March 30, 2015 | Posted in LGBT THEMES, MUSIC | By Arthur Chappell
The Little Big Town Girl Crush Controversy.
A new country and western song has run into controversy and banning on US Country music stations for supposedly promoting lesbian love.
Not only is the ban rooted in intense homophobia, the song has absolutely nothing to do with lesbianism anyway. It’s about a woman wishing she had the looks, blonde hair and perfumes of another girl who the man she herself admires, pays attention to. She wishes she was the other girl so that she could experience the warmth, proximity and tenderness that she imagines the other girl is enjoying with the guy in question. The singer wants to kiss the other girl, but only because she will taste of the man she really has the crush for.
It is a daring, sensual song, but by no means deserving of any kind of ban or controversy, either for its actual themes or the lesbian subtext being manufactured around it by the country radio stations.
The title is misleading as it isn’t really a song about a crush, but a song about envy and fantasizing about being in another body. The lyrics are set to quite a gentle melody.
The video on Youtube is certainly not lesbian, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWecuhUUvX0
It has no people in it at all, but shows a slow moving camera reading the lyrics off perfume bottles, messages on steamed up mirrors and written on carpet fabric.
The ban is a typical redneck knee-jerk reaction which can only help to sky-rocket the song’s record sales even without airplay and get the record stations reacting like jerks a lot of angry backlash from music fans and the LGBT community in general.
The ban seems to be a response to orchestrated listener complaints, but with many more listeners rallying to defend the song and state obvious facts about its content being taken out of context, the stations can afford to ignore the complaints anyway. Neither Little Big Town or the US LGBT community need this kind of nonsense stopping music fans enjoying a totally inoffensive song.
The reactions on Youtube and on forums covering the story of this senseless ban are overwhelmingly supportive for the song and its writers, Lori McKenna and The Love Junkies. As with other songs banned for giving offence to a few vociferous bigots, the controversy can only boost record sales and make Little Big Town a big big city sound in Nashville.
Arthur Chappell
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sockii
March 30, 2015
As you say, the controversy is only going to bring more attention to the song and the artist – I certainly had not heard of it until now as I don’t normally listen to country music stations. I’m not surprised by the close-mindedness but it’s sad, because it shows that people aren’t even listening to the lyrics of the song and what it’s really about.