“Sing me an old song and remind me what it means”
(Jennifer Berezan, Take Me to the Mountain, 2005)
This week, BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting extracts from Claire Dederer’s recent book Monsters. What comes across in the first two extracts is her ambivalence about liking films or songs by male directors or singers whose biographies include abusive behaviour - Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, and David Bowie.
Dederer’s ethical contortions are occasionally illuminating, but often bizarre. She obviously loves the films of Roman Polanski, but is also “awed by his monstrousness”. She finds it easier to watch the films he made before he raped 13 year old Samantha Gailey, but wonders whether his crime can be mitigated by his being a holocaust survivor, by the trauma he experienced when his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, by Gailey’s apparent forgiveness of him, or even by her own belief that context is important - that “sex between grown men and teenage girls was normalised at the time. The subject matter of songs and films.” What comes through is a sense that her identity as a fan is threatened when she discovers unsavoury facts about an artist’s life.
The extracts I’ve heard so far (available on BBC Sounds, here) are not persuading me that it would be worth reading Dederer’s book. They have, though, got me thinking about similar dilemmas of mine. Not as an audience for a film or song, but as a member of a choir. A dilemma that is more about the content of a work than its originator.
For five or six years before Covid concerns brought it to an end, I sang in choirs. It was, on the whole, a wonderful experience. But It didn’t take long before I realised just how many popular songs are about abuse, and how often they condone it. You don’t have much choice as a choir member about what you sing. So what might seem a straightforward activity, singing in a choir, can involve difficult ethical choices.
I believe I can fly
This came to a head for me in the Summer of 2017. One of the songs we were working on was R Kelly’s ‘I believe I can fly.’ It was not a song I particularly enjoyed, but it seemed an innocuous enough celebration of self-belief. That all changed when I happened to see a TV news item about R Kelly - how he sexually abused girls, recruited them into a cult based on repeated sexual abuse, and manipulated them into being unable to escape.
R Kelly’s fame as a singer, and his coercive control of his victims (which ensured that they would not testify against him), meant that he was not brought to trial. The words of his song then took on a new, and sinister, meaning -
“If I see it, then I can do it…
I believe I can fly….
I believe I can soar.
I see me running through that open door.”
Learning that R Kelly was an abuser was one thing. But seeing how easily his song could be used to justify a man’s sense of entitlement to abuse was another. I knew there was no way I could sing this song. As it happened, I had booked a singing lesson with the choir leader for the following morning. At the end of the session, I mentioned the news item about R Kelly and expressed my concerns about the song. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be. Fortunately, it was unequivocal - “we’ll pull it.”
(R Kelly was eventually brought to trial in 2021, and sentenced to 30 years in jail in 2022)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
When an Elton John song was chosen for a Christmas concert with another choir in 2019, I had qualms because of his role as a poster boy for surrogacy. Singing one of his songs, at the same time as writing a submission to the Law Society in which I was arguing that no man should feel entitled to use a ‘surrogate mother’ to bear ‘his’ child, was not going to be straightforward. But the lyrics were written more than 40 years ago, by Bernie Taupin (Elton John wrote the music), and no way was it about surrogacy.
At one level, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road could be understood as a song about Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or about Judy Garland who played Dorothy, or more generally about the drawbacks of fame (apparently Bernie Taupin was uneasy about the public attention he was given as Elton John’s lyricist). But the more I sang it, the more it seemed to be about sexual abuse. Not condoning it, but from the point of view of the victim:
“I didn’t sign up with you.
I’m not a present for your friends to open.
This boy’s too young to be singing the blues.”
And in the second verse there’s an awareness of the abuser’s mind set, and his exploitation of the victim’s vulnerability -
“Maybe you’ll get a replacement.
There’s plenty like me to be found.
Mongrels who ain’t got a penny.
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground.”
Whether or not it was intended as a song that challenges abuse, it felt good to sing “I’ve finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road” as if it was.
Phantom of the Opera
Earlier in 2019 I enrolled in a one day workshop, working on choral arrangements of songs from Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, then performing them to an invited audience at the end of the day. Abuse reared its ugly head again. The big choral numbers from Phantom chronicled and celebrated the psychological abuse of a young chorus girl (Christine) by the ghost of a much older man (the Phantom). Not only that, they suggested that we should be sympathetic to the Phantom, because he has himself been abused on account of his facial disfigurement. There were echoes here of the Vampire Syndrome (an assumption that if you’ve been abused you’re going to go on to become an abuser) that I have always found troubling and cruel.
Fortunately the most explicitly abusive songs from Phantom of the Opera - ‘The music of the night’ and ‘The point of no return’ - were not included. There is no way I could have sung them. But coercive control was embedded in the opening number that we had to sing:
Christine: “The Phantom of the Opera is there.
Inside my mind”
Phantom: “ My power over you grows stronger yet…
The Phantom of the Opera is there
Inside your mind”
I found that the only way I could live with myself was by miming the passages I felt uncomfortable with.
Calon Lân and Delilah
In another choir session, early in 2020, we had started preparing Calon Lân, in Welsh, for a public performance. Someone suggested that, as a warmup, we sing the Tom Jones song, Delilah - a murder ballad about a jealous man who knifes ‘his woman’ to death because she’s been with another man:
“She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more”
Even miming this song was a step too far. I kept my mouth closed, and noticed that some others were doing the same. Many, however, (and not just men) were belting out the words with great enthusiasm (there was some interesting discussion in the break). Fortunately this was a one-off, and in subsequent weeks we returned to Calon Lân, without having to team it with Delilah.
Calon Lân, in total contrast to the woman hating in Delilah, is life-affirming:
“Calon lân all ganu (none but a pure heart can sing)
Canu’r dydd a chanu’r nos (sing day and sing night)”
An English choir can be forgiven for not understanding the Welsh lyrics of Calon Lân. But the contrast with Delilah is apparent from the totally different energy of the songs. It got me wondering, what is going on if we can sing two such totally different songs with equal enthusiasm? Are we not paying any attention to the words? Or by linking the heart energy of Calon Lân with the brutality of Delilah, do we unconsciously buy in to the lie that crimes of passion are expressions of love?
Later I discovered the connection between the two songs. Both, apparently, were sung before Wales rugby matches. Recently, there have been objections to the singing of Delilah at matches, because it glorifies male violence against women. Tom Jones, the singer who made Delilah a hit back in 1968, replied to these objections by arguing that we shouldn’t take the words literally - “I think it takes the fun out of it” - which implies that dissociation from reality enables femicide to be experienced as ‘fun’.
(This February, the Welsh Rugby Union, mired in a sexism and misogyny scandal, banned choirs from singing Delilah at Six Nations matches in Cardiff)
Non-participation in lies
Domestic abuse researcher Dr Emma Katz has suggested that listening to songs like Delilah endorses a culture that reinforces double standards - they “may give little boosts of confidence and validation to men who have already formed dangerously high levels of entitlement and possessiveness, encouraging them to further pursue the horrific paths down which they are travelling. They may encourage women to engage in the victim-blaming of other women who’ve been abused”.
Absorbing an abusive culture while listening to such songs is one thing. Contributing to that culture by singing them is another. I don’t feel it’s something I could do any more. Not only would it seem dishonest and cowardly, but I can’t help thinking that singing the same abusive songs week after week would start desensitising the brain to abuse. Music moves people, and not always in a good way - singing gives this added power.
Eliza Mondegreen describes the difficulty of being truthful around ‘gender identity’ in situations where we are coerced into affirming a lie. But, she suggests, “you never, ever have to lie about reality.” She stresses the importance of Solzhenitsyn’s dictum: “key to our liberation: a personal non-participation in lies” .
If I were to return to singing in a choir, it might not always be realistic to challenge a song that condoned abuse being sung. In such a situation, would miming rather than singing (and explaining why, if asked) be a cop out? Or would this be a valid compromise that would avoid having to personally participate in a lie, and enable me to remain a member?
No doubt the author of Monsters would dismiss these concerns as being too influenced by contemporary ‘cancel culture’. I’m not so sure.