Previously in this series: Which girl is the most dead?
Men in rock songs want two things: they want women who act like children, and they want children who act like women. Send a man into a topsy-turvy world where infants tower in ten-inch stilettos and grown women sprawl on the ground helplessly, mewling for milk and diamonds, and he will be happy.
How old is Woman? Is she older than Time itself, or is she secretly just a child? Is she both? Is she everything? What does she need? To be held like a child? To be instructed like a child? To be fed and bathed and read The Dark is Rising to every night and allowed to go to summer camp if she’s good like a child? To be sent to grammar school promptly at 7:35 every weekday morning with her homework and an allergy-free lunch in her ergonomic bookbag like a child?
Woman is all of these things. But which Woman is most of these things?
Song: ”Always a Woman”
Songwriter: Billy Joel
How much like a child is she?: “She can ruin your faith with her casual lies/ And she only reveals what she wants you to see/ She hides like a child, but she’s always a woman to me.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: She “takes care of herself,” which is a strike against her favor, because children are notoriously lax when it comes to being self-sufficient. Her smile can kill, but her face becomes significantly less lethal closer to the hairline, as her eyes can only wound. She is “ahead” of her own time, stranded somewhere in the timestream eons away from the world of her birth. She is old and yet young. She is a murderer who routinely slices Billy Joel. And yet on some level her Childlike Powers are limited in our mortal world — the “most” she can do is “throw shadows at you,” which suggests that her killing smile has no affect on human men. A curious case.
Song: ”Hot Child in the City”
Songwriter: Nick Gilder
How much like a child is she?: “Danger in the shape of somethin’ wild/ Stranger dressed in black, she’s a hungry child/ No one knows who she is or what her name is/ I don’t know where she came from or what her game is”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: This child is very childlike. She does not even have a name, although she is swathed in black. She is hungry all the time, and the narrator would like to have sex with her in his very own apartment. She runs with abandon and comes from nowhere. All the boys want to take her home, and her game is secret. Nothing about her makes any sense. She is a tiny, sultry puzzle in a city with no name.
Song: “She’s Like a Child”
Songwriter: Dyllon Marshall
How much like a child is she?: “She’s like a child that don’t know no better/ And I’ve been told that I’m no good to love her/ But that don’t mean a thing to me/ ’Cause when she’s in my arms/ She’s all the woman that I need.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: One of the hallmarks of the sexy girl-child is not knowing what’s best for herself, and this particular girl-child doesn’t have a clue. He is bad for her, but she is too uneducated to realize this, and remains locked in his arms, trapped in a meat-prison of man-flesh. She is so sexy she cannot move. A very hot baby indeed.
Song: “Like a Child”
Songwriter: Tamyra Gray
How much like a child is she?: “She says love me/ Tell me you need me/ Just like it should be/ I am a child I am human / She says hold me/ Don’t set me free/ Always protect me/ Like a child only human.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: Many of the sexiest babies are in a great deal of sexy, sexy pain, and this child is no exception. More than anything, she longs to be put in prison, where she will be treated like a human.
Song: “Just Like a Woman”
Songwriter: Bob Dylan
How much like a child is she?: “Ev’rybody knows/ That Baby’s got new clothes/ But lately I see her ribbons and her bows/ Have fallen from her curls/ She takes just like a woman, yes she does/ She makes love just like a woman, yes she does/ And she aches just like a woman/ But she breaks just like a little girl.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: This woman cannot even keep a ribbon in her hair. She is a mess. Very childlike. Also, she is not impervious to pain and her bones are fragile. Very hot, this woman, whose limbs are constantly snapping and whose hair is falling limply to the floor.
Song: “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”
Songwriter: Urge Overkill
How much like a child is she?: “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon,/ Please, come take my hand/ Girl, you’ll be a woman soon,/ Soon, you’ll need a man.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: She has limited time left. Soon adulthood will come for her, and she will no longer be Interesting. He will watch her grow up. He has been watching her for a long time. Sexily.
Song: “Walks Like a Lady”
Songwriter: The Steve Miller Band
How much like a child is she?: “You know she walks like a lady/ But she acts like a child/ She can drive you crazy/ Yeah, she can drive you wild/ Talks like a baby/ But she looks like a lady to me.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: Face of a woman. Behavior of a child. Gait of an adult human. Voice of an infant. She is the complete package. Is she ten? Is she thirty-five? Is it illegal and unethical to have sex with her, or is it normal and fine and great? Follow her. You’ll find out. Then you will go mad, and be placed in an institution.
Song: ”Young Girl”
Songwriter: Gary Puckett and the Union Gap
How much like a child is she?: ”Young girl, get out of my mind/ My love for you is way out of line/ Better run, girl/ You’re much too young, girl/ With all the charms of a woman/ You’ve kept the secret of your youth/ You led me to believe/ You’re old enough/ To give me love/ And now it hurts to know the truth.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: Perhaps the hottest baby of them all. “Beneath your perfume and your make-up/ You’re just a baby in disguise.” A baby in disguise! How did she even develop the motor skills necessarily to apply makeup so cunningly? Most babies have trouble even unscrewing a lipstick tube. This baby has layers upon sexy layers.
Song: ”Good Girl Gone Bad”
Songwriter: KISS
How much like a child is she?: ”She ain’t nothin’ like you ever had/ Face of a woman, hands of a child, yeah/ Been a long time comin’, now she’s goin’ wild.”
Overall Hot Baby Quotient: A woman-baby Frankenstein on the brink of insanity. Her body has been cobbled together from various toddlers and tweens and women who have achieved sexual maturity. She’s out of control, but he knows the score. She did not wish to find love, but love was hiding in the back of his car, which she probably found sitting in her state-mandated rear-facing child’s carrier. Hot.
Winner: In a surprising upset, all of them. Each woman is a delicious soft-serve swirl of adult and eeny-teeny-weeny widdle baby, morphing into adulthood and then spiraling back into toddlerhood on a moment’s notice. They will all strike and stab and kick at you if given half a chance, but this will be almost immediately be followed up with some serious loving. Their hands and faces are the hands and faces of grown-up hot chicks, but their minds and voices are those of Li’l Baby Dumplin’. Enjoy your mix-and-match sexual treasures, fellas. Someday they will be older than you.
Tags: billy joel, girls, goo goo ga ga, infantilism, like a child, music
“Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” was written by Neil Diamond.
Good for him!
What would you guys have named the Childlike Empress? It’s a big responsibility. Maybe ‘Heather.’
I was always far too overwhelmed by said big responsibility to even think about it.
These songs are all creepy.
Tiffani
Nevaeh
Mykynzi
Dagmar
Put am thumb-sucking toddler in high heels and the lyrics just write themselves.
(Sorry, must excuse myself, have made myself ill.)
“Is it illegal and unethical to have sex with her, or is it normal and fine and great?”
ahhh this is the best.
so….am I the only one who doesn’t have the patience for Bob Dylan? like, i just can’t. maybe b/c Just Like a Woman put me off initially, but really i just find him *boring*.
i am open to other interpretations, really.
You are not the only one. I don’t talk about it much, because, who needs the hassle of the outraged, but: YAWN.
I think he’s one of those artists that meant a lot more in his time.
“Just Like a Woman” is so gross, though.
I don’t feel strongly anti-him, but I get so annoyed with hipstery stores and coffee shops constantly playing him. I can never relax when Bob Dylan is on. Something about his weird cadence is so distracting. It demands to be listened to! And I don’t want to sit around and actively listen to Bob Dylan most of the time!
My sister and I quote Dylan lyrics to back up our arguments the way religious folk use bible quotes (unapologetic cherrypicking included). e.g.
“I’m not sure how I feel about x situation”
“Well, ‘when something’s not right, it’s wrong.'”
I have some friends and had a college “history of rock” (thank you, community college) instructor who effing love that dude. I appreciate his importance in the overall scheme of popular music and culture but gotDAMN he bores me. Also, I was born after 1965.
So Billy Joel invented “throwing shade” then?
“Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
I’ll always remember you like a child, girl”
Oh and the rest of the song where Cat Stevens is reminding this person that people are big bad meanies. Oy.
That song has been forever ruined/improved for me by the Skins Series 1 finale.
arrgghhh yes I don’t trust people who love this song, it makes me hate him. Like, I THINK SHE WILL BE FINE IN THE BIG SCARY WORLD Cat Stevens, stop being condescending and creepy
I know this is stupid, but I thought it was about a daughter for a long time. I had never actually paid attention to the lyrics. It was always less creepy that way.
It’s not about his daughter? This is worse than finding out about santa.
I blame How to Deal for this confusion. Peter Gallagher and his magnificent eyebrows played it for his daughter and so I thought, “Okay. That’s sweet”. It’s actually about an ex-girlfriend. Plus, if you read the lyrics, it’s kind of a passive aggressive fuck you.
MALLORY this made me so so so sossosososososososososososo uncomfortable
An addendum to Bob Dylan: in “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, there’s a line that goes “I once loved a woman, I child I’m told/I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul.” More children! Is he singing about the same child? Does this girl need the power from consuming raw human hearts in order to mend her constantly breaking limbs? Does she seek to feed upon the eternal human soul, that she may use it to strengthen her limbs of glass and never break them again?
Bob Dylan was trying to warn us, but we did not listen.
Sam Cooke’s “Only Sixteen” used to creep me out but then I read the lyrics and it’s from his 16 year-old perspective so I guess young love is a fine song topic. Just fine.
“Younger Girl” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. I think/hope that it’s from the perspective of a slightly-older teenager, but it’s not really clear.
A younger girl keeps a-rollin’ ‘cross my mind/And should I hang around, acting like her brother/In a few more years, they’d call us right for each other/And why, if I wait I’ll just die, yeah
I remember her eyes, soft dark and brown/Said, “She’d never been in trouble, even in town
Also, he “can’t seem to leave her memory behind,” which makes me wonder if he killed her.
So what you’re saying is that that line about her memory is faintly macabre? *rimshot* Thank you! Try the veal!
Compare/Contrast: Paul Kelly’s “You’re 39, you’re beautiful and you’re mine” and “Big, fine woman”.
Late 70s/early 80s Upstate NY favorite Benny Mardones, with his one big hit, “Into the Night”:
She’s just sixteen years old / Leave her alone, they say / Separated by fools / Who don’t know what love is yet / But I want you to know
If I could fly, I’d pick you up / I’d take you into the night / And show you a love / Like you’ve never seen, ever seen
So, in essence, she’s not only a child, she’s a child that is obsessed over by a giant, man-sized bird. A man-sized bird with feathered hair.
My sister and I quote Dylan lyrics to back up our arguments the way religious folk use bible quotes (unapologetic cherrypicking included). e.g.
"I'm not sure how I feel about x situation"
"Well, 'when something's not right, it's wrong.'"
arrgghhh yes I don't trust people who love this song, it makes me hate him. Like, I THINK SHE WILL BE FINE IN THE BIG SCARY WORLD Cat Stevens, stop being condescending and creepy
I love this series! I think another idea could be: Who Doesn’t Know Their Own Beauty? So many songs say someone is beautiful because they don’t know how beautiful they are…
Covered here: Who Is The Saddest Girl
1D: You don’t know you’re beautiful.
ETA: I am wrong, this song is not mentioned. Not sure where I got this, but yes, I agree that this needs to be done, post haste, Mallory!
I know this is stupid, but I thought it was about a daughter for a long time. I had never actually paid attention to the lyrics. It was always less creepy that way.
Did anyone else’s mind go here with the KISS interpretation?
I blame How to Deal for this confusion. Peter Gallagher and his magnificent eyebrows played it for his daughter and so I thought, "Okay. That's sweet". It's actually about an ex-girlfriend. Plus, if you read the lyrics, it's kind of a passive aggressive fuck you.