Thanks, but honey, I am not good

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Honey I'm goodIf you are anything like me, you have realized that you cannot go many places without hearing Andy Grammer’s hit single “Honey, I’m Good.” And when you do hear it, good luck trying to get the melody out of your head.

As fun as this song is (I will admit it, it is pretty catchy), I have found some serious issues with it. “Honey, I’m Good” (which has been on the Billboard Top 100 chart for 31 weeks and peaked at number nine) is supposed to be about a man who is pursued by a woman at a bar, but he tells her again and again that he is already taken and he will stay true to his wife/girlfriend.

Because of this, girls and women who listen to this song are fawning over Grammer’s fidelity (just look at Twitter, YouTube and iTunes comments). And yes, even though this song is supposed to be about faithfulness, there is evidence to suspect the choice of “staying true” was not an easy one.

Despite his “fidelity,” in the song, Grammer refers to his pursuer as “honey” and “baby,” and even goes as far as telling her “you look good, I will not lie” and saying she has “got that ass.”

Should women (especially the strong women of Webster University) be praising this song to be as “cute and sweet” as we seem to think it is? It is frustrating to me. If I were the woman waiting for Grammer to get back from the bar, yes, I would be happy to know he at least came home. But I would not be very happy to find out there was a woman pursuing my man, and that he repeatedly called her “baby,” “honey” and complimented her body more than once.

Now I am not saying Grammer is a bad guy, I just want to know why women continue to refer to this as such a sweet song. If a man were really true, he would not be going around telling random women how great they look, especially their rear areas.

“Honey, I’m Good” is not the only song on the radio to fall into this trap. Omi’s hit single “Cheerleader,” which has been on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 23 weeks and peaked at number one, preaches his affection for his girlfriend. As much as I like the song, I do not understand why the lyrics have to mention “all these other girls are tempting.” The lyrics go farther when these “other girls” ask Omi if they make him “feel like cheating,” to which he responds “not really.” Oh, good. If I was his girlfriend, I would sure be glad to know that my boyfriend “does not really” feel like cheating (sarcasm, people). Yet, just like “Honey, I’m Good,” I hear women say all the time how “cute and sweet” the song is.

We all know many songs out there that are directly degrading to women or at least portray them in an explicitly sexual light (just look at “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj). A Public Health Reports 2008 study about degrading sex in popular music found that 36.9 percent of the 279 songs studied contained references to sexual activity. Of those songs, 65 percent of the sexual activity references were made in a degrading manner. It is easy to pick out songs that obviously contain this negative content when majority of the lyrics are degrading to women. The problem is that songs that are supposed to be praising women in a positive light still contain hidden messages that women should not feel confident because their boyfriends are likely to cheat on them. Which is why I have a problem with even the supposedly “cutest” and “sweetest” songs, because they still are not fully what they should be.

I want to make it clear that not all songs fall into this trap. Sure, there are still the ones that truly praise women positively, recent ones being songs like John Legend’s “All Of Me” and Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud.” But by listening to hit music channels on the radio, these songs do not seem to be the majority.

Songs that are supposed to be praising women should not leave us feeling like we still have to worry about being cheated on. Women want to know that we can be praised for who we are; we do not want to think that we still have to question our partner’s faithfulness. I encourage the ladies of Webster to think every lyric through before choosing songs to play at your future wedding.

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