Late yesterday afternoon Brian McFadden sent these tweets:
So, it seems he’s upset his song is “getting attention for the wrong reasons”. Lyrics about doing damage to an inebriated women were just meant as a bit of fun. And anyway that woman was his fiance Delta Goodrem, so it doesn’t matter anyway. And even though he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, he’ll give all the profits to a charity that works with rape victims.
The analogy comes to mind of a man who makes light of robbing and beating a blind person then so kindly sends money to a charity for the blind.
McFadden says it’s not a PR stunt but it’s hard to see it as anything else. And look at how the controversy is portrayed on his website – which, by the way, is accessed by clicking on a full screen image of the McFadden police mug shot cover of the new single.
Looks to me like McFadden and his record company are cashing in on the controversy with wording like “You be the judge, buy Brian’s new single here”.
And what’s with the “Controversial new video?” Will the music video clip be a visual illustration of the lyrics? Is McFadden going to show us what ‘take advantage’ and ‘do some damage’ really means?
Given that Universal – the target of our petition against Kanye West’s Monster which has just cracked 15,000 signatures – is McFadden’s label as well, perhaps we need to brace ourselves for something truly horrible.
If McFadden is really concerned his song is being interpreted as promoting date rape, why say he doesn’t want it played on radio? What’s so special about radio? If it is causing this much angst – and triggering sexual assault survivors – why not just withdraw the whole thing? And can the video?
It’s difficult to see McFadden’s gesture as sincere when he blames all those who have criticised Just as you are (Drunk at the Bar) (including me here and here) . It’s our fault, see, because we don’t have a sense of humour. And he doesn’t want to give “haters” the pleasure of backing down. But it is his lyrics that are hateful. He just doesn’t see that. He won’t back down, even when more sexual assault survivors are speaking out about what this song is doing to them.
Nicole obviously doesn’t have a sense of humour either. Following ‘anon’ on my blog Tuesday, Nicole is another woman who has come forward to describe the impact of this song on her, posting this comment:
This brings up so much for me. I don’t really know where to begin. It was such a long time ago, but it still hurts and humiliates me, some 20 years later.
I was about 16. I went to a party hoping to see a boy that I really liked. I got way too drunk and my friends tucked me into a bed at the house to recover. The boy I really liked then came into the room and tried his luck, but seemed to realise nothing was going to happen. Maybe 10 minutes later, his friend came in and he too tried his luck, however he was more determined. I have no doubt that if my friends hadn’t come back to check on me when they did, he would have raped me. He already had my clothes undone and had his hand inside me.
Later that night, after I had sobered up, we went to another friends house and I told my friends what had happened. They confronted the guy involved and he outright denied it. I never reported it and I never spoke of it again to anybody. The guy on the other hand ran around telling everybody that I was a liar and a bitch and that I was just pissed off because he wouldn’t have sex with me. I was humiliated.
So, Brian McFadden, do you think this is something to poke fun at? Does my story deserve it’ own catchy tune and rounds of laughter and applause because you were so clever to come up with something witty that ultimately diminishes the trauma of my experience and belittles my feelings about it?
I’m really ever so glad that we live in a society where cretins like you can influence a whole new generation of young boys and men to sexually assault women and girls and then have a big old laugh about it later on… not to mention make yourself rich at our expense. (That was sarcasm, in case you hadn’t quite picked up on it, and yes, I’m more than a little angry over your stupid song)
Maybe, Brian, you should consider that you have little girls growing up. I hope to God that they are never sexually assaulted by boys who have listened to your song and think it’s hilarious to ‘take advantage’ of your daughters while drunk, so they can ‘do some damage’ to them.
Delta Goodrem is one of a number of celebrity spokeswomen supporting Avon Voices, which raises money to address violence against women. She is also Brian McFadden’s fiancé. Shame she didn’t have a word to him before he released the new song. Or are violent lyrics – and the violence of a rape enabling culture – just so passé now,they weren’t noticed? Remember, this isn’t McFadden on his own. There’s an entire production chain involved in getting a single like this out. Did no one think to say ‘maybe this isn’t such a great idea’?
Help answer McFadden’s request
McFadden wants recommendations for charities working to help rape survivors. You can tweet him at @BrianMcFadden with your suggestions or contact him throug his website or feel free to post your suggestions here and I’ll make sure he gets them. Then let’s see him if he means it. But you know, there are some charities which may not want to accept his tainted money.
And even if he sends truckloads of money, he is not absolved. Nice of him to help out a charity and all, but what we really need is a genuine show of sorrow and regret. For that we are still waiting.
11 Responses
I’d be very interested to see which – if any – organisation dedicated to the prevention of violence against women is prepared to accept the profits from this song…
It is equally concerning to me that he’s attempted to play down the controversy by saying the lyrics are about watching his fiancee when she’s had a rare alcoholic drink and is dancing. Is he saying he wants to damage his Delta? He wants to take advantage of her? Brian – keep digging, you’ll only go deeper.
So what’s the gist here? It’s totally okay to write (and SELL) a song that implies sexual assault is fine just so long as you donate the profits to a sexual assault prevention/support organisation? Well, good to know that money can make things better. Maybe Kanye can donate the profits of Monster to an appropriate anti-violence charity too.
Listen up, Brian: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY. Nor is it even about whether your song will make all men want to go out and assault the next woman they see. No one is saying that. It’s about *normalising* violence and misogyny – making it so commonplace that people don’t even think twice when they hear lyrics about ‘damaging’ and taking advantage of women. When people say ‘it’s just a song’ and ‘it doesn’t matter’, that means we’ve taken one more step towards complete desensitisation about violence and assault.
This song is one step, and the next song by someone else will take it a tiny step further… what happens when we’re hearing songs that explicity commend assault and people are STILL saying, “lighten up, it’s just a song”? Protesting this song is about taking a stand and saying that violence and assault is ALWAYS WRONG and not something to be spoken (or sung) about lightly or in ‘fun’.
I agree, I find it hard to believe that during the whole process of writing, recording and releasing the song, that the obvious date rape interpretation of the song just never came up?
Also, as has been pointed out by a few people, why the mugshot picture for the cover? Coincidence? I think not.
There seem to be a lot of artists willing to make money from promoting violence against women. It is disgusting.
I’m not buying the its really about Delta bit. If those lyrics are an accurate reflection of how he treats her, he probably should be investigated for domestic abuse.
If Brian had a shred of decency left and was truly sorry, he would pull the song from sale.
Oh, and Delta…you can do better honey!
According to the Daily Telegraph today, the ‘controversial’ video for the clip hasn’t even been shot yet – and now Universal have cancelled the shoot. It was to be set on a plane.
Yes, this is just a fun song about tipsy fiancees with dumb beats. This isn’t deliberately courting controversy at all. If the video hasn’t been done yet, I’d not be at all surprised if the ‘mugshot’ cover was in fact either created or changed between the plane incident and the single’s release.
I think you guys need to question the basis of your own beliefs a bit more.
By denying the possibility that Mrian McF wrote that song as a fun, somewhat satyrical piece of intra-relationship banter, you are effectively displaying an attitude towards other people and relationships which is deeply unhealthy. To my mind, MTR and her acolytes (though I don’t include Nina F in here as her level of intelligence and self-awareness is on an entirely different, far superior plane) approach these sorts of debates with a disturbing lack of faith in humanity, and with an unconscious background understanding of relationships as somehow inherently transactional, individualist, evidence-based – or to collect these adjectives into a single word, abusive. But they’re not. Relationships are conducted between people who love and care for each other unconditionally, and who understand each other enough to know that everything their partner says does not necessarily reflect the person they are, or does not need to be taken literally. But I guess this is something you guys might never get to experience.
Sure, Brian’s song is dumb and insensitive, and he has apologised perfectly adequately for that in his tweet (though arguably the promoters who are pushing the date rape angle are doing it knowingly – and as such are the real villains here). However this lynch mob mentality that the MTR set is purveying on this website is far more dangerous and corrupting. I would make the analogy of a pack of zombies singling out the happiest, most life-living members of society and sinking their teeth in.
If you are serious about preventing abuse, then the best way to go about it is to sensitively alert people who would otherwise find it unthinkable (like Brian and Delta) to the fact that it does happen – not to go for the jugular. It is because of people like you that Western civilisation had to come up with the idea of an impartial judiciary in the first place.
@Sam Jandwich…
“Relationships are conducted between people who love and care for each other unconditionally, and who understand each other enough to know that everything their partner says does not necessarily reflect the person they are, or does not need to be taken literally.”
Of course this is true, but this song has gone out to the general public. We are not a part of that relationship, and as such our only choice is to interpret the lyrics as written. We have no other context in which to read them.
I feel sure that Brian was merely thoughtless in writing this song, and not malicious. But that is the point – we’re fighting against attitudes where people DON’T think about the impact of lyrics or poems or videos or whatever, and are so conditioned to implied violence that it has become the norm. This is not about going for the jugular; it’s about raising awareness and changing ‘the norm’ to something that opposes violence, both actual and implied.
Dear Sam
Which is, of course, not your name.
First, allow me to ask a question. If you feel so strongly about these issues, why are you not willing to put your name to your opinion? Just curious.
I take issue with several of your statements.
First, the fact that I read Melinda’s work and am interested in and supportive of what she is trying to achieve does not make me an ‘acolyte’ and I resent your casting of me in that light and the implication that I am an unthinking follower of any school of thought.
As to your main point, that to take the lyrics of a well-meaning song and twist them (according to your interpretation) to mean something unintended is sick and unhelpful, I see where you are coming from, but I have to disagree. I agree that Brian himself probably didn’t mean them to be offensive and it is possible that his apology is sincere. If they had stopped at ‘taking advantage’ I might even defend him as just being, as you put it, ‘dumb and insensitive’.
But why would any person of good will talk about doing ‘damage’ to another person in the context of a loving relationship? To suggest that it could not have occurred to anyone involved in the making and marketing of that song that those lyrics could be interpreted in the light of date rape is, I think, laughable. And to suggest that Brian himself, through the whole process and time involved, did not have a chance to rethink and consider that they were inappropriate is to paint him as truly stupid.
Or, if you don’t accept that interpretation, then it follows that Melinda’s original position is the correct one – that verbal and visual images of ‘damaging’ and ‘taking advantage’ of women are so prevalent and accepted in our culture, that lyrics like this, which clearly are resonant of date rape, as attested by the people who should best know – the victims – are considered innocuous.
As I see it, part of what Melinda is trying to do is bring to our attention just how prevalent and ingrained these messages are and how much damage that prevalence can do to us as a community and to women in vulnerable situations. This doesn’t mean that all women are vulnerable, nor does it try to infantalise them. It is pointing out that just because expressions and attitudes are common, or even ingrained, it doesn’t make them harmless and if we want to improve the condition of women in our society, it behooves us to be aware of attitudes that harm them.
As to your statement that
“Relationships are conducted between people who love and care for each other unconditionally, and who understand each other enough to know that everything their partner says does not necessarily reflect the person they are, or does not need to be taken literally.”
That’s a lovely idea, and it is certainly true of many relationships. But to pretend it is true of all is, respectfully, looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses. If you are talking about the relationship between Delta Goodrem and Brian McFadden, sure, she may well understand that he didn’t mean it and that’s fine – although, frankly it doesn’t interest me. But this is not about something he said in private to her alone. This is about a song offered to the public and people are entitled judge it by the words that he used. Indeed, not having a personal relationship with Brian, I don’t know how else I can judge it. Do you, I wonder, have a personal relationship with ‘Brian and Delta’ to know that they are so insulated from the world as to think that abuse is ‘unthinkable’?
I’m not quite sure how you get from objecting to the words of a song and to the mileage made by publicists out of the hurt it has caused to being a lynch mob. I don’t see anyone here suggesting anything more violent than boycotting his song, which last time I looked, doesn’t require any part of the legal system.
It seems to me that you feel that Brian and Delta are nice people and that this public criticism is unfari. That may be true. But the very fact that he is perceived as ‘nice’ is precisely why he needs to be challenged on this issue. If ‘nice’ people promulgate attitudes like this, it makes them ‘okay’. And they aren’t. That’s the point.
Hi Guys,
Thanks for your considered responses. To be honest I was expecting outraged personal attacks, or simply to be ignored completely (or even deleted). So given that courtesy I feel I should respond in kind.
Firstly I don’t use my real name because I’m new to this commenting thing and I’m not comfortable with the idea of declaring myself publicly. How’s that?
Essentially I suppose my position could be summed up in two statements: that I don’t believe people can be blamed for the things they don’t know, and that Melinda TR’s reaction to the release of this song is bizarrely inappropriate and *way* out of proportion (and in any case there are many far more useful targets around. Unfortunately they might just require a bit of effort to research however…).
Despite all the publicity it receives, intra-relationship abuse is still a little-understood topic. It is something that I have had to deal with in both my personal and professional life, but throughout, let’s say, my teens and early 20s, it was absolutely a foreign concept to me and just about everyone I knew (or if it wasn’t, then it wasn’t talked about). One reason for this is that it *is* hard to talk about for many people. Another, more challenging reason, is that I think it’s almost impossible to fully comprehend what abuse is about unless you are directly exposed to it. I suppose at minimum you would have to sit with an abuse victim while they explain frankly and fearlessly what has happened to them, and how it made them feel, and to develop an emotional connection to their experience. But who gets to do that?
So it’s not that Brain McFadden didn’t think about the implications of his lyrics, but that he COULDN’T think about them, because they are, as I said, unthinkable to him. It’s pretty obvious from his line of tweets – and his genuine shock at the reaction to his song – that he does not have much understanding of abuse and its effects. But at the same time his defensively talking about not giving in to the “haters” is a clear indication that the vehemence of the criticism he has received has simply alienated him from those who would try to set him straight. Given the extent of his emotional investment in this whole experience he will no doubt henceforth live under the misconception that all feminists are man-hating, sanctimonious pack-animals out for male blood and to separate him from his beloved, and he will be unlikely to listen to their arguments in the future.
If you want to sensitise others to the problems of abuse, date rape, and gender-insensitive behaviour generally – and to make the world more liveable for those who have suffered abuse – then it would be more productive to work on public education programs, make documentaries, get involved in writing school curriculums, and have a quiet word to the Brian McFaddens of the world about how he should be more careful about saying things like that. And in a perfect world, the song would be seen for what it is: an ever-so-slightly subversive, edgy, and playful bit of throwaway consumerism. But to blame hapless rockstars for perpetuating abuse, instead of the failure of the women’s movement to adequately inform people about it is, well, abusive, especially in the vitriolic way MTR expresses it.
In any case, to imagine that lyrics about “taking advantage” and “doing some damage” are actually talking about exploiting your drunken partner or subjecting him/her to acts of violence is an enormous leap of judgement. I do realise here that we are talking about releasing the song publicly. But even here, to suggest that this acts to normalise violence is a nonsense, as it’s not talking about violence to begin with. The intention of the lyrics is to be satirical. If you really want to analyse it, I’d say the reason it’s “clever” is because it is making a joke about/at the expense of the public understanding of date rape, in a sort of “haha that doesn’t apply to us” kind of way. Tasteless, but there you go (and another demonstration of why further education is required). The problem here is that MTR’s take on this is part of a pattern of her making seemingly wilful, or even “sick” misinterpretations of what people say. To use another song example, her objection to Kanye West’s “Monster” as an expression of normalising lust for dead women is utterly outlandish. That song is about Kanye exploring his own dark self-loathing in a public way – quite a brave thing to do. To suggest otherwise is to show an unwarranted contempt for humanity, which is both deeply offensive and disappointing to any thinking person.
I stand by my characterisation of relationships as being unconditional and based on understanding. If a relationship exists where this isn’t the case then I would say that relationship is abusive, and probably shouldn’t exist at all. Again, it’s important for people to be able to recognise abuse for what it is.
I know I’m using strong language. Normally I’m not quite so inflammatory, and normally I have a policy of only talking to people I think are worth talking to (which is why I’m writing to you, Emily Sue and Imelda), but it has been concerning me lately how much traction Melinda TR has at the moment. I think feminism is very important, however I fundamentally disagree with what MTR is doing (in fact I would say it is not feminism at all, but a particularly insidious form of prejudiced, irreflexive rage dressed up as argument), and I wanted to let her know that, and also perhaps to try to help her readers to see her for what she is – not so much the Helen Lovejoy as the Pauline Hanson of public intellectuals. And I do suggest people think very hard about why they find themselves in agreement with her (no objections with using her as a vehicle though;-).