The objected to line — on "Heated" — is "Spazzing on that ass, spaz on that ass."
Who wrote that line? "The song has nine credited writers including Beyoncé and Drake, the Canadian rapper, but it is not clear which of them wrote the lyrics."
What was the "similar controversy" that happened recently? Lizzo used the same word, in the line "Hold my bag, bitch, hold my bag/ Do you see this shit? I’m a spaz."
What's more likely, that Beyoncé's people knew about the Lizzo's controversy or not? And then, what's more likely that they deliberately sought controversy by using the word or that they somehow just muddled into it? All nine of them?
This is the 6th post in this 17-year history of this blog that the word "spaz" has appeared (always within a quote):
April 2006: Tiger Woods got in trouble — but only in Britain — for saying "As soon as I got on the green I was a spaz."
May 2006: The Slate music critic Jody Rosen referred to "American Idol" contestant Taylor Hicks as "the prematurely gray-haired doofus who has spent the past several weeks jerking across the Idol stage like a spaz."
May 2009: Bono wrote a poem about Elvis that had the line "Elvis the ecstatic/ Elvis the plastic/ Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance that could explain the energy of America." British radio issued a language warning, and I noted the different level of offensiveness in Britain and America, and cited the old "Saturday Night Live" character "Chaz 'The Spaz' Knerlman," AKA "Spazalopolis."
December 2018: Someone at Deadspin wrote sarcastically that Elon Musk was "definitely a visionary brain genius and not at all a manic idiot spaz and brazen fraud."
June 2022: I noted that Lizzo apologized for using the word.
ADDED: The OED finds the first published use of "spaz" in Pauline Kael's 1965 "I Lost It at the Movies":
The term that American teen-agers now use as the opposite of ‘tough’ is ‘spaz’. A spaz is a person who is courteous to teachers, plans for a career..and believes in official values. A spaz is something like what adults still call a square.
"Tough" was a compliment at the time, as you can tell from the context, and as I know from memory. It was just another way to say "great."
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49 comments:
Bitch - cool
Shit - cool
Spaz - yo bitch you can't say that shit
in the upcoming battle; between the Crack Emcee's of the world, and the Igna's.. Who Will Win?
I'm waiting for call outs of n*****, as used in songs by thousands of mainstream hip-hop artists for several decades. Alternatively, I'm waiting for when the left doesn't criticize non-Black folks who repeat lyrics or say it in public settings.
When that glaring double standard ends 'spaz' outrage will be credible.
Ugh. So much hand-wringing about nothing from a society that is glutted on luxury levels of life never before seen in the history of man. We need serious things to work on. This is not one of them. Maybe someone could care less about a word Beyonce is using rather than the sentence it was used in and what that says about all of us.
I always thought spaz the insult meant something more like the opposite of calm, cool, and collected. Like someone who acted in an unseemly, uncontrolled, unartful manner. If someone appears to get over excited about something and waves their arms about like a bird flapping and makes a very excited, yet overly loud and embarrassing noise some might say that person was acting like a spaz. Which makes it closer to spastic which I think is usually used in reference to something who cerebral palsy. I think this is primarily a case of word being very taboo in the UK but fairly mild here in the US. Though there is strong demand over here to find more things to be upset about.
Maybe the "spas" word's first published use was in 1965--but heckfire it was in use on middle school playgrounds in the mid 1950s. OED could ask me how I know!
But time and inventive slang and derogatory terms move on. These days it's said that a kid "rides the short bus". Took me a while to learn that that term refers to kids with special needs or who are "differently abled", and indeed ride the shorter buses that pick them up to take them to school. Still it may be a while before a rapper works that "short bus" meme into a song.
Now THAT is some songwriting!
Hmmmm......I guess the record isn't selling very well. Maybe they can get it banned in Boston.
I understand the record company was running a contest for the replacement lyric, but decided that replacing SPAZ with JIZZ wasn't going to solve any problems.
And they say rock lyrics aren't poetry....
spaz on that ass
It means ejaculate. The ableist apparently can't handle literature.
I grew up in the 60s and spaz was not the opposite of tough.
A spaz was someone who was uncoordinated or clumsy especially in a herky-jerky way. A klutz.
Earth-shattering.
Now get your fellow singers of color to ban the N-word....
Ignorance is bliss. Stupid line. Stupid song. No wonder America is falling. Who listens to this crap?
The 1979 Bill Murray summer-camp comedy "Meatballs" had a nerdy character nicknamed "Spaz." He was played by Jack Blum, who later went on to found Reel Canada, "a non-profit organization based in Toronto dedicated to the presentation of Canadian films in Canadian schools."
Upset about hearing the word 'spaz'?
Tough.
In 1988 in Brighton I saw a storefront with the name, "Spastic Society". I thought it might have been art or music related, as there were punk rockers in the 'hood. I asked a local who I was with at the time what sort of entity it was and she said it was a "Goodwill type store. I have a photo of the business, which I took because I thought was politically incorrect at the time.
Those are really retarded lyrics, if you ask me.
Nooice!
People go all spaz over this?
Change it to ditz
"Spazzing on that ass, spaz on that ass."
This is what passes for a song lyric by a major star of today's music? Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with my dinosaur-era rock and roll. Maybe I'm just an out-of-touch geezer, but I find very little that is worthwhile in today's pop culture.
And you kids stay offa my lawn!
The Elastik Band - Spazz (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKO9x17Cj5k
Is this a drug song? Probably vulgar to think so.
Isn’t it the left that keeps telling us language is fluid and dynamic? These “slurs” have taken on new meanings within our culture and don’t demean anyone. Why can’t they accept that?
Gives Haydn a run for the money. A few more years she will be singing bout those sexy hemorrhoids.
I was not familiar with this word until it’s now apparent banishment.
I’ll attempt to keep it mind for later use, when appropriate.
I agree with those who think spaz is another word for "jizz". Maybe they are just afraid to say to the disabled community- "Hey guys. We didn't mean you. We meant cum! It's all good! We be cool! "
The day it dropped, I bought “you won’t break my soul”; the first release from the album in question. I heard the song on the radio and was immediately under its spell.
I've seen numerous interviews with Beyonce and she seems very nice and reasonably intelligent. SHe certainly gets a fair amount of respect from the press. And then she sings (and maybe even writes) crap like "Spazzing on that ass, spaz on that ass." I often say that rock lyrics go downhill as they try to be profound. I guess there's no more worry about attempted profundity.
"Spaz" fir ejaculate makes sense; "Nut" is sometimes used around here, as in "Then he nut on my leg" in a rape trial.
I love the American language.
Talk about how we used to talk: who can forget "Hire the handicapped. They're more fun to watch."? Ricky Retardo jokes.
A lot of people formerly-known-as-handicapped spent their lives here in a place called the Home for Incurables, and there was the Crippled Children's Hospital too.
“Spaz on dat ass.”
Get it right!
How many people does it take to write crappy lyrics?
Maybe this is a case where too many cooks spoiled the broth. If only one of these artists had written the song, then the words would have been powerful, and eloquent.
Off the subject.
Is Beyoncé even a good singer? Not in my book.
Semantic sewage, sometimes silage, or the N-word... Niger! uh, nerd! Think of the linguistic constructs.
I'm guessing the original line was jizzing on that ass. I'll keep these lyrics in mind next time the media tells me how wonderful Beyonce is.
in the upcoming battle; between the Crack Emcee's of the world, and the Igna's.. Who Will Win?
Iran. Iraq.
Same difference.
'How many people does it take to write crappy lyrics?'
Apparently, if you're black and have a marginal voice and a huge ass, you can be very successful in the US of A.
Brits did not get it from Pauline Kael. Using it in school there in '65.
“Apparently, if you're black and have a marginal voice and a huge ass, you can be very successful in the US of A.”
Hey, I’m white, have a decent voice and - nearing 70 years of age - have the narrowest of behinds. You can catch my new jam “Wet Ass (Occasionally Reluctant) Johnson” on Death’s Door Records.
A fairly gracious apology. Not much groveling. I guess you don't have to go full hair shirt penance when you make an ableist gaffe. It's not like racial or misogynistic insults. You just apologize and move on....Still, I'd like to see her put a bit more effort into it. Maybe give a free concert for the March of Dimes kids. Little kids love catchy tunes about jizzing on asses, and it would broaden her fan base.
In my YouTube meanderings I came across a few people with diagnosed Tourette's exposing a woman making quite a bit of clicks for faking Tourette's. She would display a manufactured "tic" rather then an uncontrolled one, and laugh about how spastic she was.
I can understand being upset when there's a cottage industry of scam artists.
Hit me with your best shot.
The degradation of popular music continues apace. I did not like the popular music of the 50s and 60s until country came along.
Splooge on dat ass!
Wearing shorts.
On a podium.
Garnering attention.
Spaz is short for spasm: a painful and involuntary muscular contraction.
"Which makes it closer to spastic which I think is usually used in reference to something who cerebral palsy. I think this is primarily a case of word being very taboo in the UK but fairly mild here in the US. Though there is strong demand over here to find more things to be upset about."
When I was in grade school and junior high in the 60s, when kids called other someone a "spaz," he was calling that kid a spastic.
Beyoncé actually has a great voice, as she demonstrated playing Etta James in “Cadillac Records”. Sadly, it’s now wasted on this crap.
One song has the lyrics. "“them Karens just turned into terrorists”. Maybe Ms Beyonce should take a look at her thug of a husband and how he was pimping out girls and shooting his own brother and stabbing a record producer. She is ignorant. Just another progressive who Michele Obama wants her daughters to be like. Thugs stick together. She sticks by her man like Hillary, no matter what he does to her. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/01/falshback-rapper-jay-z-shot-brother-sold-crack-mothers/
24 songwriters for THOSE lyrics?? OMG....What a joke. I'm with Diane Warren. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11071015/Beyonce-fans-react-Diane-Warren-seemingly-shading-singer-using-24-songwriters.html
“It’s a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.
Take ‘good,’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them?
‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word.
Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.’s (Big Brother's) idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought”
From "1984", by George Orwell.
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