Sticks and Stones Rock’n’roll’s politically incorrect lyrics

Jimi Hendrix,

Hey Joe, 1966 Though it had been kicking around since the 1960s, and covered by numerous artists, it was Hendrix’s rock version of this folk classic which brought the house down – and caused a storm of outrage. Telling the story of a man on the run after shooting his wife, it’s skin -prickingly uncomfortable in its psychological intimacy. know I caught “You my old lady messin’ ‘round town/ And I gave her the gun/ I shot her.”

The Beatles, I Saw Her Standing There, 1963 One of the band’s first copperbottomed hits from their 1963 debut album Please Me Please Me, few batted an eyelid when it was released. Now though, after #Metoo and numerous underage music sex scandals, its description of a Lolitaesque seduction sounds decidedly iffy. “Well, she was just 17/ You know what I mean,” Lennon and Mccartney sing sparkly on the opening.

The Rolling Stones, Some Girls, 1978 Alongside Brown Sugar, perhaps The Stones’s most vexed hit. The fruit of bitter divorces and nastybreakups, Jagger sends up the whole of womankind in lyrics which steer towards misogyny. “White girls they’re pretty funny, sometimes they drive me mad,” he sings.

But “black girls just wanna get f ***** all night”.

The Kinks, Lola, 1970 A gloriously catchy narrative about a sexuallyambiguous encounter “down in old Soho”, this karaoke favourite has drawn the ire of trans rights groups for its evocation of a “mixed up, muddled up, shook up world” where “girls will be boys and boys will be girls”.

But at the time, it was banned by the BBC for its reference to “Coca Cola” – a name drop that is not allowed under the corporation’s broadcasting contract.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama, 1974 Written in indignant response to Neil Young’s 1970 Southern Man, which took the South to task for its legacy of slavery, these proud Floridian rockers hit back by namechecking Young in this yee-haw footstomper.

Its defence of George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a noted segregationist is hard to swallow. “Sweet home Alabama, oh, sweet home baby/ Where the skies are so blue and the governor’s true.”

Nirvana, Rape Me, 1993 The kings of moody grunge rock, Kurt Cobain’s band were known for their long hair, nihilism – and deeply uncomfortable lyricism. “I’ll kiss your open sores,” Cobain croons, before launching into the chorus. “Rape me, rape me, my friend/ rape me, rape me again.”