Vile Pervert

Album: Earth To King (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • After he was convicted of "flashing" at an undercover police officer in a Beverly Hills toilet, George Michael wrote a song called "Outside" for which he produced a tongue-in-cheek video. Michael's "victim" was an otherwise consenting adult, and everybody could see the funny side of the incident. Although he shares Michael's sexuality, no one but Jonathan King appears to see the funny side of his convictions. King was jailed for seven years for indecently assaulting underage boys. After being paroled he continued to protest his innocence, and wrote a number of songs attacking the criminal justice system.
  • The song begins:

    "Look at him, he's a vile per-vert, Ogle-ing boys and lifting his shirt."

    "Shirt lifter" is a colloquialism for homosexual; the point King seems to miss though is that while homosexuality is legal in Britain, pedophilia is not. The associated video contains all manner of images of people who are/were clearly not vile perverts - including the Pope and Mother Theresa. It ends with a picture of the man himself. Just as King is the only person to find humor in his crimes, so is he the only person not to see the irony in the song, which should of course have been written in the first person singular.

    That being said, "Vile Pervert" has a serious message which its composer has obviously missed, and that is that the young especially should never judge a book by its cover. King may have been "decent," talented, rich, and widely admired as in the song, but he was also predatory. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England

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