Genghis Khan was not a groovy dude
Is it ok to make a post complaining about something? I don't do it very often. Every now and then is alright, right?
This freakin' song man. It's so pro-patriarchy and mono-normative it makes me want to puke. The chorus made my flesh crawl. I now understand how people who had bad reactions to Blurred Lines felt. No wonder they disliked the song so much - it's a visceral physical reaction that you can't really prevent (aside from not listening to the song in the first place, which is hard if it's being played in a public area)
The possessiveness on display here--of someone he acknowledges isn't even his primary!-- is gag-inducing. Plus the implication that if he "made up his mind" to move this relationship up to primary that he'd have the right to be possessive like that. Bleh.
And he had to top it off with a reference to Genghis Khan. I guess it's far enough in the past that people don't care anymore, but I still associate the name with genocide and mass-rape.
A friend who really liked the music tried to argue that he's struggling to understand his own feelings, calling himself "selfish" and "obscene". That he's exposing all of his own faults, and if I hate this song because he's singing about being a terrible person, and acknowledging himself as terrible, then there's a lot more music that I need to also hate for the same reasons.
I do like the juxtaposition of upbeat music with tragic lyrics sometimes. Hey Ya is fantastic for this! But Hey Ya is about a break-up, which doesn't normalize anything. I understand that Khan can be interpreted as a struggle over trying to not be a shitty person, and mad props to anyone who hears it that way. But I know there are people who find this possessive attitude sexy, because I was married to one for several years. And she certainly wasn't in the minority among her friends. I'd be surprised if Khan wasn't seen as a sexy song of desire, that normalized those attitudes among those listeners.
Which is not to say the song should be banned or anything. Just... ew ew ew. This is as horrifying to me as the women who write love letters to serial killers. What is wrong with people??