Top 5 Songs That Taught Me English And Scandalized My Entire Family
- joie
- Nov 21, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 21
Picture this: a five-year-old who spoke zero English but could belt out every single lyric to "Nasty Girl" with the conviction of a seasoned backup dancer auditioning for Soul Train. That was me fresh off Caribbean beaches armed with nothing but Spanish, Garifuna, and an impressive vocabulary of English curse words courtesy of my grandmother. My family was terrified I'd be stuck in ESL classes forever, a fate they considered worse than actually being illiterate. Their solution? Apparently, none because I had zero interest in English lessons. But hand me a Vanity 6 record and suddenly I was a linguistic prodigy, shimmy-shaking my way through phonetics while my hyper-masculine, machismo, Catholic family watched in equal parts horror and fascination. Nothing says "welcome to America" quite like a kindergartener teaching Prince's "I Wanna Be Your Lover" to unsuspecting classmates.
My grandmother the force of nature who insisted my birthday party happen from a hospital bed the day after her stroke sent me off to the States with more than just survival skills. She'd given me an iron will, a mischievous streak (I never got in trouble for the same thing twice because I was creative), and apparently, a doctorate in inappropriate music appreciation. While my cousins tried desperately to warn me that only girls could be nasty girls, I was already too far gone, committed to my craft, ready to perform "Bad Girls" at any family gathering that would have me. Then came Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," which got me enrolled in Bible studies faster than you could say "divine intervention" though that didn't last once Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" entered my repertoire. My mom eventually got called to school because I was corrupting the youth with Prince, and honestly? I regret nothing.
Those songs weren't just catchy they were my Rosetta Stone, my passport to fluency, my ticket out of remedial classes and into straight A's in English, Social Studies, Spanish, Art, and Music. Math, however, could go rot behind the refrigerator with the year's worth of tripe I'd been hiding.
Speaking of tripe let's talk about my mother's psychological warfare disguised as dinner. The punishment for refusing math homework wasn't losing toys (jokes on her, I was a bookworm), it was facing down a plate of tripe, that gelatinous nightmare that haunts every Gen X kid's memory. "Close your eyes and it'll taste just like McDonald's," she'd say, which remains the most audacious lie ever told in our household. I got so good at hiding that tripe that when she finally discovered my year-long stash rotting behind the fridge, I was conveniently 1000 miles away, living my best life with my grandmother picking sand grapes, climbing coconut trees, befriending every stray dog (cat) in the village and creating sand castles on those sandy white beaches. But did my mother throw it away? Of course not. She saved it in a Tupperware container and presented it to me like a homecoming gift when I got off the plane. That's love, I guess...vindictive, fermented, unforgettable love.
The Songs
1. Vanity 6 - "Nasty Girl"This 1982 Prince-penned masterpiece became my actual autobiography before I could spell my own name. While it only hit #101 on mainstream charts due to its deliciously explicit lyrics, it went straight to #1 on the dance charts and straight to #1 in my five-year-old heart. I had absolutely no idea what I was singing, but I knew it was important, and my cousin's warning that "only girls can be nasty girls" only made me more committed to the bit. The song's cultural impact includes appearances in Beverly Hills Cop and Girl 6, but its most significant contribution was teaching an immigrant child that confidence and enunciation go hand in hand.
2. Marvin Gaye - "Sexual Healing"Written during Gaye's Belgian exile while battling depression and addiction, this 1982 comeback hit about the restorative power of love went straight over my head and straight into my performance repertoire. The groundbreaking use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine created that hypnotic groove that had me swaying like I understood adult relationships. It topped R&B charts for ten weeks, won two Grammys, and got me enrolled in Bible studies within approximately 72 hours of my first public performance. My family thought Jesus could save me from Marvin Gaye, but really, Marvin Gaye was saving me from ESL classes.
3. Donna Summer - "Bad Girls"Inspired by a real incident of police harassment on Sunset Boulevard, this 1979 disco-rock fusion made Donna the first female artist with two songs in the Top 3 simultaneously and made me the first kindergartener in my school to question authority through dance. That iconic "Toot Toot! Ah! Beep Beep!" refrain? Summer added it spontaneously in the studio, and I added my own spontaneous choreography in our living room while my Catholic family clutched their rosaries. The song asks "who is a bad girl?" and suggests we're all the same regardless. A progressive message I absolutely did not understand but performed with the conviction of someone who definitely did.
4. Donna Summer - "Love to Love You Baby"The 1975 track that TIME magazine noted contained 22 simulated orgasms (not that anyone was counting...I'm totally counting.) became my final straw before Bible studies. Producer Giorgio Moroder had Summer record in a dark studio while she fantasized about her boyfriend, and I performed it in broad daylight (moans included) while my family fantasized about a time machine that could un-teach me this song. The BBC banned it, my family tried to ban it, but I was an unstoppable tiny disco ball of inappropriate enthusiasm. It popularized the 12-inch single format and traumatized my extended family in equal measure.
5.Prince - "I Wanna Be Your Lover"Prince's 1979 breakthrough hit, written about his crush on Patrice Rushen and sung entirely in falsetto, was apparently too much for my elementary school to handle. My mom got the call (you know, the one where teachers use that special concerned voice) because I was teaching this funk masterpiece to other kids. The song peaked at #11 on Billboard and #1 on Soul Singles charts, but more importantly, it peaked at getting me temporarily banned from music sharing time. Prince was challenging norms of masculinity and sexuality in popular music; I was just challenging my school's patience and my mother's blood pressure.
