April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men experience sexual assault in their lifetime. People as a whole can be oversexualized by assumptions made about them based on clothing, pieces of fabric used for expression, and taken advantage of when we are so beautiful and deserve to be treated as such. Here, I have complied a list of songs about assault experiences, as a little reminder that if you’re going through something, people see and hear you, and you’re not on your own in this. Everybody has a story and their voices deserve to be heard. Everybody has a story and their voices deserve to be heard.
Most of the songs that I have found today were written by female artists, but that is not to discredit the men that have experienced this atrocity. When a man is assaulted, they are not taken as seriously because people tend to believe that because men have tougher personas and they cannot be assaulted. That is false; gender does not dictate experience. If you have a story to tell, regardless if you are a man or woman, tell it.
This song is the title track from Rapps’s album and for good reason. This is a beautiful song that has so much meaning. A few years ago, Rapp was at a party having fun with friends and then the next morning she woke up in a hotel bathroom alone and confused, and with her pants covered in blood. She didn’t know what happened or how she ended up there, but an assumption can be made. Since then, she stopped partying as much and worked on herself and has put out two amazing albums.
Next up is the song “I Believe You” by Fletcher. This song is so heartbreakingly beautiful. It was released in 2018, and I remember it coming on my Spotify for the first time in 2020. The entire song is the narrator saying that she believes the victim when nobody else does. In the second verse she sings, “Did they tell you, ‘You were asking for it’ by what you were wearing?” This line is something I think about a lot because this exact experience is one that so many have gone through of their trauma being completely invalidated. The entire rest of the song has just as many powerful lines.
This next one is a song is one that I hadn’t ever listened to the full way through, but I am glad I finally have because the story that is being told is gut wrenching and needs to be said. The entire song is about her experience with someone who was very close to her but was under the influence and wouldn’t listen to her needs.
This song, rather than being about assault is more about the oversexualization that Tewari has experienced. Specifically, the chorus of the song when she sings “And I’m sorry I don’t wanna take off my clothes / And I’m sorry I won’t let you get too close” this is a line I think about a lot especially because I have seen how big hook-up culture has become in recent years.
Next is “Your Power” by Billie Ellish, and this one is about her personal assault experience. She has opened up about the meaning off the song and has been very blunt in saying that this is about rape and the lines in the song “How dare you? / How Could you?” truly sum up the feelings that she was trying to convey.
Next is “A&W” by Lana Del Ray. This is a seven-minute story. There is one specific part that made me want to include this in this list and that would be when Lana says, “If I told you that I was raped do you really think that anybody would think I didn’t ask for it?” This song has helped so many feel seen because there are so many that have been violated that aren’t afraid to express themselves through their clothing. The main thing victims get told when they come forward is “look at what you were wearing, you were asking for it” which is false, because self-expression doesn’t equal consent.
This song is from Six the Musical and is about the life Catherine Howard lived. Howard was still a teenager when she married Henry the VIII, and her body was used and mistreated for years. The main hook of the song is “All you wanna do is touch me” and in live performances you can see the emotion the actress has to help carry the emotion Howard once felt.
Lastly, I have “the grudge” by Olivia Rodrigo; now this song isn’t specifically about assault but is about emotional turmoil in general. The song is about not understanding how someone that you valued so deeply can do something so traitorous. Especially with the line “I try to understand why you would do this all to me”, this song is about trying to wrap your head around what happened to you knowing that you deserved better.
If you or someone you know has been violated in this manner, please tell someone. People care about your wellbeing and there’s so many resources to help you, you’re not alone. You are more than what happened to you. You deserve justice; you deserve to feel safe in your skin.
Resources:
RAINN Sexual Assault Website: https://rainn.org/
RAINN Hotline- to call or text: 1-800-656-4673
Tuttleman Counseling Services: https://counseling.temple.edu/
Title IX: https://compliance.temple.edu/titleix/title-ix-resources