Seeing Enrique Iglesias dance track “Tonight, I’m Fucking You” reach #2 on my Spotify top songs list today, I can’t help but think it signify’s a significant change for music in general. A sign that music as a lyrical art form is taking some sort of turn, not necessarily good…or bad…but into an area where language that has been considered dirty and generally off limits will more clearly become a part of popular music.
I wouldn’t use the ‘Jumping the Shark’ phrase quite yet, but with Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” and now, “I’m Fucking You” close behind it doing extremely well in the popular music charts, it represents a bit of a sea change.
I would suspect we’ll see a lot more of this “me too” phenomenon with the use of “fuck” and potentially other words that feature bold brash cussing as the chorus of popular songs. Enrique’s single is the first example of this copycat phenomenon, borrowing strongly from the success of Cee-Lo’s song.
With the success of this new track, I’m sure music label execs around the country are sending off emails to their top producers and song writers about loosening up those lyrical restrictions and letting some more cuss words fly. Next month look out for the hot new hits, “Go fuck yourself”, and “You’re my favorite motherfucker” from EMI.
I imagine that somewhere in Heaven George Carlin is sitting back and nodding his head a bit to his seven dirty words getting so much pop music attention, but there’s part of me and maybe part of George, that wonders about the loss of innuendo in the face of straight, brutal lyrics. Don’t get me wrong, I use the “f” word far too much, and its a word that slips out in my conversation with people haphazardly, but listening to the Enrique song I can’t help but feel it only adds shock value and puts the song in another category (not like it was in a good category to begin with, but I think you know what I mean) that feels cheap.
Either way, like trying to stop our data from being shared or our privacy being eliminated, it will take on an inertia of its own and I’m predicting we’ll see it a lot more of it the rest of this year.
