" song featured the line "Too many Jews for my liking". This, says Siouxsie, was a metaphor for too many fat businessmen waiting to pounce, suck the youth from and cast aside new talent."
so a metaphorical antisemite then
Fat businessmen doesn’t scan so she thoughtlessly and lazily used a casually-anti-semetic byword of the day.
It‘s in keeping with a lot of the more shitty attitudes back then, “different world back then” and all that. Some of the people using those words, exhibiting that behaviour were genuine wrong’uns, some were just being thoughtless, ignorant, foolish, stupid. Being better now is because people made changes, forced change, but the ones who were pushing for change weren’t people like Siouxie. I wouldn’t say she was a mover or shaker, not one of the bright leading lights, she was just a pop star.
She was young, probably pretty conditioned-Suburban-normal under all the glamour, and a woman in a very male environment so no doubt constantly on the back foot with every attempt she made to push forward. This is not to excuse her and those awful lyrics, but to give some context around her bad mistake. No one else around her picked up on the lyrics, from writing to recording to producing, releasing etc. Insofar as “everyone was a bit -ist back then”, does she stand out particularly?
And if you look at her behaviour in the Bill Grundy clip you can see how easily swayed she was, how automatic is was for her to work to fit in. She responds one way and then quick- sharp changes her reaction.
