Thursday, June 22, 2006
Set the dial to "Sexy"
I had my I-Tunes on random while bathing the children and had to abruptly run over to skip “Darling Nikki” by Prince & the Revolution. The lyrics are too… well… dirty for my five year old to hear. (Can you imagine her innocent questions and the scarlet hue of my big, bald head as I tried to dodge them.) This got me thinking… what popular song has the dirtiest lyrics and why do we like it?
For whatever reason, I am fond of “When I Think About you I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls and my wife likes Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” (better known by its refrain… “I want to F*** you like an animal). I started liking the Divnyls song when it was used in Austin Powers: Man of Mystery, but I don’t think it is merely the use of the song that makes it entertaining. The tune certainly has much to recommend it and it got a lot of airtime. But the words… the words are… so… LEWD.
I don’t think I’m a “stick in the mud,” but what is it about lewd songs that attract us so?
Consider Billy Idol’s “Mony, Mony.” The words really aren’t “Get laid, get f***ed;” but, at the last wedding I attended everyone knew those words. There were people, dancing and singing, spanning at least three decades. Even where there aren’t rude words, we seem to happily add them.
Then, of course, we have to include the “seduction songs:” songs like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On” and “Sexual healing.”
Then, there are the “clever ones;” you know, the ones that EVERYONE knows what they are singing about, but they never actually SAY it, like the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”- “Really love your peaches, want to shake your tree.”
Hmmm… What songs SHOULD be on the list of “songs about sex” and why?
For whatever reason, I am fond of “When I Think About you I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls and my wife likes Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” (better known by its refrain… “I want to F*** you like an animal). I started liking the Divnyls song when it was used in Austin Powers: Man of Mystery, but I don’t think it is merely the use of the song that makes it entertaining. The tune certainly has much to recommend it and it got a lot of airtime. But the words… the words are… so… LEWD.
I don’t think I’m a “stick in the mud,” but what is it about lewd songs that attract us so?
Consider Billy Idol’s “Mony, Mony.” The words really aren’t “Get laid, get f***ed;” but, at the last wedding I attended everyone knew those words. There were people, dancing and singing, spanning at least three decades. Even where there aren’t rude words, we seem to happily add them.
Then, of course, we have to include the “seduction songs:” songs like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On” and “Sexual healing.”
Then, there are the “clever ones;” you know, the ones that EVERYONE knows what they are singing about, but they never actually SAY it, like the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”- “Really love your peaches, want to shake your tree.”
Hmmm… What songs SHOULD be on the list of “songs about sex” and why?
# posted by Gorgius Vegetius : 8:01 PM
