Unlike Dury, Lizzo and Beyoncé are unenlightened pop-music con artists quick to censor themselves for the sake of ‘virtue.’
The late great Ian Dury left behind important words for pop musicians and fans to remember: “I wibble when I piddle / Cos my middle is a riddle.” That’s from Dury’s outrageous but inspiring 1981 single “Spasticus Autisticus,” the most controversial of the singer-songwriter’s bawdy tunes. It gains new relevance with the self-imposed censorship displayed by Lizzo and Beyoncé, the latest pop stars submitting to Internet mob intimidation.
Both Lizzo and Beyoncé announced they would change the lyrics of their respective songs “Grrrls” and “Heated” after public complaints that each track uses the word “spaz.” The slang term for an inept, gangly person who lacks physical control is a clipped version of “spastic paralysis,” as in cerebral palsy. Lizzo and Beyoncé have made it a cause, part of the ongoing language putsch that changes the use and meaning of words — whether “infrastructure,” “recession” or “spaz” — for political purposes and social regulation.
Apparently neither Lizzo nor Beyoncé was aware of Ian Dury’s artistry, bravery, and culture emancipation. Dury was afflicted with polio as a child, but his thin, slightly bent figure possessed compact determination that powered his musical rhythm and wit. He was one of the bright lights during the British punk movement’s efflorescence, carving personal space out of its famously political anarchy. Finding liberty in punk artistry, Dury updated the tradition of British music-hall ribaldry and rude folk humor. “Spasticus Autisticus” was ultimate proof that Dury presented his person as an example of proud self-identification — not shame or pity but unstoppable individual will.
The artistic censorship Lizzo and Beyoncé embrace is really just condescension. It goes against their pretense of free speech and feminist freedom, tactics that limit them as progressive icons. Yet this “sensitive” posturing exposes the PC game-playing that makes dupes of the fans they pretend to glorify. They belong to the new breed of political stooges who don’t know the difference between a label, an epithet, and an insult.
Despite Lizzo and Beyoncé’s brazen exhibitionism, the superficiality of their sexual and materialist paeans doesn’t get to the core of being, as Dury’s existential “my middle is a riddle” does. When Beyoncé speed-raps “Spazzin’ on that ass / Spaz on that ass” or Lizzo sings “Hold my bag / See this sh**? / I’m a spaz,” their expression is truly vulgar. It’s not the voice of the people, but a low-down idiom intended to sell certain class values. Dury mastered the pop development of language into slang without apology.
Lizzo’s apology was rote:
I never want to promote derogatory language. As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me so I overstand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case unintentionally). . . . I’m dedicated to being part of the change I want to see in the world.
She parrots the Obama-Oprah con job.
Dury died in 2000 at age 57 but was able to change the world. At the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, “Spasticus Autisticus” was introduced by none other than wheelchair-bound astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and performed by John Kelly’s Graeae Theatre Company of deaf and disabled artists. (The name Graeae, or “the grey ones,” comes from deformed creatures in Greek mythology, three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them.) This was the culmination of Dury’s singular art project where the impolite, maybe unsightly aspects of society and behavior are made recognizable — we relate, not “overstand” as in Lizzo’s tired hip-hop term. The Graeae Theatre cast acted out the song’s climax where Dury’s proclamation “I’m Spasticus!” deliberately satirizes the solidarity scene in the movie Spartacus. (Forgive me for often thinking of the song as “Spasticus Artisticus.”)
That Paralympic event recalled Ian Dury’s own legendary concerts when he danced or flopped across the stage as his band the Blockheads produced their signature mix of pub music, R & B, reggae, and American funk. Dury’s “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick” was a dazzling mix of James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic stylings, the polio survivor’s celebration.
Dury’s most popular song, “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll,” defined the ethos of youth culture that’s now crippled by humorless, authoritarian political correctness. His debut album, New Boots and Panties!! (1978), was as genuine as Gilbert & Sullivan, but his second album, Do It Yourself, features a triptych (“This Is What We Find / Uneasy Sunny Day Hotsy-Totsy / Mischief”) so wild and infectious that it’s like James Joyce put to music. Dury’s mastery of colloquial speech drew a detailed picture of English class experience and unbridled thinking. Ian Dury didn’t censor himself to become an unreliable paragon of virtue; he made uncancelable art that was deeply liberating.