“Mood Rings” by Relient K, Thursday, May 2, 2024
In 2022, Relient K’s official account posted a comment on TikToker Kirby MacKenzie’s video pointing out the problematic lyric to the band’s 2003 once fan favorite, “Mood Rings.” The video’s caption reads “Therapy isn’t enough[.] I need Christian punk band Relient K to apologize for this song from 2003.” Relient K wrote back: “We had a lot of growing and learning to do, still do!” While some Christian bands have doubled down on problematic messaging regarding issues of homo/transphobia, nationalism, and sexism; Relient K has taken the stance with many of their deconstructionist listeners at not taking their joke songs too seriously. A song like “Mood Rings” transported into the 2020s feels completely out of place. But in 2003, was part of a sexist zeitgeist that existed both in the cultures of pop-punk and in evangelical youth culture.
AND I’VE CONTRIVED SOME SORT OF A PLAN TO HELP MY FELLOW MAN. “Mood Rings” is the second track on Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right . . . But Three Do. The quirky album is mostly filled with tracks that don’t make a theological point, at least until later in the tracklist. But when lead singer Matt Thiessen isn’t making statements about God, he’s talking about relationships. Relient K’s lyrics in retrospect feel like trashy teen magazine column advice that no mature adult would heed. But to the millennial teens listening to Thiessen crafted a worldview about sex and gender based on stereotypes. “Mood Rings” was an especially damaging song as it showed an emotionally immature speaker reducing girls to their emotions. The song's speaker comes up with a plan to “get emotional girls to all wear mood rings.” In the song’s bridge, the speaker interprets what the different colors of the mood ring mean. Of course, mood ring readings are based on body temperature, and there is no scientific evidence that a person’s mood can be read based on the ring’s color. If “Mood Rings was just one of the scores of problematic jams from the angsty aughts, we probably would only talk about it along with other damaging songs like Paramore’s “Misery Business” and 30h!3’s “DONTTRUSTME” are a couple of examples of sexist lyrics that seem out of place in the 2020s. The biggest problem with Relient K’s “Mood Rings” is how the lyrics were a baptized version of sexism, particularly for Christian youth groups.
SHE SAID TO ME THAT SHE’S SO STRESSED OUT THAT IT’S SOOTHING. For some youth groups, the ‘90s and ‘00s youth pastor sermon illustrations citing episodes of Home Improvement and the fundamental misunderstanding between husband and wife Tim and Jill Taylor were commonplace. Rather than youth leaders teaching a path to understanding and compromise, boys were taught women’s minds were “a complex infrastructure,” inscrutable to a simple male. To make the misunderstanding even worse, Relient K lent their name to a book titled The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind: According to Relient K, the name taken from the final lines of “Mood Rings.” Rather than categorizing the moods of women, the book categorizes girls based on characteristics, for example, “The Overachiever” and “The Homecoming Queen.” The band later stated that the writer Mark Nichols wrote the book and sent it to the band for an endorsement. Just as the band apologized for “Mood Rings,” guitarist Matthew Hoopes apologized for the book based on “Mood Rings.” Sexism in the church has been harmful to all. I’m inclined to say that Relient K’s participation was youthful inexperience thanks to a culture that perpetuated it. With maturity, the members of the band could see how harmful their participation in it was. And how ridiculous were all those arguments in youth group? “Mood Rings” claims that changing one’s emotions drastically (as teenagers often do) is feminine. Boys never do that. Girls are too emotional because of their hormonal imbalances, that’s why one can never be president. They can never have access to the nuclear codes! I think of the youth group leaders and Christian school teachers who said this and who probably voted for the most emotionally unstable president in American history, who just happens to be male. So, while “Mood Rings” is a toxic song, I like that there is a redemption story. Even if it messed us up for twenty years.
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