Outrageous sexual innuendo and bad euphemisms
Considering the very phrase ‘Rock’n’roll’ is said to have once been slang for making the beast with two backs, it’s hardly surprising that sex has been a popular lyrical topic in popular music since back in the days of the blues. However, in the interests of good taste, lyricists have often sought to couch the subject in euphemistic terms. The trouble is, sometimes they lack the poetic sensibilities to, erm, pull it off …
LED ZEPPELIN
Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and co were never backward in coming forwards when it came to matters of courtship. In fact rock folklore has it that they showed all the sensitivity in matters of romance of Cro-Magnon men at the end of a particularly epic night on the peyote. But when they copied the line from Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Killing Floor’ and instructed an unnamed partner to Squeeze my lemon’til the juice runs down my leg, many a sensitive gentleman winced at the very notion.
After all, it’s surely a pretty dangerous instruction for a man to give to his sexual partner. Any man who has had the pleasure of their other half treating their pride and joy with all the tender loving care of a mediaeval municipal water pump will shudder at the prospect of someone squeezing their ‘lemon’. In fact, the most likely ‘juice’ to be forthcoming from such a technique would be from the poor fella’s watering eyes.
AC/DC
When metal’s most supreme riff merchants sing Let me put my love into you babe, let me cut your cake with my knife, there’s an undeniable fingernails-down-a-blackboard effect. Yet it does allow us to make a fairly all-encompassing rule that all future songwriters should observe: Under no circumstances should you use the word ‘knife’ in a seductive context. No matter how kinky your sex life might be, and regardless of how imaginative your fantasies may be, if you’ve reached the point of opening up the cutlery drawer, it’s time to call Relate.
Other pointy objects may be permissible for metaphorical use, however. For instance, you might wish to reassure a nervous partner by saying, ‘Nothing to worry about, although you may feel a bit of a prick’.
EXTREME
Musicians have never been strangers to boasting about their sexual prowess, but relatively few operating outside the braggadocio tradition of hip-hop have actually felt the need to spell out the, erm, full extent of their charms.
So consider, if you will, these Boston rockers’ words You want me to take it off, just to see what’s underneath my cloth. I’ll show you I’m every inch a man – measure all that you think you can.
If you’ll allow me to offer my own admittedly radical interpretation of these lyrics, readers, I’d suggest that he’s talking about someone measuring his penis. The fact that he’s suggesting that task might be beyond us can only mean that said appendage is of a dimension beyond all human understanding. Some kind of four-dimensional space penis perhaps? An ever-mutating, shape-shifting super-knob that defies all classification? All the more reason to keep it under wraps in that case …
DEF LEPPARD
As the legendary Viz cartoon character Finbarr Saunders (he of the double entendres) demonstrated, it is possible to read euphemistic intentions into the most innocuous of phrases, if you so desire. But some such linguistic devices found in popular song seem to completely miss the point of the exercise, and leave even the most perceptive and worldly connoisseur of slang searching in vain for any relation to any recognised human sexual activity.
This invitation from Sheffield’s finest to Pour some sugar on me, in the name of love, is surely a case in point. What could they possibly be referring to by ‘sugar’? Some bizarre form of water sports? Food sex? Role play as mating cornflakes?
Or perhaps we’re reading too much into this. Maybe they do want a woman to quite literally pour some sugar on them, in the name of love. As opposed to, say, ‘pour some sugar on my cornflakes, in the name of a tasty and nutritious breakfast’. But it wouldn’t half make a mess on the sheets.
And he’s not finished yet, as he growls, You got the peaches, I got the cream.
No, mate, that’s for pudding – one meal at a time, you weirdo!
BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS
My giddy aunt, this lot are at it too. I went downtown, says Bob, I saw Miss Brown.
She had brown sugar all over her booga-wooga. Are we missing something with this sugar business? Are there people all over the world having hours of private fun with the same stuff we God-fearing folk are putting in our tea? And another thing: maybe some readers of Caribbean origin can confirm otherwise, but I suspect that the word ‘Booga-wooga’ doesn’t have any official meaning either in English slang or Jamaican patois. But, unlike some other nominees in this chapter, at least they’re not asking anyone to measure it.
STEVE MILLER BAND
It can’t have been easy chatting up a potential mate back in the 1970s. This was, after all, the era of Carry On films, when it seems that everything had to be wrapped in painfully laboured euphemisms. If you wanted to instigate foreplay on your wedding night, you couldn’t come out and say it, you had to try something like, ‘Can I, erm, have a twiddle at your dials, darling, and see if I can find Radio Luxembourg?’ Or so my dad tells me at any rate.
So perhaps we should take our hat off to Steve Miller, who was fairly forward on this 1972 hit. You’re the sweetest thing that I ever did see, he cooed. OK, not particularly original, but it might have an initial effect on the easily impressed. He continues, Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree. Lovey dovey lovey dovey lovey dovey all the time. Ooh yeah baby I’ll sure show you a good time.
Right. And peaches would be … a reference to the young lady’s buttocks perhaps? Or bosoms? Well, surely that’s a little previous at this stage. And ‘lovey dovey lovey dovey’? Que? Shouldn’t the baby talk start a good few months into the relationship – rather than as part of a chat-up line? As for the ‘good time’ part of the equation, judging by the taste displayed in the previous two lines, I can’t help but wonder if your idea of a good time would be a visit to Hooters followed by a request to dress up in a nappy.
PRINCE
In this sensitive 1981 paean to the joys of sex with a sibling, Prince tells us My sister was 32, lovely, and loose. She don’t wear no underwear, she says it only gets in her hair. And it’s got a funny way of stoppin’ the juice.
He later observes that ‘Incest is everything it’s said to be.’ Having never tried it, and having no intention of ever doing so, I’ll have to take his word for it. But one drawback is that sex with a sibling clearly has a devastating effect on your dress sense – why on earth would anyone want to put underwear on their head? Or does he mean … oh, I see. Hmmm …
ALISON MOYET
We’d be frankly disappointed if we bought an AC/DC record and it didn’t contain at least a couple of blatant double entendres. But you don’t always expect to find such thinly veiled filth in the work of MOR warblers like La Moyet. So we can only assume she’s talking about gardening when she sings What seed must I sow to replenish this barren land?
Well, get your hands on whichever seed takes your fancy, but make sure the area where you’re planting is nice and moist, which allows nice deep planting.
Teach me to harvest, I want you to grow in my hand. OK, well you’ve certainly stimulated my interest there. But keep at it. Don’t stop now. Don’t stop, or you could lose what growth you’ve achieved thus far.
For a warm injection is all I need to calm the pain. Well, I’d advise against the use of chemicals. As long as the bud looks nice and bulging when it pops up, you should be well on your way, and you’ll have spectacular, satisfying results in no time.
R KELLY
It’s generally considered acceptable in polite society to refer to one’s car in the female third person, e.g. ‘She’s still a reliable little runabout, the old girl.’ But it doesn’t really work the other way round. Someone should have pointed that out to lascivious soul frotteur R Kelly before he wrote You remind me of my jeep (I wanna ride it).
Really? What are you going to do? Try and have your wicked way with the exhaust pipe?
Somethin’ like my sound (I wanna pump it). There’s electrics involved, I’d leave well alone, especially if you’re a bit sweaty.
He then takes objectification of the female form to absurd extremes when he coos, Girl you look just like my car (I wanna wax it).
Does she really look like a car? Is she 12 feet long with alloy wheels?
Somethin’ like my bank account (I wanna spend it baby).
Really? Does a message flash up when you’re ‘making a deposit’, saying, ‘Please take your penis and wait for your orgasm?’ Is she open at weekends? And what are the charges like?
KISS
Rock bands do come up with some unlikely topics for songs, such as Kiss’s use of a real log fire in this romantically named love ballad. Oh babe, groans Gene Simmons, I wanna put my log in your fireplace.
That’s fine, as long as you put it in gently – you don’t want your ‘log’ spitting everywhere. And make sure the fireguard’s up – children and household pets sometimes become inquisitive and stick their paws in.
MCFLY
I bet you were just waiting for these notorious sleazehounds to make an appearance in the filthiest depths of this tawdry tome, weren’t you? And they haven’t let us down. The pick of their many depraved hymns to deviancy is this tale of loving an unnamed mystery girl from another planet. Hey girl, they drool, there’s nothing on earth could save us, when I fell in love with Uranus.
At least that double entendre is so subtle that it might just fly over the heads of some of their younger, more suggestible fans. If they happen to be particularly slow. And unable to read and write. Or hear.
BLACK EYED PEAS
Regarded by many as the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ of euphemistic nonsense songs, this jaw-dropping paean to singer Stacey Ferguson’s allegedly ‘lovely lady lumps’ takes objectification of the female form to sewer-like depths.
Whatcha gonna do with all that junk? asks rapper Will.I.Am, ever the silver-tongued poet of seduction, presumably intending it as some cack-handed compliment.
I’m gonna get, get, get you drunk, replies Fergie. Get you love drunk off my humps.
What are you, some sort of camel?
My hump my hump my humps, she continues. My lovely lady lumps.
If Will.I.Am was remotely sane, he would be feeling a little unsettled by this point, wondering if he’d picked the woman who lives in the bus shelter and eats bird droppings as a chat-up target. And then she really hits the self-destruct button. I’m gonna make, make, make, make you scream, Make you scream, make you scream. Cos of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps. Check it out!
Call me over-cautious, but I think by this time I’d suddenly be remembering an urgent appointment overseas.
Yet she’s met her match in Will.I.Am. He’s lapping it up! And after already setting new standards for leery sleaze and gut-churning single entendres, he raises the bar higher still, with the following gibbering soliloquy:
I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff,
Milky, milky cocoa,
Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight.
……………………………………………………………….I’m sorry, I had to pause there. Words failed me for a few stunned moments. In the absence of an expert in hip-hop slang here, I can only speculate that ‘cocoa puff’ and ‘milk’ are meant to somehow represent the sexual union of a black man with a white woman. Represented through the use of the kind of metaphors that most primary school children would consider lacking in sophistication, if not downright racist.
The song carries on in much the same vein. And you should hear the b-side to this one, a scorching hip-hop cover of ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts’. Saucy!