7 songs to tell your family to shut the fuck up
are your parents / sisters / brothers / some other genetic relatives of yours trying to tell you what to do with YOUR life? here are 7 songs to inspire you to tell them to fuck off! 💖
maybe you have someone in your family who says they love you, they care about you, and they want to make sure you do exactly what they have planned for you.
maybe you tell this person what you want to do, maybe you tell this person you are happy doing what you are doing, and maybe they do not believe you. maybe they say, “i love you and i care about and i cannot support this self-destructive path you are on.”
maybe even though you are a full grown adult, you still find yourself trying to live your life according to values and norms which are not your own, and maybe when you violate these values and norms: you feel guilty. maybe your parents make you feel guilty. maybe your brothers or sisters make you feel guilty.
maybe your sister says, “i am your sister and you are my brother and how can you say that i am not allowed to ask you questions about your life?”
maybe your mom says, “i birthed you. i worked so hard for you. i worked my way up from nothing, from poverty, just so you could have a good life. i sacrificed so many fun things in life so that you would have a good childhood. i gave my heart and soul to you; you were a blessing from god to me; i cried every night as i held you. i love you, and i cannot support you going down this self-destructive path.”
well, if your mom says that to you when she is trying to get you to repress your true authentic self
just so that she can live a slightly more comfortable life in her final years,
just so that she can feel like her grandchildren are being raised according to her religious and cis-heteronormative cultural values,
just so that she can avoid having to explain you to her friends (which is difficult for her because these issues are new and confusing to her, understandably so),
well, if your mom has any of those types of motivations when she’s talking to you:
here are 7 songs to tell your mom to fuck off and then go live your best life 💖
additional readings on authenticity
release the Goddess within: 10 strategies
my advice for your twenties: resist or you will be turned into a piece of material
when we stop performing: 5 enriching outcomes
identity drones: doomed forever to perform
i was a supernova and he was a black hole: end of a friendship
1. acknowledge your mom’s pain; then dismiss it
(“pink pony club”, chappell roan)
i know you wanted me to stay
but i can't ignore the crazy visions of me in la
and i heard that there's a special place
where boys and girls can all be queens every single dayi'm having wicked dreams of leaving tennessee
hear santa nonica, I swear it's calling me
won't make my mama proud, it's gonna cause a scene
she sees her baby girl, I know she's gonna screamgod, what have you done?
you're a pink pony girl
and you dance at the club
oh mama, I'm just having fun
on the stage in my heels
it's where I belong down at thepink pony club
(chappell roan, “pink pony club”)
listen to how chappell roan acknowledges her mother’s pain and then simply dismisses that pain as it if were completely irrelevant to her decisions.
i know you wanted me to stay
but i can't ignore the crazy visions of me in la
not only does she know the way she is living upsets her mom, but she’s doing it anyway. why? simple: “i can’t ignore the crazy visions of me in la.”
i mean, honestly.
ask yourself a serious question:
who gives a shit what your mom thinks when you could be dancing at the club with the pink pony girls?
when you could be a queen with all the other boys and girls, every single day?
the best part about “pink pony club”:
i'm having wicked dreams of leaving tennessee
chappell does not reject the notion that what she is doing is “wicked.”
she accepts her wickedness, relishes in her wickedness, gets naked in her wickedness.
and this is a ruthless kind of wickedness.
listen to the agony of chappell’s mother:
god, what have you done?
you're a pink pony girl
and you dance at the club
but notice: chappell’s mom’s feelings do not matter.
when her mom expresses distress, what does chappell say?
oh mama, I'm just having fun
on the stage in my heels
it's where I belong down at thepink pony club
so go have some fun at the pink pony club!
having fun matters so much more than anything your parents might think.
having fun matters more than your mom feeling comfortable about her daughter’s “morals” and “behavior.”
if your mom has a problem with your wild and socially deviant behavior,
well, that is for her to deal with:
in therapy 💖
2. do what your body wants, not what your daddy wants
(“townie”, mitski)
and i want a love that falls as fast
as a body from the balcony
and i wanna kiss like my heart is hitting the ground
i'm holding my breath with a baseball bat
though i don't know what I'm waiting for
i am not gonna be what my daddy wants me to bei'm not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be
i wanna be what my body wants me to be(mitski, “townie”)
maybe your body wants to go have sex with someone tonight. maybe your body wants to do a bunch of drugs tonight. maybe your body wants to send someone a snap while you’re touching yourself. maybe you’re really attracted to someone, they are open and consenting to your every move, you could go wild with this person…
but somehow you find yourself wondering:
would my daddy approve of me getting naked with this person right now?
would my daddy approve of me sending this snap while i’m touching myself?
well, who gives a shit what your daddy thinks about you getting naked?
sure, maybe your daddy gives a shit.
maybe the thought of you getting naked causes your daddy deep and genuine pain.
maybe the thought of you getting naked makes your daddy feel like a bad parent.
maybe your mom is concerned that you are being a bad girl when you get naked.
maybe your sisters and brothers and grandparents and uncles and aunts think you should care what your daddy thinks about when and where you get naked.
maybe all of them are in your head telling you,
“this is wrong. you should feel bad for what your body wants to do.”
“you should care what your dad thinks because he is your daddy.”
“you should think about how your behavior reflects back on your daddy because like it or not, you are your daddy’s daughter and your behavior reflects back on your family.”
if these thoughts intrude upon your intention to get naked and do drugs whenever you want to get naked and do drugs, just repeat this magical line in your mind:
i'm not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be
i wanna be what my body wants me to be
3. rejecting the body image your mother gave you
(“my mother & i” by lucy dacus)
my mother hates her body
we share the same outline
she swears that she loves mine
i blur at the edges
i'm all soft shapes and lines
shapeshifting all the time….
all she has given
all i have taken
all is forgiven
all is forsaken(lucy dacus, “my mother & i”)
“my mother & i” is a powerful song: lucy highlights the way her mother has taught her to hate her body, and then moments later she declares: “all is forgiven.”
i think most millennials have interacted with parents who respond to criticism like this: “well, i guess i was just a terrible mother!”
at this point the “well, i guess i was just a terrible mother!” line is basically a meme among millennials talking about their parents.
but this feeling — “i guess i was just a terrible mother!” — is for your mom / dad / other parent / caregiver to deal with, not you.
and this feeling is also not a feeling for you to incorporate into your understanding of what actually happened: your mother wants to focus on the abstract concept of the “terrible mother” because abstractness enables her to avoid engaging with detail.
and here are the details: if your mom modeled self-hate for you as a child, then you absorbed that way of being, and you should not feel bad for speaking to that experience in your art simply because the expression of your experience is going to make your mom (or other parent!) feel uncomfortable.
if your mom taught you to feel guilty for eating food or for working out too little or for not accurately counting your points on weight watchers, if your mom was examining your body when you were a teenager and cautioning you that you were not going to be pretty enough, then these are simply authentic features of your own experience:
if you want to write about these experiences, write about them.
the trauma is for her to deal with, not you.
when you write about your trauma, you process your feelings better.
some people are extremely uncomfortable right now because we won’t stop talking about our feelings. they want us to get “serious,” but we just won’t shut the fuck up. they want us to think about how our feelings make them “uncomfortable,” and yet we still just will not shut the fuck up.
and the boomers, many of whom were born into a world where i could have been immediately arrested for publishing the contents of this blog, are powerless to stop us.
the boomers thought we would be like them: we would grow up and be quiet. we would stay silent about what happened to us in our childhoods like they did.
but the time of the boomers has come to an end:
we are here now,
we are building a new society,
we are writing about our experiences and our feelings,
and no sense of obligation to any mommies or daddies will make us shut up.
4. bringing a stoned-as-fuck lover home to your mommy and daddy
(“supermarket” by wet leg)
i want to take you back to meet my parents
i wanna tell them 'bout that job that you do
and i think you'll like it when you meet my parents
and i think there was a good chance of them liking youbut you got too high, high, high, high, high
you got too high, high, high, high, high
you got too high, high, high, high, high
you got too high, high, high, high, high(“supermarket”, wet leg)
this song just cracks me up every time i hear it
(which is often because i love this whole album).
first of all, the whole tone and vibe of this song is fucking hilarious and upbeat:
these lyrics are not lamenting the fact that this person got too high to win the approval of the parents. these lyrics are laughing at the inappropriate behavior to which these parents have been subjected. this is a full grown adult woman who is laughing about her partner getting so stoned that they ruined their first impression on her parents.
i love that.
not only is this partner getting high and then showing up to dinner with their potential in-laws, the couple is also wandering around barely functioning in the grocery store, flaunting inappropriate behavior everywhere they go in public:
i wanna take you to the supermarket
i wanna buy you all the shit that you need
i think i like it at the supermarket
but now security keep asking us to leavewe got too high, high, high, high, high
would your daddy like to know that you, as a full grown adult, got so high in a grocery store you were thrown out by security?
would your mommy like to know that you, as a full grown adult, showed up stoned out of your mind to meet your potential father in law?
would your grandma be disappointed to discover you’ve been smoking weed at work while making out with your friend in the utility closet?
well, you guessed it! fuck them! 💖
5. you don’t need to pretend to like your mommy-in-law
(“icu” by phoebe bridgers)
i hate your mom
i hate it when she opens her mouth
it's amazing to me
how much you can say
when you don't know what you're talking aboutbut i feel something
when i see you now
i feel something
when i see you(“icu”, phoebe bridgers)
one of the funniest things i ever saw on reddit was this man who had taken his daughter for a special evening at the eras tour.
he thought he was going to have a special father-daughter night.
instead, phoebe bridgers opened.
it was fathers day and she asked the stadium,
“who else here hates their dad?”
the father was horrified.
he just couldn’t believe that someone could be so “inappropriate.”
especially a young lady.
6. the triumph of hedonism over your parents’ moral values
(“aching” by mannequin pussy)
i was aching with desire
i felt bit of rush (I got to be)
i just wanted to feel human
i was starving for some touch
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be freei wanna feel it from the top
so what?
i wanna feel it from the top
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be freerewind yourself, get me off
make me feel so elite (free, free, free, free)
i want it, i want it, i want it
i want it in threes (that's one of three)
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be(“aching,” mannequin pussy”)
did i know in that moment that what i wanted was wrong?
to be called pretty by a girl?
to try to be pretty for a girl?
to love to feel pretty in the eyes of a girl?
am i bad for wanting girls to think i’m pretty?
am i wrong for feeling fucking exhilarated when a cute girl says, “oh, he’s pretty, maybe i should be talking to him?”
i guess these feelings are not appropriate; to embrace them even less so.
in that moment, in the darkening shadow of a self-proclaimed friend who would soon dump me over my gender expression, i felt:
💖 i am not an appropriate person.
💖 i am such an inappropriate person.
💖 i am such an inappropriate person that i want to find a girl who will call me pretty.
💖 i am such an inappropriate person that i want to find a girl who will make me feel pretty.
and i knew all this this would be too much for my mommy and my daddy.
these were just a few of the thoughts swirling through me which he never ever saw.
but marisa’s words could not be stopped.
marisa’s words seeped into my fucking soul.
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be free
are there feelings stirring inside of you for which your family (or friends!) have taught you to feel ashamed?
do you feel things that, if you expressed them, your family would reject you, or make you feel bad about yourself, or tell you that you aren’t really being you?
would they call you inappropriate? would they say you’re weird?
would they tell you that they love you and that they are concerned about you?
well guess what?
what you want matters more than how what you want makes your family feel.
what you want is more important than the love your family says they feel for you.
what you want is good and valid and beautiful and whole.
so go have fun,
and fuck your family.
7. there’s nothing wrong with what you want
(“what i want” by muna)
when i go out again, i'm gonna drink a lot
i'm gonna take a shot
'cause that's just what i want, want, want
what i want, want, wantand when i see my friend put something on her tongue
i'm gonna ask for one
'cause that's just what i want, want, want
what i want, want, i wanti've spent way too, too, too many years not knowing what
what i wanted, how to get it, how to live it and now
i'm gonna make up for it all at once
'cause that's, that's just what I wanti want the full effects, I wanna hit it hard
i wanna dance in the middle of a gay bar
ooh oh oh, that's what I want
there's nothing wrong with what I want
yeah, yeah(“what i want,” muna)
want all my writing just once a week on fridays?
This list is perfect. Really enjoyed this post.