Did you guys have weird/”problematic” children’s songs when you were younger?

20 comments

1. I used to have a cassette with different children’s songs and there was one in particular that was extremely racist towards a black woman. The cassette was from the 90s and looking back I just find it so weird that a song like this was on it.
   It went something like “Is the black cook here? There she is, there she goes, the cook from America! Pitch (the black substance), pitch, pitch!” And then children were laughing.

   I’m almost too embarrassed to post this, because it’s so bad. The other songs on it were perfectly normal, well known children’s songs though.

2. There was a variation on “Jesus Christ, Superstar” that seemed to do the rounds in British Primary Schools in the 1980s.

   Lyrics included:

   *Jesus Christ, Superstar,*

   *Went for a ride on his Yamaha,*

   *Did a skid,*

   *Killed a kid,*

   *Knackered his balls on a dustbin lid*

   At my school it was:

   *Jesus Christ, Superstar,*

   *Came down from Heaven on a Yamaha*

   *He wears frilly knickers and a Playtex bra*

   We also had hymns that were sung in school assemblies, many of which were ‘modified’ or emphasised in the wrong places.

   For example, *Lord of the Dance* usually had the line “I am the Lord of the dance, said he” changed to “I am the Lord of the dance settee”.

   *Were you There?* had the chorus changed so we practically screamed the line “I was cold, I was naked. Were you there, were you there?”, with obvious emphasis on ‘naked’, haha.

3. We’ve got one in Belgium (“papegaai is ziek”) that goes like this if translated to English:

   —

   Parrot is sick and he has to die

   Make apple sauce from a can

   For our parrot

   “Parrot are you still alive”?

   – “Yes mam, I’m still here. I’ve eaten my food and left my water” *drop*

   —

   No clue why we sang a song about a sick, dying parrot …

4. Another one from Belgium is “little toddler” (“klein, Klein kleutertje”) that was made a bit more acceptable a few years ago (IIRC they removed the hitting of the dad), but the old version went like this:

   —

   Little, little toddler, what are you doing in my garden?

   You’re picking all of the flowers and are making a mess.

   Mom will reprimand you and dad will hit you.

   Little, little toddler, get out of here quickly.

5. Yeah! Our national grandpa of children’s songs, Thorbjørn Egner, has been corrected because of some lyrics that are considered racial slurs today. The lyrics were written in the 1940’s and 50’s, and he meant nothing wrong I’m sure

6. There’s a version of happy birthday that’s literally just “hankie pankie shanghai” repeated over and over again and I was literally taught to pull my eyelids when singing it to make fun of Asian people

7. There is one in Spain, generally used as children’s hands play, which has lyrics that are equal parts horrifying and absurd. It is called “Don Federico mató a su mujer” (Don Federico killed his wife). The lyrics translate as follows:

   Don Federico killed his wife,

   he minced her

   And put her on the pan.

   The people who passed by

   smelled the roasted meat.

   It was Don Federico’s wife.

   Don Federico lost his wallet

   to marry a seamstress.

   The seamstress lost her thimble

   to marry a general.

   The general lost his sword

   to marry a beautiful dame.

   The beautiful dame lost her fan

   to marry Don Federico.

   Don Federico lost his eye

   to marry a louse.

   The louse lost its tail

   to marry a Pepsi-Cola.

   The Pepsi-Cola lost its bubbles

   to marry an evil witch.

   The evil witch lost her kitten

   to marry Don Federico.

   Don Federico told her no

   and the evil witch fainted.

   After three days, he told her maybe,

   and the evil witch began to cry.

   After three months he told her yes,

   and the evil witch told him to piss off.

8. I don’t know how common this was in the country as a whole, since I’ve met people who never heard of this. But back when I was in primary school there was a Christmas song that got modified to be about Santa Claus killing children that everyone at school was singing. My mother was horrified when I sang it to her thinking it was hilarious, I don’t think I fully understood it either when I was 8 lol. I think it went like:

   It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, little children die

   stabbed and tortured, little children die

   One leg here, another over there

   I don’t know where’s my head

   And Santa Claus, with a G3

   pew pew pew pew pew kills them all at the same time

9. There’s ba ba black sheep. The lyrics basically go “ba ba black sheep, have you any wool?” Apparently it’s racist and people are trying to make the lyrics tartan sheep. Now as far as I know this song is not Scotland specific and I have no idea if other countries are changing it to tartan sheep but to me it just seems fucking ridiculous.

10. In the moonlight, in the moonlight
    I climbed on a stairway to the window frame
    And you don’t guess it, you don’t guess it
    This is how a bird acts. This is how a fish acts
    This is how a centipede that polishes shoes

    En this one and this is two
    En this my fatty, fatty, fatty aunt Kee
    En this is straight and this is curved
    And we turn around the wheel again another time
    Rom bom (this is just a self made word)

    Apparently it is about a girl that got pregnant before marriage.

11. We have „10 kleine Negerlein“ (10 Little n-words). It’s basically about 10 black children walking around and they die off one by one. As a child, I thought nothing of it. It was just a fun children song. But now I kinda see how it’s not really that nice of a song.

12. We had a clapping game rhyme “Bei Müllers hats gebrannt” (There was a fire at Miller’s)in Germany where one verse was kinda inappropriate or weird it translates to:

    Klaus was lying in bed bed bed
    with his wife Elisabeth
    Elisabeth was laughing
    Her bra was collapsing

    Her belly exploded
    A baby marched out of it
    To the first floor
    There was a man in an underskirt

13. I have to say as a French person I’m feeling a lot better about us right now, because I can’t think of a single truly bad or offensive song we learnt as kids.

    The “worst” was a little rhyme my mom taught me to sing at the end of the school year (but not in front of my teacher):

    C’est les vacances, *It’s the holidays,*

    Plus de pénitences. *No more penance.*

    Les cahiers au feu, *Notebooks in the fire,*

    Les maîtres au milieu! *Teachers in the middle (of the fire)!*

14. When we were kids in Ireland everyone used to do the eenie meanie minie mo, catch a N word by the toe. We didn’t even know what it meant back then but literally every child in the country used to sing that.

15. As very small kids 7 or 8 years old- we LOVED singing about old woman who lived in the woods, she had a 3 month old baby and a penknife long and sharp. The best part was the stabbing motion we made. ……..

    https://youtu.be/H1dOreGykiM?si=DQHQfXPkcrDKxKPQ

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weela_Weela_Walya#Lyrics

16. In Finland we had a very common school yard game called “Kuka pelkää mustaa miestä?” (Who’s afraid of the black man?)
    One person was the black man, standing in the middle of the field or gymnasium. They would then yell “Kuka pelkää mustaa miestä?!” And everyone else had to run to the other side of the field/gymnasium and the “black man” would try to catch them.

    …yeah, we played it a lot on the gym classes. Then for a while it was called “kuka pelkää mustaa Pekkaa” (who’s afraid of black jack) and now I don’t think its played anymore, but not sure.

17. Just a few weeks ago in Germany I heard a grown up play “Wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann” (Who’s afraid of the black guy) with the kids, which is basically playing racist catch. You yell “wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann” while trying to catch other people.

18. Almost all the songs I remember from my childhood were weird (I grew up in a Polish-speaking family). My two favourite ones were just perfectly crazy.

    One was about a duckling who falls in love with a poppy flower, and they get married. Then the poppy flower gets cut off, and the narrator says (in a totally happy maniac voice) “That’s how it is in life!”. Well…

    The second one is about a king and a henchman who were both in love with a princess and totally fine about their happy little MFM which is weird enough already. But at the very end of the song, we learn that the king apparently ended up eaten by a dog, the henchman was eaten by a cat, the princess was eaten by a mouse, and all of that is totally fine cause they were made of marzipan! That’s a nice twist, I remember crying like a fountain every time.

19. Aaah, the Portuguese classic “I threw a stick at the cat”. All Portuguese kids know it. It goes like this (literal translation):

    I threw the stick at the cat

    But the cat didn’t die

    Mrs Xica got scared

    With the scream, with the scream the cat did.

    Meow!

    ….
    Then it goes on about a flee that bit the narrator’s foot, but flees suck so whatever.

20. A lot of St. Nicholas rhymes involving Zwarte Piet feel very outdated. The song “Sinterklaasje kom maar binnen met je knecht” – ‘knecht’ is a word meaning something like a servant or hand to their master or employer – has a line where Zwarte Piet says something that translates to “even though I’m black as soot, I still mean well”.

    There’s also “Hankie Pankie Shanghai” sung to the melody of “Happy Birthday to you”, in which you traditionally made ‘squinty eyes’ by pulling your eyelids sideways.