Julie Fontes tries to trick children into thinking. She is having opinions in Ventura, CA and on stupeh.com.
I am a thirty-year-old former partying teenager and believer in the potential for good and must write to you about how I strongly dislike Katy Perry and other similar creatures. This isn’t a case of the playa’ hatin but the result of being forced by everyone and my daughter to listen to popular songs. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my lovely and intelligent young daughter has developed a taste for top 40 hits. I understand that the popularity of anything at her age has a great influence on whether or not she will see the value in it. I also have a number of peers who are fans of pop music. It is not my job to correct the lack of taste in my peers, but as far as my child goes, it is a never-ending war, and I’m pleased to announce that my side won the battle against Katy Perry.
Well my first attempts during the auditory invasion that has been Miss Perry were just weak declarations of disgust. When ‘California Girls’ came on I would just tell her, “this song is awful.” Unfortunately, ten-year-old girls are not concerned with their mothers’ opinions on music. This is one of the reasons why I don’t understand the point of children. In fact, I think I’ll ask her what the point of her is when I pick her up from school today. Maybe she’ll make one of her confused ‘what do you mean?’ faces, and I can answer my own question by being amused at her looks.
I think parents of teens, preteens, and pretweens should definitely not talk down to their kids about their bad taste in music, but should find creative ways to ensure that our kids think about what they are listening and singing along to. So, I finally broke the meaning of Katy’s lyrics down to the child when the song ‘Last Friday night’ just became too much for me to bear. Miss Perry dug her own grave where the young ones are concerned because every time my child plays this song I have a new opportunity to disgust her at what is actually happening in the lyrics. I’m like, “Hey guess what a menage a trois is! That is where three people have sex with each other!”
At first my daughter just pretended it didn’t affect her and that she had total loyalty to the song, but my full disclosure must have sunk in because a week after she found out that this song was mostly about getting drunk, my daughter told me she didn’t like Katy Perry anymore. Win.
If you don’t know what they are, here are the lyrics of the song that I wanted my daughter to stop singing.
Some people may think that I’m being an uptight stickler about this, but this is a very upbeat anthem for binge-drinking and being a jerk. The thing is that music is a big part of our culture. It’s blaring out of our car windows, playing at our kids’ dances, and mostly getting stuck in our heads. If a set of lyrics is going to be repeating itself in anyone’s head, especially mine, I would like it to say something that’s less shallow than ‘yeah we maxed out credit cards, oh well.’ I don’t want children or people in general to ever think that anything that happens in this song is cool. Except for streaking. I actually am a fan of streaking.
One Comment
I agree. I am a freshman in high school and I obviously listen to a lot of pop music..stuff that’s on the radio and some things do bother me. When I was in 8th grade I had to go to rehab for alcohol abuse. In rehab we were taught not to listen to music like katy perry or lil wayne. A lot of the new music influences teens to drink or smoke or party. It makes us feel like we are cool and that it’s okay to get messed up, when in reality…it’ not okay. In reality, you can go party and drink and all that “fun” stuff but you could end up dead, in the hospital, you could loose a friend, and many other horrible things.
I think it’s unreasonable to ask teens to stop listening to music like that because it is so popular but i do think it’s reasonable to ask teens to really think about what they are listening to and think about what they’re values and beliefs are before they make any grown up decisions…such as drinking.