'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.'
So ran the opening line of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between. The book was published back in 1953, but Hartley’s aphorism is just as applicable to popular music. You don’t need to be a Gen-Z prig to appreciate that certain attitudes that were perfectly OK in the past are no longer acceptable today, from drink-driving to sex with underage girls.
Some attitudes were never acceptable, but rock stars expressed them anyway. And political sentiments can quickly get outdated. Here’s our list of shame.
1. Mungo Jerry: 'In the Summertime' (1970)
Almost 100 years after the first law was passed prohibiting being drunk in charge of a carriage and two years after the breathalyser was introduced, Mungo Jerry expressed in song the notion that it might be a good idea to 'have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find'.
‘In the Summertime’ was a huge international hit, shifting millions of copies back in 1970 and was number one on the UK singles chart for seven weeks. In 1992, the UK government hit upon the idea of co-opting the song as part of its Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives public information campaign, so this catchy classic did some good after all.
2. Rainbow: 'All Night Long' (1979)
For many of us who loathed punk and were waiting for rock music to come roaring back, Rainbow represented a link to the past and a bridge to the future, as former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore carved out a new path for himself. But after the first two great Rainbow studio albums with Ronnie James Dio, he opted for a more mainstream commercial direction with 1979’s Down to Earth album, which featured vocals by Graham Bonnet.
The second single from the album, ‘All Night Long’ is a boastful tale of male sexual prowess directed at a groupie, with the unfortunate line, 'Don’t know about your brain, but you look alright'. Bassist and co-writer Roger Glover later compounded the offence by saying that the song was supposed to be funny. ‘Sexism is No Joke’, responded music paper Sounds in a double-page spread.
3. Roy Harper: 'Forbidden Fruit' (1974)
In the post-Gary Glitter paedophile panic, everybody wondered who would be the next pop star to get their collar felt. Keen students of his lyrics feared the worst for Roy Harper, given that ‘Forbidden Fruit’, the opening song from his 1974 album Valentine, reads like a confession: 'Baby, make me calm your fears/Let me hold your thirteen years', etcetera.
Sure enough, in 2013 Harper was charged with ten counts of alleged historic child sexual abuse with an underage female. The case reached court two years later and he was found not guilty of two of the charges. The remaining ones were subsequently dropped.
4. Winger: 'Seventeen' (1989)
“She’s only seventeen/Daddy says she’s too young but she’s old enough for me”. It wasn’t just daddy who took this view. Seventeen is underage is several US jurisdictions. Hunksome, hairy-chested rocker Kip Winger, formerly of Alice Cooper’s group, later claimed to be unaware of the inconvenient fact, but by then the song was his band’s biggest hit and he had to play it every night.
Winger says he was inspired by the Beatles hit ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, which also mentions a 17-year-old girl. Fun fact: Winger was romantically linked to the decidedly adult Rachel Hunter before she married Rod Stewart.
5. Guns n’ Roses: 'One in a Million' (1988)
Guns n’ Roses’ most unappealing song, the acoustic closing track on 1988's G N' R Lies mini-album, was Axl Rose’s autobiographical account of arriving in LA on a Greyhound bus from Indiana. Racism, homophobia... it’s got the lot, all expressed in the crudest possible terms. Various members of the band disagreed with the song’s sentiments – including guitarist Slash, whose mother is black – but Axl could not be dissuaded from including it, with predictable results.
Interestingly, Guns n’ Roses haven’t played ‘One in a Million’ live since 1988 and it was omitted from a reissue of the album that was included with the 2018 box set of Appetite for Destruction. No explanation was given.
6. The Rolling Stones: 'Brown Sugar' (1971)
The opening track on 1971's peerless Sticky Fingers album and a number one hit around the world, ‘Brown Sugar’ is an undeniably catchy Stones song, albeit with a deeply unpleasant lyrical undertone. Although credited to Jagger and Richards, the lyrics were written by Mick Jagger alone while filming Ned Kelly in Australia. The references to slavery made the band increasingly uncomfortable and, despite its popularity, the song was dropped from the Stones’ live set in 2022.
7. Neil Diamond 'Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon' (1967)
'Girl, you'll be a woman soon/Soon you'll need a man'. Neil Diamond’s lecherous account of an older man’s lust for an underage girl is genuinely creepy. Incredibly, it’s been covered by Cliff Richard, although the most famous version is the one Chicago alt. rockers by Urge Overkill, which was used on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
8. Chuck Berry 'My Ding-a-Ling' (1972)
Tragically, to an entire generation Chuck Berry is known not as a great rock and roll pioneer but for his chart topping cover of US band leader Dave Bartholomew’s throwaway, double entendre-laden song, which is either about his penis or a small bell, according to perspective. Disapproving self-styled morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse certainly knew what she thought and called (unsuccessfully) for a ban.
9. Scorpions 'Wind of Change' (1991)
Rudolf Schenker and Klaus Meine of German rockers Scorpions are both old enough to remember the Berlin Wall going up. So it’s hardly surprising that they took a keen interest in East/West politics, playing the Moscow Music Peace Festival and touring the Soviet Union in 1989, becoming the second Western heavy rock band (after Utiah Heep in 1987) to do so.
A celebration of glasnost and the end of the Cold War, 1991’s ‘Wind of Change’ became one of the biggest selling singles of all time. Shame the mood of hope was subsequently dashed by Vladimir Putin. To their credit, the Scorpions have recently revised the lyric to include a reference to the invasion of Ukraine.
10. Rod Stewart 'Maggie May' (1971)
'Wake up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school.' Now it’s quite possible that the singer is a schoolteacher. Or the young Rodney is sleeping in someone’s spare bed. But subsequent lyrics make it clear that he’s been led away from home, 'just to save you from being alone'.
‘Maggie May’ is a rare example of a song about a boy being taken advantage of by an older woman, rather than a young girl being preyed upon by a lascivious rock star. Rod has said the song is autobiographical. It certainly struck a chord, being at number one for what seemed like forever in 1971 (though it was actually only five weeks – time passes more slowly when you’re a kid).
11. Aerosmith 'Walk This Way' (1975)
Writing a song about a sexual encounter with a teenage girl might be seen as unfortunate. Writing a song about sexual encounters with multiple teenage girls begins to look like an admission to a pattern of offending. The irresistible song that kicked off the rap-rock phenomenon was first released way back in 1975 and charted in two separate decades. Brilliantly, the title of Aerosmith’s signature hit is taken from Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’. The censors didn’t seem to notice, or understand, the lyrics.
12. The Beatles – 'Run for Your Life' (1965)
Closing out the otherwise masterful Rubber Soul, this track is a jarring example of 'casual' domestic threats. Borrowing a line from an old Elvis Presley song ("I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man"), Lennon creates a narrative of extreme possessiveness and lethal jealousy.
While written in the persona of a jealous lover, the explicit threats of violence feel predatory rather than poetic. Lennon himself later distanced himself from the work, calling it his 'least favourite Beatles song' and admitting he wrote it under pressure to fill the album.
13. AC/DC – 'Let Me Put My Love Into You' (1980)
Appearing on the record-breaking Back in Black, this mid-tempo track attempted to blend the band’s signature high-voltage rock with a more 'romantic' lyric. However, the result is deeply unsettling by modern standards. The lines 'Don't you struggle / Don't you fight / Don't you worry 'cause it's only the night' strip away the element of enthusiastic consent, leaning into a predatory, non-consensual subtext.
While often dismissed as typical 80s rock bravado, the imagery of forcing an encounter makes it a difficult listen in an era more attuned to the nuances of sexual agency.
14. The Rolling Stones: 'Some Girls' (1978)
The title track of their 1978 comeback album is a masterclass in musical groove but a disaster in lyrical sensitivity. In an attempt to satirize the dizzying variety of the New York City dating scene, Mick Jagger leaned heavily into crude, offensive racial and ethnic stereotypes. One specific line regarding the sexual expectations of Black women was so inflammatory that it sparked protests and boycotts by civil rights groups upon the song's release.
Though Jagger defended it at the time as a parody of 'cliché' thinking, he later expressed regret for the hurt it caused.
15. Mötley Crüe: 'Ten Seconds to Love' (1983)
Appearing on the band’s breakout album Shout at the Devil, 'Ten Seconds to Love' is a quintessential example of the 'Sunset Strip' era's obsession with shock value and hyper-masculinity. The lyrics detail an encounter in a public elevator, framed not as a mutual romantic moment but as a predatory conquest.
Public indecency and the cornering of a woman in a confined space as rock 'n' roll bravado: no wonder 'Ten Seconds to Love' doesn't get many airings nowadays. In a modern context, the power dynamic described feels less like a rebellious fantasy and more like a textbook description of sexual harassment. While Mötley Crüe built their brand on being 'the world's most notorious rock band', this track highlights the thin line between 80s theatrical sleaze and frankly intimidating behaviour.
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