's tempting to say she's made some terrible career choices (like overexposing her tongue), but since she's richer than God, I'm refraining from saying anything. I do think she's deviated from her true gift, which is a voice like a songbird, and isn't using her voice in ways that show her potential. But she's just a young girl herself and is trying things on for size and trying to find her identity. And meanwhile, the ways in which she's been strongly affected by music pop culture herself comes through in every derivative thing she does. It's hard to reconcile her stage act of the past couple of years with the Miley who sang "Jolene" so beautifully with Dolly Parton in this video:

 

Don't worry about your kid liking Miley Cyrus. She's still alive and despite all the crazy posturing, she hasn't really gotten all that depraved. When I was her age (and still today), my music heroes were Joplin and Hendrix, both of who were dead by their mid-twenties. And yet, here I am at 62, still able to string words together!

[nofeelings22]

No idea your age, but...

 

 

Madonna Like A Virgin MTV music awards

She's my Cherry Pie

Prince, Little Red Corvette

Lemon Song, Led Zeppelin

3 6 Mafia, Slob on my knob

2 live crew, we want some pussy

 

 

I could go on all night.

 

Nothing has changed. You just got old and now you are bothered by new versions of the same old thing.

 

Best to remember you had this stuff growing up too.

 

Did you turn out ok?

 

Of course you did. Normal people know the difference between entertainment and reality.

[Ariadne]

I just watched this

, made by young guys.

 

I thought it was pretty cool in a weird way if you want to check it out.

[endlessabyss]

Short answer:

 

 

Yes

 

 

Here's a doozy

[Woggle]

I don't like her music at all but what she is doing is no more sleazy than what Madonna was doing 30 years ago. I love it when older people get all hypocritical about young folks like they weren't just as bad in their day. The only difference is that artists of the past actually made great music that sounds good today. I can't see any Miley songs being a classic ten years from now.

[Shepp]

pfft sleazy songs never made me think or act any differently when I was a teen!

I'd hope by the time my kids are teens i'll have made sure they have a strong enough of character that some music video wouldn't change their beliefs.

[hotgurl]

please watch this film, how do your kids behave, have we lost the plot?

 

miley cyrus shocks me, even if you are not religious things look bad, see...

 

Who put this video out?

 

No teens are not affected by music videos. It is like saying heavy metal causes people to murder other people. it is BS.

[Tayla]

So long as they aren't being idolized for their shock fest, it can be seen for what it is...attention seeking in whatever media they are pursuing....

 

Two wrongs don't make it right no matter which generation is being targeted.

[littleplanet]

Well, as a songwriter myself, I suppose I could debate the premise - but I never really wrote a sleezy song. This could be because I never felt particularly sleezy enough to write with genuine intent, I don't know.

 

But remembering my own teens, and having raised them......long before sleezy songs entered the public realm in any real kind of way - there were the "blue" blues.

These were whitty offerings that indulged much in double entendres and innuendo. Luvly stuff. Sung live in smokey bars hidden away in colored parts of towns......long, long ago.

Did they make much money? No.

Did they entertain their audiences? You betcha.

Did they have much adverse effect on kids?

That can be debated, but it is still looked at from a rear-view mirror.

(while we now ponder what appears in the windshield)

 

Perhaps their legacy eventually grew into rock and roll....scandalous in its infancy, but compared with 63 years of evolution - seem sweetly innocent by the substandards of today.

Public verbosity knows no restrictions now.

No-one cares if a lyric outrages the public sensibility anymore. There is no financial punishment attached to it the way that used to happen back in the days of payola top-40 radio.

 

Are teens essentially different now than they were back then?

Not really.

Songs come and go.

The results are more or less the same.

Kids grow up.

And learn to celebrate sensuality and sexuality much the same way.

 

Sex always was a big seller.

But the public realm is far more pickled in the stuff, than once was the case.

 

Personally, for all this freedom of expression......I'm more entranced, amused and astonished at how easily and effortlessly most of us brush off its precocity.

 

I attribute this to the wonderful dynamics evident in the human spirit, good sense, perhaps good breeding, possibly a bit of iron in the will.

Good parenting? The imposition of the State? A moral and ethical standoff?

Well.....there is the slog in the bog, and all the fuss and bother of messy footprints.

 

As long as sex sells, a world population full of customers eventually have to make up their own minds concerning this commerce attached to biological function:

If hormones didn't take up the call and provide most of the work, sleeze would be as potent as a limp noodle and a week-old stale cream donut.

 

But for kids....teens and otherwise, obviously there has to be something to balance out affairs.

 

I recall as a teen myself - in my most hormonal of years....latching onto Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, BB King's Lucille, The Mothers of Invention's Burnt Weenie Sandwich, and Spider John Koerner's Running Jumping Standing Still. Not a molecule of sleeze to be found in the whole bunch.

On the other hand.....I also recall the ultimate makeout tune.....The Minotaur..........nary a sleezy word in the entire thing....it was an instrumental, after all. (nice memories!)

 

But the standards of the time could be argued, I suppose.

I lived, at the time, completely outside parental authority.

In other words, I made up my own mind about things.

 

Haul me at that age through today's lexicon, vernacular and public brandishments of in-your-face brash and bawdy no-holds-barred sexually-defined expositions.....and would the results have been different?

I could just as easily have latched onto a plethora of world music that would leave the burnt offerings of the "industry" smoldering in my wake.

 

Which brings me though - to what bothers me the most.

The little guys.

It is one thing to throw this spaghetti at the wall of a 17 year-old collection of sensibility and experience.

It is entirely another thing to offer up the same with milk and cookies to a six year-old.

Infantilizing teens is one thing (a gloriously ancient and venerable pet peeve of mine.)

It is another thing altogether to 'adultify' a kiddle.

 

That's where the horse escapes the barn, methinks.

The sweetness of innocence, the mysteries of chemistry, the millions of most subtle layers of natural growth that take many years to work their wonders.....all get lost in the crush and rush of hard core - and kids get ripped off.

 

I recall as a kid, when listening to my older sister's records, discovering a tune I didn't know existed: Puff the Magic Dragon.

Apparently this thing had a hidden drug message deep inside.

I didn't care a damn about that. I liked it no more or less for it.

 

Still, we can't or don't, or won't - roll back the clock. So we do our level best to mix in as much sweet with the sour as we can. Though the nutritional value is dubious at best, the junk food still fattens up the soul.

Overweight and out of shape requires the same balanced diet and exercise it always did. A McDonald's on every corner doesn't help. But there it is.

 

I suppose I could say, I'll never be that old. Though I once was that young, and have not forgotten. Embarrassed apologies were never good enough, but moral tyranny will always be met with the usual scorn.

We can expect it. Each generation must serve its own self-definition. Not a whole lot we can do about that.

I never did pilot those brave young ships - not my job.

Rather, to be a lighthouse on the shore.....and do my level best to keep them off the rocks.

[Haydn]

I certainly was a teen. Marvelous!

[elaine567]

Madonna Like A Virgin MTV music awards

.

 

OK Madonna was no angel but, her act at the MTV music awards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXPMLTmpPpY - is very, very different from Miley.

Madonna was more subtle, a bit of cleavage, a bit of leg and bare shoulders, lying on the ground...

 

Miley is almost always 99% naked, touches her pubic area all the time, and is pretty good at bending over with a naked butt, dry humping and simuating real sex, and her tongue is just gross.

 

No comparison.

[littleplanet]

hmmm.

I'm noticing that nobody's talkin' much about de woids.

Not surprised I suppose, in such non-literary times as these.

But still:

When it comes to the merely visual - as challenging as a comic book, we wind up with the mouthful of popcorn we pay for.

And while all the post-adolescent bliss in the world can't measure up to much more than a hill of beans.....

all of it added together could not tip the scale occupied on the other side, by the likes of a Tina Turner........or a Jim Morrison.....

but then again - those were more mature times.

And even the kids noticed.

[Woggle]

OK Madonna was no angel but, her act at the MTV music awards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXPMLTmpPpY - is very, very different from Miley.

Madonna was more subtle, a bit of cleavage, a bit of leg and bare shoulders, lying on the ground...

 

Miley is almost always 99% naked, touches her pubic area all the time, and is pretty good at bending over with a naked butt, dry humping and simuating real sex, and her tongue is just gross.

 

No comparison.

 

The difference between the two is that at least back then Madonna didn't come across as an attention seeking try hard. That is really who she is while almost everything Miley does screams look at me look at me.

[Rejected Rosebud]

I'd be more worried about my kids turning out with horrible taste in music! but I don't have any, that is a ways in the future for me. I will say that my mom didn't like me watching "Beverly Hills 90210" or certain kinds of videos mainly in rap genre where guys were doing the music and girls were just gyrating around in small outfits (she didn't stop me though!) !! She just wanted me to take relationships between people and my body seriously in my life!!

[turnera]

My DD24's first favorite band was Bowling for Soup. When she got one of their albums and I listened to it, I took it away for a couple years. Only to find out that the rest of the stuff they listen to is worse. She's an amazing kid, she KNOWS that it's just music, that it doesn't correlate to the real world - because that's how I raised her. She knows what I expect from her and she took on my beliefs as her own. Because I made it safe to always tell me the truth, I never banned her from anything (since that first CD), we talked everything out, lots of talks about what happens when girls act sleazy, and to always think of her future and not make choices that will affect that future. She was a virgin until 21, because no guy was worth giving it up for, and she wasn't willing to risk her future just to keep some guy.

 

Another favorite band was Good Charlotte. Tons of tattoos. I wanted to take her and her guy friend to their concert and his super religious mother looked them up, saw the tattoos, and forbid him to go. This wonderful son of hers was screwing every girl in sight, taking drugs, stealing (and lying, of course, because his mom 'banned' everything, so he 'had' to lie). I allowed my DD to give a reason for what she wanted and if it had merit, I let her have it. Today she never lies, is in grad school, helps everyone, has only had sex with two guys so far. Oh, and Good Charlotte? The twin brothers take care of their mother and ended up marrying two of the most famous women in Hollywood and totally became house dads. But oh no! Tattoos! They must be evil! lol

 

She was just listening to some song in the car with me yesterday that was really suggestive, and she was laughing about it, saying it made a good workout song.

 

Kids get it - as long as you don't preach to them, don't ban things, and show them that you have high expectations from them.

Edited January 31, 2015 by turnera

[autumnnight]

My youngest played a song for me the other day that was based on a video game. It was a parody and contained some pretty foul language. He never uses any of those words.

 

A person who is going to "become" something because of a song or movie or game already has some instability to begin with. And that is the parents' job to deal with, not the recording industry.

[violet1]

OK Madonna was no angel but, her act at the MTV music awards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXPMLTmpPpY - is very, very different from Miley.

Madonna was more subtle, a bit of cleavage, a bit of leg and bare shoulders, lying on the ground...

 

Miley is almost always 99% naked, touches her pubic area all the time, and is pretty good at bending over with a naked butt, dry humping and simuating real sex, and her tongue is just gross.

 

No comparison.

I think the provocative styles of stars like Miley definitely influence teens. Especially teenaged girls. Some of these young 12-15 year old girls look like they're 19 or 20. They wear dark make up, tight pants, short shorts and tank tops with their goodies hanging out. I was a teen in the mid to late 90's. Things have changed so much.

[turnera]

Miley is almost always 99% naked, touches her pubic area all the time, and is pretty good at bending over with a naked butt, dry humping and simuating real sex, and her tongue is just gross

That's just ridiculous. She is NOT 99% naked, she has touched herself in 2 or 3 instances - DURING a performance, and the rest of your 'accusation' isn't even worth discussing.