Refuge in Audacity/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats
And go and put on your cleats
And come and trample me.

    • Tom Lehrer himself says that probably his most controversial song is "The Vatican Rag" which pokes fun at the Roman Catholic Church (specifically at Vatican 2's allowing 'modern' music to be used during Mass.) Even if you don't come from a religious background, it is downright hilarious, even more so if you're a former Christian. The recording, which is a live one, has the audience breaking out in laughter every few seconds. They really did find it just that funny.
      • Tom's introduction for the song gets quite a few laughs, too, especially when he says that the song he's about to perform is "a modest example". When it comes to Tom Lehrer, there is no such thing, and his audience is clearly well aware of that fact.
    • National Brotherhood Week: "Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants. And the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews."
      • From the same song: "National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week: Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek-to-cheek. It's fun to eulogize the people you despise as long as you don't let 'em in your schools...."
  • On the face of it, the popular Bloodhound Gang song "The Bad Touch" is a tactless solicitation of sex. But it gets away with its plethora of overtly sexual imagery because it's so ridiculously over-the-top, it becomes entertaining.
    • Their song "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" composed of sexual innuendo. And yes, the title DOES spell 'Fuck' in NATO phoneic spelling. The music video takes it even further, with such things as a car shaped like a banana becoming unpeeled as it goes through a tunnel.
    • ...Aren't ALL of their songs and videos Refuge in Audacity?
  • Die Arzte are possibly the most famous and successful band in Germany of all time. Since their first days in the early 80s almost every song and music video is a Refuge in Audacity, and two of their early albums have been banned from being displayed on store shelves and played on concerts. In the face of changes in public perception and a rare instance of Reasonable Authority Figures, the responsible agency recognized that they Crossed The Line Twice, and repealed the ban on one in 2004.
  • Knorkator, another Berlin band known for even more ridiculous lyrics, also gets very close to crossing the line in about half of their songs. Some consists almost entirely of swearing or a overly poetic musings about masturbation or feces. "Schwanzlich Willkommen" (dickish welcome) tells that expression Herzlich Willkommen (hearty welcome) doesn't make any sense since a penis is much more suited as an organ to express happy feelings and in fact you can replace the word heart with dick in all expressions.
    • This life performance in which the two vocalists dressed up in tall, stripped cardboard boxes for the last song. At the end of the song, the guitarist appears back on the stage and, well, see for yourself.
  • The band DragonForce crams so many fantasy cliches into every song that it becomes awesome.
  • Amanda Palmer's Oasis Crosses the Line Twice by itself, being a peppy song about rape and abortion, ("I've seen better days, but I don't care/Oasis got my letter in the mail!") but the music video brings in the true audacity to take refuge in.
  • The Ball of Kerrymuir. Jim Croce is a family musician really - except for this one song, which is quite possibly the raunchiest thing you've ever heard. And it is absolutely hilarious. Definitely NSFW.
    • That's a relatively clean version of the song.
  • The Ozzy Osbourne song I Don't Wanna Stop seems to be about this trope. the chorus goes:

All my life I've been over the top
I don't know what I'm doing, all I know is I don't wanna stop

All fired up, gonna go to the top

I'm as real as the world will make me, I don't wanna stop!

Killing
Pandas
For fun and profit
Turn their
Scrotum
Into a wallet
And it fun
To pretend you're killing nuns
Because they're black and white
But don't believe in an afterlife

  • Lou Reed's legendary "Walk on the Wild Side": while his peers were filling their albums and b-sides with shocking tracks, Lou Reed was the only one with the balls to release a single touching on full-time crossdressing, prescription drug abuse, male prostitution, a transwoman buying favors with oral sex (in a verse sometimes cut even today), and (perhaps most shockingly to modern audiences) a racial slur in the chorus, all in what's almost a bored monotone. And the song made top 40.
    • That's nothing. Ever heard "I Wanna Be Black"?
    • Or "Sex With Your Parents (Motherfucker) Part II". The gist of which is that all republican politicians are the way they are because, well, "When they looked into their lover's eyes, they saw MOM!"
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic deserves a mention here, as not many male performers would have the gall to dress up as Madonna and re-enact her own video's moves, shot for shot. Also, he always asks permission to write the parody, so the original artist ends up being condescending with the weirdness!
    • One of his Christmas songs, "Christmas at Ground Zero" (actually a parody of Yogi Yorgesson's "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas") now counts as a Funny Aneurysm Moment. (The song is actually about Communists rather than terrorists.)
  • Sublime did this alot. Wrong Way is about a 12-year-old prostitute, Date Rape is also a good example. Although Bradley Nowell was trying to say that these things were wrong. Other songs used profanity, drug references, etc, etc just for fun.
  • Flight of the Conchords - "If You're Into It". Writing a song to a girl? Cute. Suggesting, in said song, that you should get naked? Weird. Going on to suggest a food sex threesome? Hilarious!
  • Kiss - tame now, but over-the-top when they first appeared. Beyond their image and theatrics (blood-spitting, 12-inch platform boots, fire-breathing, explosions...), KISS' songs included "Nothing to Lose" (about anal sex, on their first album - in 1974!), "Goin' Blind" (a 93-year-old man in love with a 16-year-old girl who's also in love with him), "Larger Than Life" (Gene Simmons bragging about the size of his... "love"), "Shock Me" ("We can come together..."), and "Rocket Ride" ("Come on - grab ahold of my rocket!"). Drummer Peter Criss compared a KISS show to "surviving World War III." They ended up inspiring other bands to go even further, like...
  • G.G. Allin. The Mentors. The Macc Lads. Cannibal Corpse. For starters...
    • Just LOOK at the sort of things he did onstage. Brain Bleach will rapidly be called for.
  • It was back in '32 when times was hard, he had a colt '45 and a deck of cards, Stagger Lee
  • Australian comedy singer/songwriter Kevin Bloody Wilson was about to tour in Canada when he was warned not to use the c-word on-stage. His response? You Can't Say Cunt In Canada.
  • This music video parodying "Tik Tok" By Ke$ha.
  • Lady Gaga. Please to be seeing the Alejandro video. She has quite probably executed the above description to Refuge in Audacity.
  • Tim Minchin in general, but (NSFW - cartoon penis) The Pope Song has got to take the cake. "Storm" is up there, too, with an anecdote about dinner ultimately becoming a ten-minute rant against all things "spiritual."
  • The United States Air Force fighter pilot band Dos Gringos makes this the main ingredient of many, if not most, of their songs.
  • Mastodon got into it with their song "Cut You Up With A Linoleum Knife", from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters soundtrack, which is a how-to guide on theatrical etiquette:

Did you bring your baby? Babies don't watch this!
Take the seed outside!
Leave it in the streets!
RUN OVER IT AFTER THE SHOOOOOOOOW!

  • When an actor needs to establish themselves as "serious", they'll usually play a role that includes lots of sex, drugs and profanity. Natalie Portman had already done that and now needed to show that she wasn't all serious all the time. To do this, she took the road less traveled and rapped a song so absolutely violent and rude that it was just hilarious. With The Lonely Island. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P Qjw 9 Qkz GPU

"All the kids lookin' up to me can suck my dick
it's Portman motherfucker, drink 'til I'm sick!"

  • Eminem built much of his early career on this trope, with almost far too many examples to list, but "My Name Is", "The Real Slim Shady", and "Role Model" are good places to start..
  • Tom Maxwell's song "Ham" has an in-universe example crossed with Rule of Funny. A very large woman comes up to a cash register in a grocery store. Then a ham falls out from under her dress. She turns around and yells, "Who threw that ham at me?"
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