On listening to music that swears

And what my kids have taught me

Last Sunday night we decorated Christmas sugar cookies at the family table with my almost 14-year old son, my almost 12-year old daughter and a little sister who tags along for everything. On the speaker—Tyler the Creator, Mac Miller and our latest favorite, Kneecap, a trio from Ireland who rap in native Irish. What do all these have in common besides being creative, very good music? They all swear, a lot.

I am always surprised by what Mormonism embedded so deeply in me that six years after setting foot in my last Sunday School classroom, I am just discovering the thread that I can pull to examine what is there.

As my kids turn into teenagers, I recognize that parenting is requiring a different set of rules than I had previously ascribed to. Over the past year my two oldest kids, much to my delight, have taken a strong interest in music. Growing up, my dad had a huge record and cassette tape collection and he instilled in me a deep love for good music, “tasty” as he calls it.

From sixth grade on I had my cassette tape player and headphones with me all the time. I was an overly sentimental kid, laying in bed at night crying to The Cranberries, the first Coldplay album, Tom Petty, Belle and Sebastian, and Lauryn Hill. It was a transcendent time for me as I found my favorite bands and songs, and eventually, started going to concerts on the weekends.

There was always a keen awareness though that some music was unacceptable. There was some music I just didn’t listen to or buy because it was the type of music we learned about at youth conference that was “evil”. There were CD’s I just didn’t buy because I knew they’d end up in the bonfire that happened at youth activities where kids brought their favorite albums like sacrificial lambs and threw them into the flames with a renewed hope to “be better”, to rid themselves of the evils of the world.

A few weeks ago, as I drove my son to his soccer game thirty minutes away, he asked to play some songs that he likes. We’ve shared our music with him for years, and I wanted him to know I am interested in what he loves, so he started through his series of current favorite music. I could tell he was a little hesitant, even though we’ve talked about the fact that I’m okay with him making the choices about what he listens to, (though I did tell him I’m not okay with anything violent or diminishing of any other human and their body.)

It felt a little different though as song after song used the full spectrum of swear words and we sat on either side of it. I felt as if it were a sort of test, and I think I’m not wrong. I could see my son watching my reaction, to see if I approved of his music, and ultimately of him. At first, all those lessons from church came rising up in me. All those years of believing that people who experienced the world in very different ways than my Mormon upbringing were “evil”. I let the feelings come, and then instead of speaking them aloud, I just listened with him. I liked his music, genuinely, and the more I was excited about what he was showing me, the more he opened up and showed me more.

Remy is a tender kid, one that tells me he eats with kids who are on their own at lunch. He’s not perfect, of course, but one who is treading into the world trying to figure out who he is and often I see him coming back to this idea that kindness and openness is a tenet of his character. I only write this to remind myself of the lines I drew and the judgments I made about kids who listened to music that swore, and just how untrue they were and are.

I see that the music Remy listens to is just as important to his development as mine was to me. I see the way his voice quickens when he tells me about the way the bass shook his whole body at the first concert he went to a few weeks ago. That is important. That is life. I know the musician he went to see swears in his lyrics. He gave my son that moment of connection to himself and his body.

As a kid, even with my non-judgmental, former surfer hippie parents, I would have never listened to this type of music with them around. I was so adept at policing myself, that I would have thrown the music in the bonfire without them implying that I should. I stepped so far back from any line that I simply was not aware of so much. I was afraid of the people who swore, wary of their culture and way of being. Scared of whatever it was that led them to make music that I believed would not be approved if Jesus himself were in the room listening with me.

I realize now, as a parent, that my kids will enter a diverse world with or without me. My disapproval will not change what they love, it will only make them feel guilty about it.

What I’ve recognized over the past year is just how judgmental and dismissive I had spent most of my life being. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I see how this idea that because someone swears, sings about sex and sexuality (I see you Doja Cat), or simply comes from a culture that is not my own, is so dismissive of humanity in general. It is a tool of separation and piety that actually doesn’t serve us in the ways we believe it is.

Ultimately, I’ve had to sit with the idea that I believed, and am in the process of rooting out this belief still, that I am better than someone else because that is not necessarily how I grew up engaging with the world. I am untangling binaries between good and evil and realizing that neither word is serving me.

I want my kids to grow up knowing that what and who they are does not belong to the camp of “good” or “evil” and in the same way, they don’t have to do the laborious and demeaning work of assigning value to other humans either. I mean, of course I get that there are some real atrocities done by people will terrible motives (like I hope my kids choose not to listen to P Diddy because of what he has done to so many women), and I want them to be aware of that, but that is not the type of people and actions I am talking about in this moment.

I am just in the middle of this uncovering. I am just recently allowing myself to listen to a wider breadth of music than I would have previously. I am just realizing how much I still held on to this idea of my music being “bad or evil” and by extension, my listening to it making me “bad or evil”. So much of this is still living in my subconscious and it is seeing light for the first time. honestly, exciting work!

I am letting myself listen to so much music without guilt that I previously had listened to with still a twinge of guilt buried in there. Again, I see you Doja Cat.

My kids are widening my horizons and asking me to engage with hard questions and l love them for that. It is a joy to know what they love and to love it alongside them.