St. Vincent showed her good taste in a recent interview with Kerrang when she declared John Mayer’s “Daughters” to be the worst song in the world:

“It pretends to be a love song, but it’s really, really retrograde and really sexist. And I hate it… It’s so deeply misogynistic, which would be fine if you owned that, but it pretends like it’s sweet.”

So, it’s bad, but is “Daughters” truly “hideously sexist”?

Yes!

When “Daughters” came on my radar years ago, I had assumed that the message was one of allyship, a patronizing by well intentioned plea for parents to acknowledge the difficulties of growing up as a young woman. Turns out, the song is about a guy who blames the parents of the girls who reject his sexual advances for not raising them to be more pliant to his will. If Andrew Tate were a song, he’d be “Daughters.”

It starts with an mid-tempo acoustic guitar introduction that reminds me of something I would hear a first-year undergrad play in his dorm room to impress his roommate, girls, anyone passing by. Some of us grow out of this phase; John Mayer never did. As juvenile musically as this is, it doesn’t make “Daughters” the worst ever.

The first verse makes it the worst ever. Mayer tells us that he knows a “girl” who “puts the color inside of my world,” but try as he might, he can’t win her over. She’s “just like a maze,” after all, “where all of the walls all continually change.” She’s indecisive, apparently, or is trying to let him down gently. Hard to tell. But, whatever’s going on, “it’s got nothing to do with me.” Who’s at fault here? Her father!

Dads like me need to “be good to our daughters,” as Mayer tells us in the chorus, because they take their cues on how to be good girlfriends from us when they “turn into lovers.” For my sake, says Mayer, teach your daughters to be confident and secure enough that they’ll put out.

Throughout the first verse and chorus, Mayer uses a vocal timbre that plays against both the immaturity and the perversity of his lyrics. Instead of projecting in frustration, Mayer practically whispers his lines to us, like a pedophile singing a lullaby. Underneath the whisper is a gravelly base that makes him sound older, wiser, as if he can trick us into thinking he’s on the same emotional and social level of a father. He’s not whining at how unfair women are to him; he’s giving us all advice. For the betterment of us all. Of course.

If a young man came to me, exhorted me to raise my daughter better, and even vaguely implied the reasoning Mayer gives in his song, I would call my daughter and tell her a stalker might be after her: lock your door, call friends and ask them to keep their phones close, be ready to call 911, and document any interaction you have with this guy. Good fathers do what they can to prepare their children to handle people like Mayer in this song.

In the bridge, which is the last thing you hear before the closing chorus, Mayer addresses his fellow “boys,” telling them, “you can break” / “You find out how much they can take.” I’m assuming the “they” here is women. These lines are chilling in light of the lines that follow: “But boys would be gone without warmth from a woman’s good, good heart.” Women should prepared to absorb the punishment (literally? figuratively?) that mete out–it’s hard to “be strong” after all–and parents need to prepare them to be that security cushion.

Even without considering the message of the lyrics, this is a bad song. The singing grates and the guitar playing is juvenile. The structure of the song makes no sense, with the bridge, for example, sounding too similar to the verse to be a proper, separate section. But of course, we do need to consider the lyrics, and when we do, we realize that “Daughters” belongs in the pantheon of truly horrible, shouldn’t-be-heard-again songs of death and trash.