Australian singer/songwriter Nick Cave often responds to his fan mail, and he recently took a stance against a defending some of his  more controversial lyrics, according to Consequence Of Sound.

A fan recently brought up a line from his 1992 song “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry,” that reads: “a f*g in a whalebone corset dragging his dick across my cheek,” asking “Are you happy to preserve the lyric as a product of its time, and respect the original content?” Cave responded by stating, “These days, some of my songs are feeling a little nervous. They are like children that have been playing cheerfully in the schoolyard, only to be told that all along they have had some hideous physical deformity.” He goes on to address our rapidly shifting society, “But what songwriter could have predicted thirty years ago that the future would lose its sense of humour, its sense of playfulness, its sense of context, nuance and irony, and fall into the hands of a perpetually pissed off coterie of pearl-clutchers? How were we to know?”

Cave goes on to say, “As flawed as they may be, the souls of the songs must be protected at all costs,” defending the purpose behind some of the more provocative lyrics he had used. “They must be allowed to exist in all their aberrant horror, unmolested by these strident advocates of the innocuous, even if just as some indication that the world has moved toward a better, fairer and more sensitive place.”

Cave concluded his thoughts by stating, “If punishment must be administered, punish the creators, not the songs. We can handle it. I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.”

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat