Nick Cave admits ‘Stagger Lee’ is “a highly problematic song”
In a new interview, Nick Cave has conceded that ‘Stagger Lee’, the song he and The Bad Seeds released on 1996’s Murder Ballads, is “highly problematic”. The track is a take on a traditional piece about the African-American murderer of the same name.
Cave made the admission during a recent chat with UnHerd Club. At one point, host Freddie Sayers asked him: “Does that happen to you? The second-guessing, the self-censoring?”
He replied: “‘Should I say this? Or should I not?’ Only as much as I would have ten years ago, or 20 years ago. You always think: ‘Is this a good line or a bad line?’ But I never think in terms of whether it’s offensive or not. So no, I don’t feel that I do that. However, I do feel a kind of wet blanket has been thrown over art in general, and this is just not good.”
Sayers then pressed Cave on what the wet blanket is, to which the Australian musician replied: “What is the wet blanket? Well, a squeamish, censorious, merciless idea that there are certain things that you can get away with saying and certain things that you can’t get away with saying.”
He continued: “But I get tired of hearing people say: ‘Well, you can’t say this; I think this, but you can’t say this.’ That’s reflective of a mood, but I don’t think it’s true. I don’t think there are things that you can’t say. You just need to take the consequences of saying certain sorts of things.”
“Now these consequences are brutal, and merciless, and unjust sometimes, and it’s distressing to see these things happen. But I work in songwriting, and the form is abstract in its nature. So you can say all sorts of things through songwriting, approaching these matters, crab-like, sideways, so you can actually say all sorts of things in songwriting.”
Then, Cave used ‘Stagger Lee’ as an example of what he meant. He explained: “For example, there’s a particular song of mine called ‘Stagger Lee’. This is a famous Bad Seeds song, and it’s offensive on many, many levels. I won’t go through all the different sorts of people that it offends, but it’s pretty much everybody. It’s a highly problematic song. It is sort of spoken-sung over this crawling, predatory music.”
Outlining how art can be problematic and enjoyable, he concluded: “But in all my days of playing ‘Stagger Lee’, and that’s hundreds of times of looking out into the audience, I have never seen anybody looking askance or offended at it. They’re just swept up within the music itself. So all sorts of things can be said in music and art that’s problematic, but at the same time just hugely enjoyable.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.