East coast exports Sleepless Nights want to save future generations of musicians from foot-in-mouth disease with a little public service announcement in the form of a single. “Pink Popcorn” gets woke when it comes to loose language in lewd lyrics.A.A. Wallace, Sleepless Nights’ frontman, says that some rock classics are more than a little problematic in hindsight and, “Let’s not do that.”
While whole portions of the industry seem to be not only exempt from but also actually thrive on the extremes of misogyny, Wallace refers to many artists whose lyrics you’d expect to be far more innocent. These are songs that might not be overtly sexist, but Wallace says he feels that they do set a dangerous precedent.
“The songs we love and that are huge parts of pop culture are insanely misogynistic, but that gets subverted by nostalgia,” says Wallace.
“Now that the world is getting more and more woke, how too do we listen to the lyrics of Axl Rose or even Mick Jagger? How can a song like ‘Rocket Queen’ or ‘Brown Sugar’ be played on the radio? Driving around with classic rock radio for most people is not an academic exercise. The rules mentioned in ‘Pink Popcorn’ are songwriting conventions and clichés that really we should be done with.
“There are songs I’ve written that I won’t do anymore. There’s the whole sex/drugs/rock roll thing. Pop music is mainly a product of the middle of the last century. That’s not known for being a great time for most groups of people, but the form was established and songwriters kept playing in that sandbox. If you go back to even people like Carol King or Paul Williams, they wrote songs that seemed innocent at the time and come across as horror stories now. Early stuff like “Go Away Little Girl” is kind of insane. Even “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” while not expressly so, kind of makes the singer seem self victimizing in a vulgar way.
“Most songs with questionable lyrics don’t cause outrage. They make people uncomfortable. It’s easy to shrug off discomfort. Then nothing happens. That’s my take on it, but I’m not the word police. I didn’t pass the word police training academy entrance exam. Mostly I just write about death and cigarettes now.”
Sleepless Nights have yet to announce any upcoming East Coast tour dates, but Wallace hints that a Spring tour is in the works. In the meantime, the band are looking at pressing their two most recent singles on vinyl for a double A-side, with several more Sleepless Nights tunes queued up for release.