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As Tina Turner once sang, "What's love got to do with it?" The answer here is, of course, "Nothing. It's purely physical."
Although this week's CityBeat is the annual Love & Sex issue, I've avoided L-O-V-E as much as possible. Were I to create a list of great love songs, I could just run a litany of Burt Bacharach and Hal David standards and be done with it. Instead, I've reached deep down into the pants of my record collection to find songs that skip the sentimental stuff and go right to getting it on.
Please don't get upset if your horny favorites aren't included. This is not a "Best of" list per se. Rather, if you'll pardon the metaphor, it's a kind of a sex lover's pizza, with a nice variety but not all of the possible toppings.
Enjoy.
You can always pick off the stuff you don't like.
The Old In & Out
Marvin Gaye and Barry White both have so many songs that make people want to stick something inside someone or have someone stick something inside them that they just overwhelm the list. Gaye's "Let's Get It On" or "Sexual Healing" are almost without peer in sheer sexiness. Likewise for any number of White's sweeping, disco odes to lovemaking.
For purely orgasmic numbers, however, Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and French singer and cultural icon Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime ... Moi Non Plus" are hard to top. But my special pick for this list goes to an obscure slow jam from the Gotta Get High CD by Antoine Elektra (aka ex-Coolie Clay Harper). It's not subtle. It gets right down to business.
Hot Lyric:
When I feel my love inside ya
And I get on top and ride ya
Ooh you're makin me come.
With one hand scratch my back
While the other cups my sack
Ooh you're making me come.
Masturbation Melodies
There's a bunch of songs in this category: Devo's "Whip It," Prince's "Darling Nikki," Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up," The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" and The Who's incomparable "Pictures of Lily." But the most joyful of all is Clarence Carter's "Strokin'." Stroke it, Clarence.
Hot Lyric:
I stroke it to the East.
I stroke it to the West
I stroke it to the woman that I love the best
I be strokin'.
Fun With Sex Toys
This is a tough category. I'm sure, with my lone entry, I'm leaving out some winners. So keep those cards and letters coming. Still, you can't top Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," a brooding, obsessive tale about love with a blow up doll. Here the usually urbane Brian Ferry is full of "hot" air.
Hot Lyric:
Inflatable doll
Lover ungrateful
I blew up your body
But you blew my mind.
Genital Jams
Who else but Prince could score a Top 10 hit about vaginal walls? It seems a tough sell for Top 40, but the tiny genius did it, with, of course, a little help from that wholesome Scot, Sheena Easton, who sang the song. Easton was extremely credible in singing about the pleasures of getting inside her "Sugar Walls." Some of us had been curious about them since she debuted with "Morning Train" in the early 1980s.
Other contenders in this category include AC/DC's slightly confusing "Big Balls" (as in "she's got Big Balls"), The Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Party on Your Pussy" and the singing penis of The Dickies' "If Stuart Could Talk." The champ though in this category has to be the Motor City Madman and his lecherous "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."
Hey, Ted, is that a crossbow under your loincloth or are you just happy to see us?
Hot Lyric:
She come to town; she be foolin' around,
A puttin' me down as a Rock & Roll clown. It's all right.
Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
Wang dang, what a sweet poontang,
A shakin' my thang as a rang-a-dang-dang in the bell.
Songs That Suck
There just aren't enough songs about oral sex. There are several songs that briefly allude to the act: David Bowie's "Cracked Actor" has a great raunchy guitar riff and the line "Suck baby suck. Give me your head." And I remember nearly choking on my Fresca when I first heard Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders sing, "I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for" on "Tattooed Love Boys."
In those songs, however, the blow job is just a small part of a larger theme. For a full head of song, try to find a copy of Silverhead's Sixteen and Savaged LP from 1973, with it's shoulda-been-a-hit, "More Than Your Mouth Can Hold."
But in an effort to provide equal time, the merit badge for this category goes to Marvin Sease's 10-minute "Candy Licker," a song just for the ladies. The song was an underground smash in 1987, plus it also helped breakdown stereotypes about black men's supposed aversion to grazing the Venus mound. All in all, a pivotal record. If you're intrigued, check out any of Marvin's other fine CDs: Do You Need a Licker (1994), Bitch Git It All (1997) and Women Would Rather Be Licked (2001).
Hot Lyric:
Gonna lick you up
Gonna lick you down
Turn round baby
Gonna lick you all around
I'm your candy licker.
Contraception
Good ol' Snoop Dogg sang about having a pocket full of rubbers in "Gin & Juice," and of course those horses that Prince sang about in "Little Red Corvette" were of the latex variety.
Still, it was a country gal from Butcher's Hollow, Ky., who was the first Pop artist to sing of contraception. Though it sounds quaint now, Loretta Lynn's "The Pill" was a powerful statement of independence.
Hot Lyric:
This old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage
The clothes I'm wearing from now on won't pick up so much yardage
Mini-skirts and hot pants, and a few little fancy thrills
I'm makin' up for all those years 'cos now I've got the pill. ©
