Freudian Excuse/Music
Examples of Freudian Excuses in Music include:
- In West Side Story The Jets playfully make a song, "Gee, Officer Krupke" out of this.
My daddy beats my mommy |
- Or, in the alternate lyric from the stage play:
My father is a bastard |
- As quoted above, John Flansburgh (of They Might Be Giants fame) has recorded a song called "It Never Fails", about cops manipulating the psychological problems of criminals in order to keep their arrest quotas up.
- Anna Russell's song "Jolly Old Sigmund Freud."
At three I had a feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers, |
- A particularly Anvilicious case is Harry Chapin's "Sniper," about a boy whose mother never makes time for him, so he grows up to be a deranged mass murderer who explicitly voices his hatred for her at the climax. Can be considered a darker version of Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle."
- The person the singer is singing to in "Numb" by Linkin Park has one, apparently ("but I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you").
- Same in "Points of Authority":
You want someone to hurt like you (you live what you've learned) |
- The Sara Bareilles song "Machine Gun," about the jerk whose sole purpose in life is to aggravate those around him:
Maybe nobody loved you when you were young |
- The Wound that Never Heals by Jim White, is about a Black Widow. It has this to say about her backstory:
She runs from devils, she runs from angels |
- Pseudothyrum Song by The Mountain Goats
I think someone was mean to you, when you were little |
- Had Enough by Breaking Benjamin may be an example of this trope, as it could be about an Omnicidal Maniac who is motivated by hatred for someone, possibly his father.
You should have learned by now, I'll burn this whole world down |
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