Part four: Sex

Try Again Aaliyah 2000 A futuristic slice of R&B perfection from the production desk of Timbaland, who created an electronic storm for Aaliyah to glide through. The late singer, extending what might have been a dangerous invitation in a world full of stalkers, encouraged unsuccessful suitors to make like Robert the Bruce and not give up just because she won’t put out on the first date. Combining innocence, honesty and sensuality, it was released early in 2000, making it one of the century’s first records. And still one of the best. SY
Listen on Spotify Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) Abba 1979 The finest example of Abba’s talent for pairing happy music with miserable words, A Man After Midnight is sung with girl-group gusto by Agnetha Fältskog, who is going through a chronic dry spell and spends every night alone in her room, “depressed to see the gloom”. A man will cure the literal and metaphorical darkness but how, when she never leaves the house? Meanwhile, the disco beats and melodramatic melodies just add to the sense of pent-up frustration. GM
Listen on Spotify You Shook Me All Night Long AC/DC 1980 Aussie rockers AC/DC have their fair share of sleazy songs, whether it’s the band’s homage to a plus-size lover in Whole Lotta Rosie or the sniggering metaphor of Big Balls. But You Shook Me ..., with its 80s power riffs and endless boasting about all-night prowess, remains the band’s definitive anthem, managing to capture Brian Johnson at both his most juvenile and jubilant. And, of course, it gave us the immortal line, “Working double-time on the seduction line.” RS Love in an Elevator Aerosmith 1989 Perhaps the most famous Aerosmith song, Love in an Elevator came nearly two decades into their career, and despite their fame it’s still a tale of a hard-working joe who gets lucky in the lift of a department store with a woman who wants to show him “how to fax” (this is 1989, after all). “Living it up when I’m going down” may be the most memorable refrain, but the song would be nothing without it’s beery call-and-response verse or rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford’s thrusting arpeggios. PMac
Listen on Spotify Smile Lily Allen 2006 A lilting lovers rock beat and gentle instrumentation housed the introduction of Britain’s first cool female pop star in an age. Unafraid to bring the natural vernacular of youth into song, the scenario is explicit from the opening lines – “You were fucking that girl next door,” before the nonchalant question: “What you do that for?” Revenge is sweet and the ex is left a crumpled mess by the chorus and a witty bit of feminine karma. When she sees him cry? “It makes me smile.” PF
Listen on Spotify When The Sun Goes Down Arctic Monkeys 2006 One of the standout tracks of their debut album Whatever You Say I Am, I’m Not, When The Sun Goes Down showcases Alex Turner’s great skill at scene setting and neat wordplay. Sounding old beyond his years, he observes the red light district of his native Sheffield, pondering “who’s that girl there?/ I wonder what went wrong /So that she had to walk the streets/ She doesn’t do major credit cards/ I doubt she does receipts”. LB
Listen on Spotify Come Again Au Pairs 1981 Conceived amid the overweeningly righteous atmosphere of post-punk student politics, the Au Pairs were PC before the concept was ever named. But they also knew the way beneath the skin of that other 80s stereotype, the new man. Come Again is a witheringly sarcastic put-down of a man who’s desperate to please but is really just desperate. This is sex stripped of romance, or even lust; just two fumbling bodies and a world of embarrassment. SY Another Girl The Beatles 1965 When Paul McCartney wrote Another Girl in 1965, he was living with his girlfriend Jane Asher and her parents at 57 Wimpole Street, London. However, throughout their relationship, he kept a secret flat to entertain other women. The lyrics are unusually crude for the normally sentimental McCartney. “She’s sweeter than all the girls, and I met quite a few,” he smirks over twangy guitars. Three years later, Asher found McCartney in bed with the American scriptwriter Francie Schwartz and dumped him. A revealing insight into Macca’s attitude towards women. CC Norwegian Wood (This  Bird Has Flown) The Beatles 1965 With so much biographical detail and scholarly analysis of the Beatles’ work available, it’s amazing that this song still carries such an air of mystery. Ostensibly about rejection by a woman and revenge by a man, it’s now commonly held to be a song written by John Lennon about one of his many affairs during his marriage to Cynthia. The overwhelming mood, dictated by the mesmeric E major guitar motif, is elegaic; but it’s so difficult to know who to feel sorry for. PMac My Ding-a-Ling Chuck Berry 1972 Sex? Surely this songs is purely about a small toy with two silver bells that Chuck Berry was given as a child by his grandmama? Berry details the various scrapes he and his “ding-a-ling” got into throughout his life (including playing with it frenetically in the school vestibule). That it became Berry’s only US No 1 is a tribute to his storytelling and in no way an indictment of the record-buying public. MH
Listen on Spotify Kangaroo Big Star 1978 Big Star’s third album, Third/ Sister Lovers, was a chaotic, nervous meltdown of a record. Yet its weirdness was what made it compelling, as best evidenced on Kangaroo. A tale of lustful voyeurism at a party, it managed to convey teenage longing with a line as stark raving bonkers as: “Ooh I want you, like a kangaroo”. Instruments echo and clang. Distant voices wail. Then the entire song collapses in a heap, drawing to an end what may be the oddest sex song ever recorded. TJ Je T’Aime ... Moi Non Plus Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg 1969 Still the only French language No 1 in this country – and the iconic Gainsbourg’s sole British chart hit – this record shot to the top not only by virtue of its sumptuous tune but by the grunts and groans which still make it the most scandalous instance of the orgasm in a pop record. The words were as decadent as the sound, not to mention witty – the title translates as “I love you … me neither”. AN Girls and Boys Blur 1994 Apart from reviving alternative disco, Blur’s first major hit heralded the Britpop era and reintroduced social satire to the UK charts. Damon Albarn’s withering take on Club 18-30 holiday culture suggested that 90s love was nothing but paranoia and sexually transmitted diseases. But the line a generation sang along with was the hopeful “Always should be someone you really love”, and the rest of the chorus celebrated polymorphous perversity with a relish not heard since 70s Bowie. GM
Listen on Spotify Tent Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band 1969 Surrealist art school band the Bonzos had all but run out of ideas by fourth album Keynsham, save the simple but ridiculously funny Mr Slater’s Parrot and this manic r’n’b pastiche. It hasn’t the clever humour of Mr Apollo nor the guitar solo of Canyons, but this nonsense ditty will find favour with anyone who has developed an amorous coupling at the wrong end of a festival site. MR
Listen on Spotify Cruisin’ the Streets Boys Town Gang 1981 By 1981 the homophobic and racist inspired disco backlash had countered the commercial success of Saturday Night Fever et al and had driven much of the music back into the gay clubs, where it continued developing in a stripped-down, high-energy format. This sole highlight from the manufactured, studio-based outfit was the first section of a four-part opera; an uncompromising depiction of an unchaste man’s night out on San Francisco’s pre-Aids-ravaged gay scene. MR Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine James Brown 1970 After Brown’s early backing band the Famous Flames bailed in protest at the Godfather of Soul’s dictatorial tendencies, he hired Cincinnati band the Pacemakers, featuring one Bootsy Collins on bass. Their first recording as the JBs became the most famous funk record of all-time. Making the connection between shagging and dancing more explicit than ever, Brown’s radical vision involved everyone – even he and co-vocalist Bobby Byrd – impersonating percussion. The earth moved. GM
Listen on Spotify Get On Top Tim Buckley 1972 “Well like a bitch dog in heat we had those bed springs a-squeakin’ all night long,” wailed Buckley on a song with a decidedly one-track mind. The accompanying album – Greetings From LA – was Buckley’s sex statement, and Get on Top was its filthiest, funkiest moment. Rattling drums, Kevin Kelly’s organ and a vocal that descends into orgasmic moans and strained groans – you can practically smell the sweat dripping from the walls. TJ
Listen on Spotify Orgasm Addict Buzzcocks 1977 Opening with a cheeky pun (“Well, you tried it just for once, found it all right for kicks/ But now you’ve found out that it’s a habit that sticks”), this fittingly breathless ode to masturbation is two minutes of meticulously crafted smut. Clearly the keen eye for small details didn’t depart the Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto (who crowbarred a mention of avocado pears into 1976’s Friends of Mine). In a middle eight that’s surely punk’s campest hour, singer Pete Shelley chides, “You’re making out with schoolkids, winos and heads of state … butchers’ assistants and bellhops”. MH
Listen on Spotify Triad The Byrds 1968 David Crosby’s frank hymn to the pleasures of a menage a trois – “I don’t really see, why can’t we go on as three” – was omitted from the Notorious Byrd Brothers album, deemed too near the knuckle by fellow band members, even by the standards of 1968. Later recorded by Jefferson Airplane, the original resurfaced two decades on and a lovely thing it is, too, its slinky, stoned beat crowned by one of Crosby’s most exquisite vocals. GT
Listen on Spotify High Fidelity Elvis Costello and the Attractions 1980 The trials and tribulations of a faithless marriage, the adulterer coming to face-to-face with his wife’s own infidelities. Tricky. Originally played live in the lumbering manner of David Bowie’s Station to Station, the song finally sprung to life over a pounding Motown beat – the opening line is a nod to the Supremes’ Some Things You Never Get Used To – laced with an inebriated punkish energy at odds with the underlying despair. GT
Listen on Spotify I Want You Elvis Costello and the Attractions 1986 An exercise in prolonged self-torture, in which Costello’s half-deranged protagonist sinks into obsessive desire and jealousy while replaying scenes of his lover with another man: “It’s the thought of him undressing you,” he sobs, “Or you undressing …” The music – recorded in one slow-burning take – has a similarly brutal simplicity: the discordant two-note guitar solo is as violently articulate as any of the words. GT
Listen on Spotify Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above CSS 2006 A nostalgic throwback to the sultry New York female raps of early 80s Blondie and Tom Tom Club, this punk-funk gem was easily the sexiest tune of its year. The Brazilian combo’s lead vocalist, Lovefoxxx, welcomes her lover back from a trip away by imploring him to join her in “wine, then bed, then more, then again” to the unlikely strains of now-defunct noise duo Death From Above 1979. GM
Listen on Spotify Brown Sugar D’Angelo 1995 Traditionally, R&B artists talked about sex with lyrics that appeared to be about one innocuous thing but were actually about the other. This neo-soul classic, co-written with A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, contains lyrics about threesomes but is actually about D’Angelo’s love of cannabis. Regardless of his intention, the combination of D’Angelo’s sensual delivery, backing vocals from then-girlfriend Angie Stone and his undeniable physical charms mean the song’s eroticism has endured. Drugs rarely sounded so hot. EW
Listen on Spotify Say My Name Destiny’s Child 1999 The end of the 90s saw R&B take giant strides thanks to the efforts of young innovators such as Rodney Jerkins, who wrote and produced this banger with his Darkchild team and Destiny’s Child themselves. This song includes all Darkchild’s hallmarks – skittering rhythms, a minor key melody, vocal harmonies that could turn on a sixpence and wonderfully soapy lyrics in which a girl calls her man and demands he “say my name” to prove that he’s not with another woman. He is. AN
Listen on Spotify Come On Eileen Dexys Midnight Runners 1982 Can a song sung by a man in dungarees ever be sexy? Kevin Rowland gave it his best shot with a chart-straddling party anthem that made the distinction between teenage lust and affection sound as giddy and confusing on record as it was in real life (“With you in that dress, my thoughts I confess verge on dirty”). That Rowland was an artist searching for something pure, something precious, only adds to the impact. TJ
Listen on Spotify I Touch Myself Divinyls 1991 Described at the time by a prudish Q magazine as having all the subtlety of a Bernard Manning routine, this trash-pop classic is one of the few international hits about female masturbation. Co-written with crack songwriting team Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg (who seem to have a one-track mind – they also wrote Like a Virgin), I Touch Myself gave Australian band the Divinyls their sole British hit and a 90s pop cultural touchstone referenced everywhere from Buffy to Austin Powers. AN
Listen on Spotify Wake Up and Make Love With Me Ian Dury and the Blockheads 1977 Barry White by way of Billericay. Tight, clipped, lubricious funk, with a happy-sexy take on early-morning fumblings in “the naughty, naked nude”. The opening track on the equally saucy New Boots and Panties!! album, it has just enough good manners to revert to coyness when the events reach their climax: “What happens next is private,” Dury grins. “It’s also very rude.” Fair enough. GT I Want You Bob Dylan 1966 One of Dylan’s catchiest tunes, with its skipping guitar motif and sing-along chorus, peopled by a rich array of characters: the guilty undertaker; the drunken politician; the dancing child with his Chinese suit. As with most of its parent album, Blonde On Blonde, the song describes a triangular relationship awash with sexual intrigue, but there’s real sincerity, too. “I did it, though, because he lied,” sings Dylan, “Because he took you for a ride.” GT
Listen on Spotify Lay Lady Lay Bob Dylan 1969 Dylan at his most sultry, delivering this dreamy invitational in a low, nasal country croon quite in contrast to his usual creaky rasp. You can almost see him propped up on a pillow, patting the side of that big brass bed, as he promises to show his potential paramour “whatever colours you have in your mind”. A steel guitar glints and the organ purrs behind him as he draws on all his poetic powers of persuasion: “Why wait any longer for the world to begin?” TH
Listen on Spotify Lyin’ Eyes The Eagles 1975 Based on Glenn Frey and Don Henley’s real-life observation of young, beautiful Hollywood wives escorting older, smaller, podgier husbands – and hiding, they suspect, a young lover on the side – this looks behind the shimmering veneer to unearth some tawdry compromises. Essentially a variation on the well-worn theme of a bird trapped in a gilded cage, it’s shackled to a classic Californian-country melody. GT Stutter Elastica 1993 Might it have been about Suede’s Brett Anderson? Might it have been about Damon Albarn - or just some other boy dissolved into jelly by Justine Frischmann’s predatory confidence? Whatever, Elastica’s chippy, lippy debut single was one of the high-water marks of the burgeoning Britpop scene. Frischmann’s impatience with boys translated superbly into music, too, making Stutter into a taut rush of riffs, choruses and female dominance. KE
Listen on Spotify Vaseline Elastica 1995 For obvious reasons, lubrication is often overlooked by songwriters as a source of inspiration. Elastica, however, nailed it superbly with their icky, 1995 opus to petroleum jelly and its many benefits. Justine Frischmann explains how it can help when you’re “stuck like glue” with all the candour of a market trader, and gives the phrase “doing the nasty” a whole new meaning in the process. RS
Listen on Spotify Who’s That Girl? Eurythmics 1983 As cheating songs go, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s third top 10 hit is an odd one. While the lyrical scenario is a throwback to the sweet-talking love rats of 60s girl-pop and soul, the creamy synths and Lennox’s erotically charged vocal imply that some masochistic pleasure is being derived from her lover’s infidelity. It was rumoured that the song was about Stewart despite the pair’s romantic partnership having “broken on the rocks” two years previously. GM
Listen on Spotify Stay With Me The Faces 1971 Being the ultimate boozy, lads’ rock band, it’s appropriate that the Faces’ best-known song is about a lad making it clear he’s only interested in one thing. Written by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, Stay With Me finds a throaty Stewart drawling over bar room blues, “In the mornin’ don’t say you love me,” drawls Stewart, “cause I’ll only kick you out of the door”. LB
Listen on Spotify Passion The Flirts 1982 The three-strong US girl-group were largely a front for the spare, synthetic productions of Hi-NRG maestro Bobby “O” Orlando – a straight man who channelled, honed and economised the glorious excesses of gay disco. All his songs were about sex but none came as charmingly brazen as Passion, spelling out its title in the chorus against the arpeggio bassline and ringing hi-hat that would transform the musical paths of both New Order and Pet Shop Boys. The song transcended club microtrends from house through electroclash and remains a trashily evergreen dancefloor classic. PF Relax Frankie Goes to Hollywood 1983 Famously banned by the BBC after Mike Read declared his disgust on air, Relax’s lyrics weren’t in themselves obscene. It was the stuff that surrounded them – the video set in a leather bar (which still looks genuinely outrageous today), the sleeve featuring a couple tied together with no pants on, the way Holly Johnson sang the word “come” and, most of all, Trevor Horn’s production, which built to an epic climax over a rock-hard bass pulse. Result? One of the biggest hits of the decade. AN Sledgehammer Peter Gabriel 1986 Taking its lyrical cue from the dripping innuendo of countless old blues songs, this irresistible slice of public-school funk finds Gabriel exhorting his paramour to “Open up your fruit cage/ Where the fruit is as sweet as can be”. Other euphemisms for the male appendage, alongside the eponymous sledgehammer, include a steam train, a big dipper and a bumper car. “Sometimes sex can break through barriers when other forms of communication are not working too well,” said Gabriel. The old fox. GT Let’s Get It On Marvin Gaye 1973 A pioneering slow jam that helped Gaye swap the social consciousness of What’s Going On for 70s loverman status. The fact that the song was urgent, insistent and paced like an act of seduction helped, as did its attendant mythology. During recording, the married Gaye fell for 17-year-old Janis Hunter, who instantly became the muse for the subsequent and album of the same name. GG
Listen on Spotify Sexual Healing Marvin Gaye 1982 A year before this song’s release, Gaye was in self-imposed exile in Ostend, but it rescued his career, provided his first hit in half a decade and slickly reconfigured the singer’s frustrated soulman persona for a more polished new decade. However, it couldn’t save the man himself; still overwhelmed by depression he eventually withdrew to his parents house, where he would be shot dead by his father on 1 April 1984. GG
Listen on Spotify Fancy Bobbie Gentry 1969 It’s no exaggeration to say that Fancy could be the most pefectly economical synthesis of words and music ever committed to vinyl; Gentry’s ear for southern dialogue – already demonstrated on the similarly melodramatic Ode to Billie Joe – dancing atop spry soulful strings. It’s a tale of the 18-year-old, “plain white trash” Fancy being sent out on the game by her desperate mother. Mum’s advice is chilling (“Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they’ll be nice to you”) and, though Fancy eventually comes up trumps, Gentry herself famously disappeared into self-imposed reclusion. MH
Listen on Spotify No Pussy Blues Grinderman 2007 Bravo to Grinderman singer Nick Cave; few elder statesmen of rock are even prepared to admit they’re over the hill, let alone sing about it. Here frustration and inadequacy suffuse Cave’s lyrics about his exasperated attempts to bed a younger lady. The industrial chug of the beat and explosive bursts of guitar underscore Cave’s pain, emasculated as he is by the lengths he will go to for the women who just do not fancy him anymore. RS
Listen on Spotify Bob’s Yer Uncle Happy Mondays 1990 Shaun Ryder’s one stab at being Barry White is an unlikely triumph. Over a baggy yet sultry hip-hop groove, our hero appears to be attempting to revive a dying relationship with sex from behind and a possible foursome. Except you can’t tell whether said foursome is sexy fantasy or bad memory. Surprisingly sad and sensual. GM
Listen on Spotify The Man That I Am With My Man The Hidden Cameras 2003 Joel Gibb, frontman of Canadian indie band the Hidden Cameras, once described their sound as “gay folk church music”. Replete with harps and strings, this song sounds as reverential as a religious ceremony until you realise that Gibb is singing, very explicitly, about sex. Few singers would go there, but Gibb manages to make it sound sacramental rather than sleazy, and The Man That I Am With My Man somehow ends up being extremely moving. AN
Listen on Spotify You Sexy Thing Hot Chocolate 1975 The only song in this compendium resurrected by a dole line full of unemployed steel workers swinging their backsides. But even though it’s taken up a place in the nation’s heart as the official anthem of male stripping, Errol Brown’s lusty disco classic is brilliant. And having charted in the 70s, 80s and 90s, it’s bigger than a novelty track – just ask Brown’s bank manager. WD
Listen on Spotify Saving All My Love for You Whitney Houston 1985 Half the impact of this classic ballad lay in the contrast between 22-year-old Houston’s pristine voice and the bleak subject matter (the protagonist knows she’s on a hiding to nothing with her adulterous liaison, but being the other woman seems better than losing her lover entirely). The way Houston soars up the scale to reach the high notes at the end of each verse is absolutely spine-tingling. It’s a virtuoso performance. CS
Listen on Spotify Between the Sheets The Isley Brothers 1983 After spending most of the 70s fighting the power with their distinctive funk-rock fusion, the Cincinnati clan spent the subsequent decade smooching. Between the Sheets is as soft and sensual as it gets, with a gentle low-slung groove and lyrics that aren’t suggestive, just plain-speaking (“Enough of the singing, let’s make love”). A minor hit at the time, its influence endures in hip-hop, where it is often the first port of call for rappers displaying their sensitive side, being sampled in the Notorious BIG’s Big Poppa, A Tribe Called Quest’s Bonita Applebum and many, many more. SY
Listen on Spotify Summer (The First Time) Millie Jackson 1974 Despite her well-earned reputation as a potty mouth, Millie Jackson was a juggernaut of a soul singer with a surprisingly deft touch. Her version of Summer turned Bobby Goldsboro’s rather creepy hit about losing your cherry to an older woman into an emotional epic. The lyrics are switched to directly address her former (male) lover, personalising the story and rendering it less a belated post-adolescent boast, more an account of the transition to womanhood. SY Fujiyama Mama Wanda Jackson 1957 Wanda Jackson would sound risque in any era, never mind the strait-laced 50s. Fujiyama Mama was as bawdy as anything by Elvis (whom she briefly dated), offering up conflicting images of volcanic eruptions and nuclear explosions. The opening lines (“I’ve been to Nagasaki and Hiroshima too/ The same thing I did to them, baby, I can do to you”) would get it banned now, but didn’t trouble the Japanese, who made it No 1. SY
Listen on Spotify I Just Want to Make Love to You Etta James 1961 A song that will forever be associated with Diet Coke, thanks to the “break time” ads of the mid-90s that gave Etta James’s thundering version fresh chart success in 1996. Originally written by Willie Dixon in 1954, the reprised blues classic consists of an anti-checklist, so to speak – the singer doesn’t want her chores done, nor her bread baked, she simply wants her beau to give up the goods. RS
Listen on Spotify Super Freak Rick James 1981 Destined to be recognised as the sample behind MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This, this funky ode to a groupie who’s game for anything is as sassy as its subject matter. Led by a bouncing bassline and backed by the Temptations, James gifts every line with a flourish that’s both comic and flamboyant. Few tracks have celebrated a woman’s lack of scruples in such style. CT
Listen on Spotify Crimson and Clover Tommy James and the Shondells 1968 At a time when most rock acts were preoccupied with experimental psychedelia, Tommy James and the Shondells found success with a three-chord song so infectious it redefined pop simplicity. With the band’s main songwriter on strike, James proved a point to his detractors by penning a tune himself. The result was a US No 1 hit about a boyhood crush that sold 5m copies and continues to endure through a slew of film appearances and cover versions. CT
Listen on Spotify Pull Up to the Bumper Grace Jones 1981 Beating Chuck Berry and Prince in the filthy car/sex metaphor stakes takes some doing, but the androgynous Jamaican supermodel, Warhol muse, Bond girl and scourge of chatshow hosts managed it on this post-disco marvel. Jones’s strangely alien voice purrs her outrageous come-ons – “Let me lubricate it”, “I’ve got to blow your horn” – over an imperious tropical funk backing from reggae rhythm kings Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. GM
Listen on Spotify Milkshake Kelis 2003 The most aggressive female sex taunts in pop are generally designed to intimidate men. The bizarre, brilliant Milkshake waggles its atonal electro-R&B booty firmly in the face of other women. This is probably because it was written entirely by two men, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka prolific Virginian production team the Neptunes. Harlem’s Kelis Rogers-Jones makes their fantasies come true with her cruelly teasing take on being so tasty that other women have to pay her for lessons. GM
Listen on Spotify Ignition (Remix) R Kelly 2003 R Kelly had compared his paramour to a car before, but Ignition (Remix) was more anatomically specific. Before you got to that schoolboy metaphor, there were lyrical groaners such as, “You must be a football coach/ The way you got me playin’ the field”. Just as well, then, that this was a superlative slice of modern soul – so musically and atmospherically irresistible that it got to No 1 despite being released in the shadow of one of pop’s most bizarre and unpleasant sex scandals. AN
Listen on Spotify Khia My Neck, My Back (Lick It) 2002 This song pushed sexual boundaries. Not only does female rapper Khia demand cunnilingus with the kind of aggressive boredom that would have many men running a mile, she also insists that her partner goes further (we won’t go into the details here). There aren’t many places you can go after that – in song, anyway – and Khia proved to be a one-hit wonder. AN
Listen on Spotify I Feel the Earth Move Carole King 1971 Like the old Brill Building pro she was, Carole King was a master of writing about sex without touching on any of the thorny physical details that would have excited radio censors in the days before women were officially permitted to enjoy sex. But to those in the know, I Feel the Earth Move’s hot and cold flushes, and a climax that aped the very rhythm of sex, spoke volumes. SY
Listen on Spotify Sex On Fire Kings of Leon 2008 Caleb Followill has expressed his doubts about the Nashville rockers’ biggest hit to date, revealing that it was almost ditched during the recording of the Only By the Night album. And while the notion of anyone’s sex literally being on fire is more comic than erotic, it’s Followill’s gruff-but-desperate vocal, the sweetly ringing guitars and the sex-equals-death imagery that give the song its sensually charged atmosphere. GM
Listen on Spotify Black Diamond Kiss 1974 Gritty social commentary written by guitarist Paul Stanley but sung by man a dressed as a moggy, drummer Peter Criss, whose alter ego,“the cat”, involved wearing whiskery make up. The titular Black Diamond is a prostitute, struggling for dignity in a life of “sorrow and madness” and the chief protagonist in one of Kiss’s very best tunes. The pleasingly sloppy cover by the Replacements is also worth digging out.GG
Listen on Spotify Lady Marmalade Labelle 1974 Written about an unforgettable encounter with a Creole prostitute, Lady Marmalade bears the distinctive touch of hit-making producer Allen Toussaint, who recruited funk stalwarts the Meters to craft a New Orleans groove as the song’s irresistible bedrock. More than 30 years after it became a phenomenon that kick-started disco, it remains a go-to track for artists looking to sex up their act, yet still manages to sound good in any incarnation. CT
Listen on Spotify Telephone Love JC Lodge 1988 As chatlines sent bills rocketing and “phone sex” entered the lexicon, it took the world of reggae, ever alert to the newsworthy, to tap the phenomenon for song. British-born JC Lodge recorded this over the fabulous Rumours rhythm, using her deceptively innocent vocals to convince male listeners that they were entering a world of mutual pleasure, when in reality she’d be filing her nails while distractedly flicking through Cosmo. SY
Listen on Spotify Help Me Make It Through the Night Kris Kristofferson 1970 The former Oxford student and son of a general may have been a bit counter-cultural for conservative Nashville, but there was no resisting his pen in this form. Notching up dozens of covers (Elvis, Sammi Smith, Gladys Knight and John Holt among them), Help Me Make It Through the Night is three minutes of pure foreplay, turning sex into companionship, and vice versa. Though others (particularly Smith) sold more with it, it’s Kristofferson’s rough-hewn original that gets straight to the heart of the matter. SY
Listen on Spotify Whole Lotta Love Led Zeppelin 1969 Channelling Willie Dixon’s You Need Love into an electrifying anthem of carnal energy, Whole Lotta Love captures Led Zep at their most sensual. Between Page’s crunching blues riff and Plant’s shamanistic presence, the track is primed with enough sexual urgency to spill out of control. So when the sonic mayhem of its free-form middle gradually erupts with orgasmic moans, groans and innuendoes, there’s little doubt as to what’s being simulated. Bombastic hedonism at its finest. CT Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 A key moment in rock’n’roll’s attack on cultural segregation, the Killer’s first hit had disputed authorship between African-American singer Dave Williams and white bandleader James Faye Hall before Lewis’s wild version hit No 1 on both the US country and R&B charts. Lewis’s leer makes you wonder whether “baby” is being invited to a dance or an orgy, but all that talk of “chicken in the barn” left a bitter aftertaste when Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin. GM
Listen on Spotify French Kiss Lil’ Louis 1989 The Love to Love You Baby of the acid house era – ie all the speeding up, slowing right down and general panting and moaning was designed, in not especially subtle fashion, to evoke the act of sex itself. Created by Chicago house pioneer Louis Burns, with diva Shawn Christopher on groaning duty, it was a surprise hit across Europe, peaking at number two in the UK. GG Tutti Frutti Little Richard 1955 Richard Penniman was an undistinguished R&B shouter when he began recording with Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. When their session was going badly, the assembled went to a nearby bar and the openly gay singer entertained them with a ribald ditty about the benefits of applying grease before attempting anal sex. Blackwell heard gold, got Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the lyrics, and Little Richard unleashed the screams that forever define the polymorphous perversity of rock’n’roll. GM
Listen on Spotify Darling Be Home Soon The Lovin’ Spoonful 1967 These relatively unsung heroes of American folk-rock took their name from a line in a Mississippi John Hurt song, which in turn referenced an ad for instant coffee. Coffee grounds notwithstanding, songwriter John Sebastian knew a thing or two about lovin’, encapsulating it in this elegantly orchestrated heart-stopper as “the great relief of having you to talk to”. KE
Listen on Spotify You Ain’t Woman Enough Loretta Lynn 1966 Something of a feminist icon in the conservative world of country, Lynn wrote from the aggrieved viewpoint of the wronged but determined wife. You Ain’t Woman Enough was a gauntlet thrown down to the woman messing with her man to do her worst. “Women like you, they’re a dime-a-dozen/ You can buy them anywhere”. Lynn is reputed to have had more songs banned than anyone else in the genre. SY
Listen on Spotify Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim! Kirsty MacColl 1989 A corny Mariachi-style brass line unpromisingly heralds this country and western pastiche from MacColl Jnr. It’s easy to be annoyed by the self-pitying tone of MacColl’s plea to her new lover not to disappoint like previous deceivers and one-night stands. But there’s something extremely pleasing about the poetry and hopeful, colloquial chorus of this diamond, which dwells in a back catalogue too often blighted by tawdry double-tracked vocals. MR
Listen on Spotify Justify My Love Madonna 1990 Co-written by Lenny Kravitz, Madonna’s ninth No 1 single in the US features the singer’s palpitating spoken-word delivery of lyrics such as “I wanna run naked in a rainstorm, make love in a train cross-country” against an atmospheric drum loop and little else. The song pre-empted her drift into adult-oriented areas (namely her 1992 book Sex) and clearly gave Madge a taste for controversy. The art-house pornography of the accompanying video was banned from MTV. RS
Listen on Spotify Electric Feel MGMT 2008 By capturing the sparks of sexual attraction with its falsetto-led hooks, funky bassline and strut-worthy rhythm, Electric Feel quickly turned this pair of former music students into postmodern pop heroes. Thanks to the track’s obvious debt to 70s glam-rock, Prince and the Scissor Sisters, MGMT leave you with the feeling that this could have been a hit at any point during the past three decades. CT
Listen on Spotify I Want Your Sex George Michael 1987 One of a then unprecedented seven US top 10 singles from his major-star vehicle, Faith. A sleeve of writhing bodies disguised behind silk sheets and a video in which he inscribed the legend “explore monogamy” on the thigh and back of his then-girlfriend, make-up artist Kathy Yeung, cemented the salaciousness of the song. As a musical exercise, the mid-paced, Stevie Wonder-indebted jam proved to be one of Michael’s longest-serving income revenues, first as Simon Mayo’s Radio 1 soundbed, then a Top Of The Pops signature ident. PF
Listen on Spotify Fastlove George Michael 1996 His last US top 10 hit, the iconic white funk of Fastlove would turn out to be a curious precursor to Michael’s latter public profile – being a anthem for no-strings-attached sex. The louche hook, “Gotta get up to get down”, works for both his herbal and narcotic mores, and while the party line is that it was written about a brief affair Michael had while writing the Older set, the gay reading has always understood Fastlove as a homage to the age-old pastime of cottaging. “Looking for some inspiration, made my way into the night/ All that bullshit conversation, baby can’t you read the signs?” PF
Listen on Spotify One Minute Man Missy Elliott 2001 Virginia’s Melissa Arnette Elliott is the mistress of the kind of sexual taunt that is too busy winking at the girls to take any man entirely seriously. The two versions of this hit single from her Miss E … So Addictive album give both Ludacris and Jay-Z the opportunity to prove their virile credentials in typically bullish style. But all you want to take from this Timbaland-produced funk bouncer is Missy’s smokily sung plea for a man who’s good in the sack. GM
Listen on Spotify Work It Missy Elliott 2002 In which the playfully subversive hip-hop queen gets predatory. Set against Timbaland’s off-the-peg, jerky staccato rhythms and a skewed palette of samples including elephant noises and backward rapping, Missy flips the macho sexual bravado of the rap world on its head in her inimitable free-flowing style. SB
Listen on Spotify A Case of You Joni Mitchell 1971 As an artist whose music has accompanied many a glass of wine, it’s fitting that one of Mitchell’s best tracks is one in which she wistfully compares her lover to a glass of the stuff. The track’s tone of desire is muted somewhat by the narrator’s assertions that nothing her lover could do could get her hammered/truly hurt her. Incidentally, it’s rumoured that the titular “You” might have been Leonard Cohen or Graham Nash. Regardless, like the whole of its parent album, Blue, it’s beautiful. WD
Listen on Spotify Heads High Mr Vegas 1998 Dancehall star Mr Vegas made a habit of giving the ladies advice. Take Hot Gal Nuh Fight Over Man, which reminded his female fans that fighting over men wasn’t a good look. International hit Heads High took a similarly pedagogic stance, advising girls against giving oral sex. Chorus lyric “Heads high, kill em wit it now/ Just mek a bwoy know yuh nuh blow” are followed by a hygienic reminder to keep it fresh – not “green, like Charlene”. EW
Listen on Spotify OPP Naughty by Nature 1991 OPP was set to a chirpy piano riff borrowed from the Jackson 5’s ABC. But this was no Sesame Street track, rather a crash course in sexual politics, specifically the notion that there aren’t any no-go zones for the roving eye. Rapper Treach spells out the acronym, beginning easily enough with Other People’s, but going all coy on the final P, which could either mean Property, or vary according to gender. By opening up to both sexes, this celebration of adultery avoided being a one-sided misogynist’s boast and became a huge international hit. SY
Listen on Spotify If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night) Me’Shell Ndegeocello 1993 Madonna had an innate understanding of competitive sexuality, so no wonder she made this bisexual rapper-singer-instrumentalist her Maverick label’s first signing. If That’s Your Boyfriend is a contemptuous knife to the heart of a woman Ndegeocello wouldn’t even acknowledge as a rival, a celebration not of sex, but cuckqueaning simply because she can: “You say that’s your boyfriend/ You say I’m outta line/ That’s funny, he said I could call him up any time.” Naughty, nasty, and utterly brilliant. SY
Listen on Spotify You Can Leave Your Hat On Randy Newman 1972 The covers by Joe Cocker and Tom Jones are better known, but they miss the pathos in Newman’s original, preferring to sidestep the crux of the tune – a sad bloke’s tragic need to micro-manage the bedroom – in favour of more straightforward, and reassuring, raunch. However, its author, a man who never misses the chance to be mordant, strikes just the right balance of sauce and sly wit. GG
Listen on Spotify Bizarre Love Triangle New Order 1986 Taken from the Manchester band’s fourth album, Brotherhood, Bizarre Love Triangle didn’t even make the Top 40 on its original release, but is now widely recognised as one of their classic 80s tracks. Bernard Sumner’s lyrics are typically vague - “But that’s the way that it goes/ And it’s what nobody knows/ And every day my confusion grows” – but seem to hint at a protaganist caught in a three-way love prism. LB
Listen on Spotify Closer Nine Inch Nails 1994 With its murky textures and brooding pop focus, this track became an unexpected hit that propelled industrial rock into the mainstream and made Trent Reznor a star. A primal, impulsive longing for penetration depicts sex as an opportunity to “get away from myself” and “get me closer to God”. Blunt, sinister and irresistibly sultry, few tracks portray promiscuity as an overpowering need for escapism quite like this. CT
Listen on Spotify Warm Leatherette The Normal 1978 Kinky electro-pop inspired by the automotive fantasies of JG Ballard’s Crash (“Hear the crashing steel/ Feel the steering wheel”) and created by Daniel Miller, who would go on to fund all manner of vaguely saucy electronic music by starting Mute Records. Most famously covered by Grace Jones, whose dominatrix persona perfectly suits its strutting perviness. More recently tackled by Duran Duran – and you can imagine how that turned out. GG
Listen on Spotify I Want My Cock Owen and Leon 1965 Reggae has always had a liking for innuendo so poorly camouflaged it makes the Carry On movies look like Noël Coward (see Max Romeo’s Wet Dream, page 19). This storming ska hit from the little-known Silvera brothers begins with the loud crowing of a cockerel and details with relish a woman’s fondness for poultry, particularly last thing at night. Confused none, amused many. SY I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby Kellee Patterson 1976 Brilliant as he was, Barry White always sounded like he was parodying sex, leaving his songs ripe for reinterpretation. Kellee Patterson, a petite beauty queen with a voice that stopped just short of a squeak, could scarcely have been more different. Where the Love Hippo lounged and growled, she skips and jumps all over Gene Russell’s jazzed-up piano, squeezing every ounce of meaning out of the “deeper and deeper” refrain. SY Me and Mrs Jones Billy Paul 1972 This immaculate slice of prime Philly soul was written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff (also responsible for Love Train and Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now), describing an extramarital affair between the singer and the titular Mrs Jones. “We both know it’s wrong,” croons Paul over shimmering strings. “But it’s much too strong to let it go now.” Jumping between fatalism and fantasy, all they can do is promise to meet again tomorrow, same time, same place. GT
Listen on Spotify Fuck the Pain Away Peaches 2000 There’s nothing subtle about the title, but this song has hidden depths. First, it pays tribute to Peaches’ forebear in rock’n’roll hedonism, Chrissie Hynde. Second, it advises: “Stay in school, cos it’s the best” (no irony, Peaches is a former teacher). Third, its raw electro thump put it in the vanguard of the short-lived but highly enjoyable electroclash movement – and its message of sex as liberation and release matched any male rocker thrust for thrust. AN
Listen on Spotify Gigantic Pixies 1988 A classic face-off between romantic melody and comic lyric, the Boston quartet’s debut single was inspired by 1986 film Crimes of the Heart and its affair between Sissy Spacek and a teenage black boy. As Black Francis and co establish their much-imitated quiet verse/loud chorus USP, bassist and co-writer Kim Deal observes the jungle fever scenario and exclaims: “Gigantic ... A big, big love!” Her playfully sexy voice and the huge riff created a whole new kind of power ballad. GM
Listen on Spotify Roxanne The Police 1978 A reggaefied tango, no less. Sting wrote the song while touring France in 1977, having been “inspired” by his observation of Parisian prostitutes plying their trade near his skanky hotel. This being Sting, naturally he chose to name his heroine after the female lead from Cyrano de Bergerac. A hit upon its rerelease in 1979, it launched the band as contenders and remains an endearingly scuzzy little song. And not a lute in sight. GT
Listen on Spotify If I Was Your Girlfriend Prince 1987 There’s no other song quite like it, with Prince thumbing his nose at conventional sexual politics by reconfiguring the basic plot of the male/female love song itself. Out goes the conventional desire for a quick shag, in comes a yearning for the kind of intimacy women have with their female friends. That this was initially supposed to be sung by his female alter ego “Camille” only boggles the mind even further. GG
Listen on Spotify Little Red Corvette Prince 1983 A soft drum machine plays against hormonal chord surges and motoring metaphors, while a 24-year-old Prince relays his dalliances with a vastly more experienced lady friend. The sexual tension builds, but it’s underlined by a moment of sadness as the singer clocks the “pocket full of horses” (condoms) his date is holding on to, and realises he’s probably not the only jockey enjoying a ride. Still, something tells us he was able to get over it in time. RS
Listen on Spotify Darling Nikki Prince and the Revolution 1984 Not only was the titular Nikki naughty enough to be “masturbating with a magazine” when Prince first met her, her antics so outraged Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, who bought parent album Purple Rain as a present for their daughter, that she began to campaign against mucky lyrics, starting pressure group the Parents Music Resource Center. That’s why some CDs come with those “parental advisory” warning stickers. It’s all the little fella’s fault, basically. GG
Listen on Spotify Kiss Prince and the Revolution 1986 Prince was initially so underwhelmed by what would prove to be his biggest hit that he passed his original demo on to proteges Mazarati. When they and producer David Z came up with an incendiary minimalist funk arrangement, Prince promptly nicked it back. Packed with memorable lines – “You don’t have to watch Dynasty”, “Women not girls rule my world” – and driven by Prince’s cutest falsetto, Kiss proved that male seduction soul needn’t be macho. GM
Listen on Spotify Baby Wants to Ride Jamie Principle 1987 Hard to credit that the deeply religious man who wrote and sang the words to the gorgeous Your Love, a house ballad you could take home to meet your mother, would return with a song so sexually explicit it had its own x-rated mix. It’s the greatest track Prince never wrote. SY Babies Pulp 1992 Originally released as a single in 1992 with the self-explanatory B-side Sheffield: Sex City (see below), Babies became a hit for Pulp in a remixed version two years later. Over a guitar riff that sounds like a bra-strap twanging, Jarvis Cocker recounts a typically louche tale of a horny teenager hiding in a wardrobe to watch one sister having sex, then being seduced by her. Trouble is, he actually fancied the other one … AN
Listen on Spotify Do You Remember the First Time? Pulp 1994 Sex in Pulp songs is rarely simple – it’s often freighted with frustration, manipulation and jealousy. This song sees Jarvis Cocker berating an ex-girlfriend who’s moved on to someone both dull (“You’re gonna let him bore your pants off again”) and poorly endowed (“Still you bought a toy to reach the places he never goes”). His solution? To suggest a pervy sharing arrangement straight out of Joe Orton over cheesy organ and wired guitars. AN
Listen on Spotify Sheffield: Sex City Pulp 1992 With its industrial contours and frequently grey horizon, Sheffield doesn’t immediately spring to mind as an aphrodisiacal location. But one listen to Pulp’s homage to their hometown and you’ll never see the steel city in the same light again. Keyboard player Candida Doyle recalls childhood memories of a neighbourhood besieged by couples having sex “like some kind of chain reaction”, before Jarvis Cocker takes things a step further and claims: “I had to make love to every crack in the pavement.” RS
Listen on Spotify (Love Is Like a) Heat Wave Martha and the Vandellas 1963 Martha Reeves ends this early Motown dance classic by singing of “true romance”. But Holland/Dozier/Holland’s girl-group benchmark has something much more carnal than romance on its mind. Reeves’s powerhouse gospel holler soars over the Funk Brothers’ galloping rhythm, speaking in tongues about the devil, fire, tears, high blood pressure and a lover’s touch so incendiary that it “tearing me apart” and leaves her unable to do anything except “stare in space”. GM
Listen on Spotify Nude Photo Rhythim Is Rhythim 1987 Early techno was inspired equally by Kraftwerk and European futurism and by the hedonistic, predominantly gay, warehouse parties of Chicago and Detroit. Nude Photo, written by Derrick May and a 19-year-old Thomas Barnett, contains the sexualised energy of tension and release built into the lone, synthesised, woozy disco string and the warm, fulsome bassline. The 12” single came with an Alan Oldham artwork of a topless woman in tights and stiletto heels holding a record. EW Inside My Love Minnie Riperton 1975 Everything about this is dripping with musical honey. Ripperton’s five-octave voice, the lazy, skin-soft drums and the moment where the band (bar keyboardist Joe Sample) fade out to let her voice ripple through the high notes. All of which combines with her disarmingly overt lyrics to exude both desire and a seductive innocence. Producer Leon Ware was clearly in touch with rare sexual energy – he went on to produce Marvin Gaye’s I Want You. EW
Listen on Spotify Honky Tonk Women The Rolling Stones 1969 This ribald country-rock pastiche was released the day after the death of Brian Jones. And while its ragged glories saw the Stones further re-establishing their rock roots after unsuccessfully playing around with flower power, it remains one of Jagger’s funniest lyrics, as he imagines himself having drowned his girl sorrows so successfully that “a gin-soaked bar-room queen” has to carry him to bed, cave woman-style. The much-sampled cowbell rhythm was played by producer Jimmy Miller. GM
Listen on Spotify Let’s Spend the Night Together The Rolling Stones 1967 Here, a nervous, tongue-tied Jagger is desperately trying to talk someone into an encounter; he’ll try anything – one minute he “needs you more than ever”; the next he’s all no-pressure: “We could have fun just grooving around.” The dense, galloping piano echoes his insistence, his mind set on something seemingly long promised, or perhaps even briefly tasted. When the Stones played Shanghai in 2006, this was one of several seditiously suggestive songs the authorities demanded was left off the setlist. TH
Listen on Spotify Wet Dream Max Romeo 1968 This international reggae hit didn’t conceal its subject, despite the singer’s claims that it was about a leaky roof. That was hard to justify when it contained the lyric “give the fanny to me” and was released on Trojan, a label that shared a name with a condom brand. More sex tunes followed, including Wine Her Goosie, before Romeo found his true calling as one of the finest political singers in the history of roots reggae. EW
Listen on Spotify Love Child Diana Ross and the Supremes 1968 The Supremes’ last US No 1 was a clever record, a deeply reactionary lyric obscured by an apparently taboo-busting theme. The R Dean Taylor/Frank Wilson/Pam Sawyer/Deke Richards co-composition had the singer using the story of her tragic beginnings as an illegitimate child as a justification for withholding sex, rather than just using a condom. Nevertheless, the record remains a Motown classic by virtue of its dramatic orchestral arrangement, rich images of childhood struggle and a typically convincing performance from Ross. GM
Listen on Spotify In Every Dream Home a Heartache Roxy Music 1973 Bryan Ferry is having decadent sex in his bachelor pad but – wait – what’s this? His perfect life is an illusion, so he’s doing it with a blow-up doll? Dream Home is one of Ferry’s keenest satires on consumerism’s utopian dream, drawing on the pop art of mentor Richard Hamilton, best known for the collage Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? GG
Listen on Spotify Let’s Talk About Sex Salt-n-Pepa 1990 An epochal moment and among the first occasions when sex was discussed openly in a mainstream song. The female New York duo dodged the scissors of the censors by inviting the easily offended to change channels, even as they predicted the song would prove too racy for radio. As if shamed into self-criticism at a time when reality was already forcing a rethink (the group made an alternate version, Let’s Talk About Aids), the media slowly got behind it and Salt-n-Pepa scored a global hit. SY Hold On, I’m Comin’ Sam and Dave 1966 Allegedly inspired by songwriter David Porter asking partner Isaac Hayes be patient while he finished in the toilet. Sometimes all you need is a good punning title, though this ageless classic of 60s soul was helped by the lustiest brass section and the finest vocal tag team the genre produced. Brilliant enough on record, the much-screened Oslo performance is as close to publicly acting out sex as you could then get without being arrested. SY
Listen on Spotify Give Him a Great Big Kiss Shangri-Las 1965 Leader of the Pack (banned by the BBC) established the Shangri-Las as the girl group who played on the wrong side of the tracks. Give Him a Great Big Kiss went further, pairing up with a moody-looking “good-bad” guy with dirty fingernails, permanent shades and hair a little too long. The handclaps and “mwah!” behind the kiss throbbed with the thrill of teenage sex. The “best believe I’m in love l-u-v” intro was the popped cherry on top. SY
Listen on Spotify Some Velvet Morning Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood 1967 The line “open up your gate” has obvious possibilities; Phaedra could be a reference to the mythical Greek who may have levelled false rape charges. But you could search Some Velvet Morning top to bottom for hard meaning without arriving anywhere. So why is everyone (including Primal Scream and Kate Moss, who did a rubbish cover complete with pole-dancing video) utterly convinced it’s about sex? Because from Nancy’s faux-naif act to the leer in Lee’s glorious baritone to its aura of utter knowingness, it just is. SY
Listen on Spotify Rene Small Faces 1968 As a child, Small Faces singer Steve Marriott famously played the Artful Dodger in Oliver!. Rene could well have come from Lionel Bart’s musical, had its rating been a little more permissive than the U certificate. This song about a Docklands prostitute has plenty of East End oompah and a dash of double entendre, before drifting off into an r’n’b wig-out. SY Reel Around the Fountain The Smiths 1984 The stately opener to the Smiths’ debut LP, this song would have been a single were it not for a Sun newspaper campaign that accused it of condoning paedophilia. In fact it is (of course) a much more elusive piece of work, taking in a loss of innocence (“You took a child and you made him old”), but also mutual admiration and pleasure (“You’re the bees knees but so am I”). Oh, and a fair bit of sodomy, too – “You can pin and mount me like a butterfly” indeed. AN Empty Bed Blues Bessie Smith 1928 Less a lament about Smith’s sexless existence, more a celebration of an accomplished lover. “My man give me a lesson that I never had before,” the first lady of early blues confides. “When he got through teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore.” This 1928 number was incredibly risqué for its time and, even in this sexually explicit age, the euphemistic lyrics can still raise an appreciative eyebrow. It’s daring, witty and woozily seductive. You imagine that Smith, who had a penchant for leaping into bed with women as well as men, could teach her conquests a thing or two herself. SB
Listen on Spotify Between the Bars Elliott Smith 1997 Epitomising the troubled beauty of Smith’s songwriting, Between the Bars is as unconventional as romantic songs get. The singer’s introspective whisper advocates comfort by way of obliteration, its lullaby-like melody possessing a dark subtext. “Drink up, drink up,” Smith repeats, until he sounds like the demon on your shoulder, edging you toward escapism with predatory-like seduction. CT
Listen on Spotify Wreck a Buddy Soul Sisters 1969 Even with some 40 years’ distance, Wreck a Buddy is quite shocking in its lack of inhibition. The Jamaican girl-group make a straightforward plea for a man to terminate their virginity. Innuendo is out, as is discrimination: ugly, extra-large – anyone’s welcome, so long as they’re able and willing. Not surprisingly, the tune proved enormously popular and found its way on to an early Tighten Up compilation. SY
Listen on Spotify … Baby One More Time Britney Spears 1998 Everyone talks about the video – and no wonder – but this song is iconic in its own right. Written by an expert team of Swedish songwriters who had provided hits for the Backstreet Boys, the melody alone made for a pop classic, but the many subsequent cover versions have proved that only Britney could adequately convey the song’s combustible mixture of groaning masochism and teenage lust. AN
Listen on Spotify I’m On Fire Bruce Springsteen 1985 In which a “bad desire” leaves the Boss, rather dubiously, lying in bed with “the sheets soaking wet”. Built on the bare bones of an old Sun Studios slap-back beat, this is the dark side of desire, full of shadows and backwoods foreboding. Nothing good can ever come of this illicit, purely sexual liaison, but – like the freight train in Springsteen’s head – there’s no stopping it now. GT
Listen on Spotify Da Ya Think I’m Sexy Rod Stewart 1978 Back in the 70s, the idea of a one night stand with a lean, lithe Rod Stewart would have stirred many women into a froth of fantasising. This song – a rare Stewartian stab at disco – describes what would happen, should you be lucky enough to receive his attentions for a night. Cheeky and entirely enjoyable, it even reveals a sweet side to the cock of the walk – instead of booting the lady out the next morning, he takes her to the movies. CS
Listen on Spotify I Wanna Be Your Dog The Stooges 1969 Whereas the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs aspired to high art, Iggy Pop and his fellow Detroit droogs saw masochistic sex as yet another opportunity to swirl around in a cesspool of their own making. The Velvets connection lies in the song’s ceaseless repetition and the presence of producer John Cale, swapping his droning viola for pounding away on one piano note. The rest is three chords and Iggy’s gleeful relish for being abused. GM
Listen on Spotify Guilty Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb 1981 The perfect karaoke duet. Gibb brings the full lushness of the Bee Gees’ production technique to bear on this steamy folie a deux, while an unleashed Streisand rises up over Gibb’s falsetto, the pair talking each other into believing that there’s nothing wrong with their illicit love affair, and that it’s all going to work out fine: “We got nothing to be guilty of/ Our love will climb any mountain near or far.” RV
Listen on Spotify Animal Nitrate Suede 1993 After baggy, the indie scene was badly in need of an injection of sex and Suede provided it. Aids had almost expunged homosexuality from pop, but the straight (or, as he famously said at the time, “bisexual who’s never had a homosexual experience”) Brett Anderson brought it screaming back with this song, a lip-smacking tribute to rough gay sex, not to mention “the delights of the chemical smile”. And if you didn’t get the point, the wonderfully aggressive flounce of Bernard Butler’s guitar rammed it home. AN
Listen on Spotify The Drowners Suede 1992 The debut single from Brett Anderson’s mob firmly established their modus operandi. Big, glittery glam choruses and deliberately provocative lyrics, hinting at a modish androgyny: “As the skin flies all around us/ We kiss in his room to a popular tune,” warbles Anderson with a wink. Derivative yet fresh, this is the sound of suburban sex in excelsis, intoxicated by the scent of its own debauchery. GT
Listen on Spotify Love to Love You Baby Donna Summer 1975 Boston disco diva Summer originally presented the idea for this infamous porno-pop masterpiece to her co-writers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte with no intention of performing something so rude herself. But sanity prevailed, and the new vogue for extended disco mixes saw the original stretched to 16 minutes courtesy of Summer lying in darkness on the studio floor and simulating 23 stunningly convincing aural orgasms. The Beeb duly banned it, thereby ensuring it went top 5. GM
Listen on Spotify Wild Thing Tone Loc 1989 At a time when hip-hop was making giant creative strides, Tone Loc’s simplistic rhyming and knuckle-dragging sexism arrived looking anachronistic. But no one ever went bust giving the public what they want, and Van Halen guitar samples, a rap any pre-schooler could understand and a video ripping off Robert Palmer’s babelicious Addicted to Love tapped all our inner schoolkids and sold way more than Public Enemy could dream of. No one ever said the world was just. SY
Listen on Spotify Get It On T Rex 1971 The grinding little riff from Marc Bolan’s biggest hit has been enthusiastically nicked by everyone from Oasis (Cigarettes & Alcohol) to Prince (Cream). But Bolan readily admitted the debt his only American success owed to Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie. Get It On is a masterpiece of strutting syncopation, ragged guitar and inspired erotic doggerel (“You’ve got a hubcap diamond star halo”) that, as the lyrics mention, manages to be both dirty and sweet. GM
Listen on Spotify Wild Thing The Troggs 1966 American pop maestro Chip Taylor’s most famous song was originally recorded by New York rockers the Wild Ones in 1965, but it was Andover four-piece the Troggs who made it famous the following year, taking it to No 1 in the US. The stomping three-chord progression is almost childishly simple, but the way frontman Reg Presley switches from a purr to a snarl midway through the lines, “wild thing, I think I love you/ But I wanna know for sure”, throbs with more adult concerns. CC
Listen on Spotify Red Light Special TLC 1994 Few bands tackled sex as forthrightly as 90s R&B empresses TLC (T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli) without making the listener feel squeamish. Red Light Special leaves little to the imagination, helped along by Babyface’s laid-back, super-slick production, as lead singer Chilli commands you to “take a good look at it”, before promising all sorts of goodies usually reserved for paying clients only. RS
Listen on Spotify Shake, Rattle and Roll Big Joe Turner 1954 Penned by rock’s hidden inventor, Jesse Stone, for the greatest of all jump-blues shouters, the original of this filthy rock’n’roll standard leaves Bill Haley’s sanitised hit version for dead. Turner has obviously married a young girl for reasons other than tax purposes, can’t get her to do any housework, but has become addicted to his “one-eyed cat peepin’ in a seafood store” and her ability to make him “roll my eyes/ Even make me grit my teeth”. Elvis covered it; Cliff didn’t. GM
Listen on Spotify Oops (Oh My) Tweet 2002 Tweet was an unknown R&B singer from Rochester, New York, when she turned cheeks red and airwaves blue with her trippy description of a late-night session in front of the mirror. Timbaland’s production is as distinctive and unusual as ever, with its nagging percussion and bubbling vocals, while Missy Elliott’s cameo (“I was looking so good I couldn’t reject myself”) is perfectly bizarre in a song that surely demanded a solo performance. RS Desire U2 1988 OK, so it commits the cardinal sin of rhyming “desire” with “fire”, but the sheer uncluttered exuberance of these three minutes is otherwise flawless. From the careening Bo Diddley beat to the heady coming together of sex, drugs and politics, Desire is the thrilling apogee of their much-maligned Americana fixation. Proof positive that beneath all the technical fuss and bombastic sloganeering there lurks within the heart of U2 a primal rock’n’roll beast. GT
Listen on Spotify Turning Japanese The Vapors 1980 Objectively speaking, this was slight and laden with imagery that had every schoolboy in the land humming along knowingly. That said, there’s rarely been a catchier homage to self-abuse. Fast, funny and endowed with a lyric that errs on the clever side of lewdness (“I want a doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well”), Turning Japanese may have been as lite as new wave got, but it’s difficult to dislike. CS
Listen on Spotify Venus in Furs The Velvet Underground 1967 Lou Reed’s sado-masochistic tour de force takes its title and lead character (Severin) from the 1870 novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Austrian writer who gave masochism its name. John Cale’s coruscating viola and Reed’s own droning guitar – created by tuning all the strings to the same note - are as vital to the overwhelming atmosphere of dark sensuality as Reed’s richly imagistic lyrics. Venus in Furs has proved to be the enduring soundtrack to a million patchouli-scented student fumblings. GM
Listen on Spotify Pictures of Lily The Who 1967 At their mid-60s peak the Who were arguably the most subversive hit singles band on the planet. Ample proof is provided by this bittersweet Pete Townshend porn satire, which sees Roger Daltrey’s insomniac youth given pictures of a girl by his dad to help him sleep. And this works just fine, until the callow lad falls in love with Lily and asks if he can meet her. “Son, now don’t be silly,” dad answers gently. “She’s been dead since 1929.” GM
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