Forbidden Fruit: A History of Sex & Music
*click, fuzz* I’m in love with a stripper...*click* I kissed a girl and I liked it....*click* Don’tchaaaa? *click* Gonna get, dirrr-teh! *click* What is happening?*click* I wish Paris Hilton was dead *click*. Turn off the radio, turn off the TV. As long as humans have been breeding, they’ve been bragging about it. And what better platform for such claims than a music video or record? But this isn’t a modern agenda, brought on by sexual desensitization and depraved soap stars. It sure goes back a longways...*cue flashback sequence in sepia*
Even from the roaring 1920’s, songs like Poon Tang (The Treniers) and It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion (the aptly named Swallows) were getting people’s supposedly dormant sexual drives all-a-quiver. Such was the life of whiskey, jazz and smoky bars filled with pinstripe- suited men buying flapper girls and cigarettes. The 1940’s can garner a bit of credit for being somewhat more subtle in their suggestiveness; Dinah Washington famously sang TV Is The Thing This Year with lyrics like “If you wanna have fun come home with me, You can stay all night and play with my TV” and “Baby, my TV set will need fixin' just about this time every night!” in the sweetest tone I had ever heard of someone piling so many double entendres into one ditty. The innuendos are restrained, though; in the chaste, repressed time leading up to and including the 1950s, ‘indecency’ like outright profanity and lewd sexual content was by no means as overlooked as it is today. Then again, you didn’t have to a musicologist or a genius to get what Nina Simone was on about in Forbidden Fruit...
You ain’t nothin but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time....From the moment these everlasting words left the snarling, full lips of rock’n’roll sovereign Elvis Presley, guys and dolls would never be the same. Elvis may not have been as lewd as his 1920’s predecessors, but he represented the raw sexual awakening of an entire generation. Christians went nuts; rock and roll was considered demonic, highly lustful and anti-God (if they loathed Elvis and his Southern boy charm, imagine how they felt when Chuck Berry came out with My Ding A-Ling). Jesus-is-Savior.Com calls Elvis a “sexual degenerate, fornicator” and that his music “promotes lewdness and immorality”. The idea was to repress such urges, for they were considered foul and dissolute. Sex was bad enough (a tough grind one loathingly partakes in to further the species, no doubt) but sexual activity for fun and pleasure? Get outta town. Only dolphins do that shit and we eat them. The Elvis Age (and, in their own way, some 5 years later, The Beatles Age) birthed the notion of the male sex symbol; no longer an inconsequentially male entertainment resource to tap-a-foot to on the wireless, now little boys had figures to emulate, and little girls everywhere had unreachable and confusing dreams of pop- flavoured love. You could hear the screams a town away.
If, by some cunning logic, we were to think of the Fifties as foreplay, the Sixties was the good, long shag to end the night, before you roll over to sleep. Cheekily called ‘the swingin’ Sixties’, the free-love, hairy, rockin’ decade was best known for its incomparable blend of radicalism and devil-may-care attitude (I’ve always thought that, if decades were to have slogans, the 60s’ would have been “Fuck Everyone...Especially The Establishment”). Consider the major cultural and musical breakthroughs that emanated from the Sixties; Woodstock. Women’s Lib. The Pill. The gay and lesbian political and cultural movements. All your favourite now-dead rock stars. All your favourite hallucinogens. The Beatles. The Beatles. The Beatles! It wasn’t enough just to be a rock star in the Sixties; you had to have purpose. Personality. A drinking problem, at the very least. Major-domos of the scene like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison (lot of J’s, lot of drugs, all 27 at untimely death) were the patron saints, anointed to show the world how to live to excess; which seemed to be the only manner of living in the 1960s. The epitome of the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ axiom. It was the true design in breaking free from the Fifties’ rigidity and tight moral code. Within the flighty lust and naked mud rolling of the decade, though, came some of music’s greatest protest songs; in 1969, John Lennon’s choral Give Peace A Chance became the anthem for the anti-war movement (and subsequent peace factions for generations to follow). If there’s any other song to truly capture the heady idealism and uncontained love of the 60s, I haven’t heard it and loved it.
I suppose we can assume that after the all-out sexual mania of the 1960s, it had to at least quieten down somewhat. The Seventies brought us such a jumble, musically; from jazz success stories emerging out of the Miles Davis camp of smooth jazz-rock fusion, watery AOR like Elton John, James Taylor and John Denver and, of course, the diametrically opposed Disco and Punk. Disco brought us the foundation of the ‘club scene’, wherein the casual sex and drug-fuelled depravity of the 60s built themselves around the bright, booming music of a new era. New hair, new tunes, new drugs. The wide-eyed naiveté of the 60s was slowly washing away in the glitter of a disco ball, being replaced by the new debaucherous, animal lust we can see today in any thumping-bumping-pumping nightclub. Punk had less a part of the sexual side of music; though it did bore us one of history’s most eminent couples; the messy messy Sid and Nancy. Sid Vicious is not the ideal boyfriend, let’s be honest. You don’t take him to home to Mama (mainly because he’d probably cut himself all over Mum’s new linens and eat everything in her medicine cabinet) and one would only enter into any kind of relationship with him if you were, say, an insane, drug-addled groupie. Enter, Nancy Spungen. You probably all know the particulars, but let’s just say, punk is not made for lovers. Not any of the tenderly romantic variety, anyway. In their own Shakespearean way, they paved the way for horny, self-destructive, angry young people to fight and fuck and eventually perish. Yay for the Seventies!
“Don’t fuck anyone or you’ll die! Never mind, here comes MC Hammer”
This is comedian Dylan Moran’s synopsis of the 1980s. And a pretty succinct one, at that. The 80’s is as synonymous with tacky music and sexual diseases as Paris Hilton is for.... anyway, if there is a God, around the time of the late Seventies, he said, in his great booming voice, to his flock; “Alright, pack it up. I gave you a good coupla decades of mindless sex, drugs and awesome music. Times are changing. I’d like you meet your new virus; AIDS. I’m not gonna tell you where he came from, or how to make him go away, but sufficed to say, some of you will get to know him quite well indeed”. And get to know him they did; almost 180,000 were dead by the commencement of the 1990s. Heralded as the “gay disease” and killing thousands (straight and gay alike; whatever, homophobes! It’s a blood disease!), people were finally letting go of the devil-may-care profligacy of the long-gone, freer generations and learned to embrace safe sex. The story of the various gadgets and gizmos that followed, though, is another tangent entirely...
The 80s also brought us the popularisation of glam or ‘glitter’ rock. A colourful, spirited, usually decadent vent of androgyny and relaxed morals. David Bowie is widely regarded as being the dynamic, asexual uterus out of which the glam movement was born. Other such brother-sisters of the field included some of your better known hair-metal bands (Motley Crue, Poison, Queen) and even better known, though not entirely wise, fashion trends. The gender barriers were being blurred; men were smearing crimson lipstick on their lips, women were being fitted with broad, clunky shoulder pads for that easy, breezy, bulky look. Mercifully, to combat the masculinising of ladies’ shoulders, sexually ‘enlightened’ acts like Madonna and Salt N Pepa began the onslaught of female-dominated pop. Not only lady-led, but encompassing an entirely new ethos in women’s music. Female artists saw it as ‘getting their own back’: if men could be loud and proud with their sexuality, exhibiting it so openly and sometimes morally questionably, why couldn’t women? It seemed like such simple logic...
The 1990s will forever be remembered as a glittering, plastic epoch made of blonde hair and shiny white teeth. Every ten minutes a new Biggest Star in the World arrived to make us dance, sing and feel bad about ourselves while giving them out money. Having grown up in the era of the Poptart, I am all too familiar with its cruel duality; the Britneys and Christinas of the world (well, let’s not generalize: America) hypnotizing us with double-entendres and subtle hints at a whole river of repressed sexuality underneath the “I’m not gonna have sex until I get married!” figurative chastity belt. Looking back, I can hardly believe my generation didn’t catch on quicker; nearly every song from Spice Girls to Girls Aloud, from Backstreet Boys to Boyz 2 Men had some sort of sneaky sexual undertone. We would hear these lyrics, hell, we would sing them, and have no idea what they really meant. Sure, Two Become One is pretty obvious now, but at 10 or 11, it’s just a nice ditty by some pretty ladies in expensive clothes you couldn’t afford, big, pearly white smiles on their synthetic faces.
Lou Pearlman: you may not know the name, but you’re aware of his handiwork. An evil mastermind, in every cartoony sense of the word, Pearlman was the sweaty, sinister man behind toy-boy acts like NSYNC and Backstreet Boys (though his relationship with some of the lads he managed has come into heavy questioning...uurghl). Pearlman knew what kids wanted: idols. Unattainable, idealistic perfection on a brightly-lit stage, swoon-worthy in leather pants and microphone headsets; "My thing—and I've said this before—is that I'll know the exact moment when boy bands are over," Pearlman has said, innocuous words turning to poison emanating from the mouth of a degenerate, (if he had a long moustache, no doubt he’d be twirling it) "and that'll be when God stops making little girls."
The Nineties was where the Industry made sex a little more manipulative. Playing on the knowledge that children (namely, females) could be mesmerized into adoration at the flick of a hand during a synchronised dance move, Lou and other Pop Cronies milked the sensation for all it was worth. The seemingly endless production line of Pop Stars and Pop Tarts singing harmonised ballads in midriff tops and matching silver jumpsuits created an idyllic refuge for the tween market. No longer would their sexuality be confusing and wrong; they would marry Nick Carter and live happily ever after like the fairytale books they read told them they would. The enchanted romances from early childhood blending with the inaccessible pop pantheons no doubt baffling the hell out of little girls everywhere. Boys, likewise, were taught to embrace shallowness and the power of aesthetics. Tracks like Bills, Bills, Bills by Destiny’s Child, No Scrubs by TLC and, to a disconcerting extent, Short Dick Man by 20 Fingers/ Gilette, made boys aware at an early age that success, potency and a fast convertible, above all, was vital to female relations. An unfortunate notion that many girls and boys have kept alive even until now...
No time like the present, eh? The subtle midriff of Britney has turned into blurry crotch-shots and understated, vague sexual nuances in music have become blatant vulgarity. No longer do little girls simply straighten their hair or wear body glitter on their shoulders to mimic their cultural idols; now, children as young as five or six are fitted for heels and spangly lingerie (I wish I were exaggerating) and they know what a blow job is before they know algebra. Sex has been made into a commodity rather than an act between two mature, consenting participants. The last shreds of anything sacred of the Act are being torn away in the shape of a Pussycat Doll or a rather ardent episode of America’s Next Top Model. Bratz dolls have replaced Barbie, and a whole generation are growing up stupider. Valley Girls with more cavernous cleavage than acting ability on our televisions making our society feel collectively bad about themselves, and the State of Things. Unless, Dog willing, you are lucky enough (or, unlucky enough, depending on your view, but that’s a whole other kettle of carp) to be among the blissfully ignorant, whose consumption and abandonment of passing trends and paint-by-numbers society is second only to the vast waste of brain cells one suffers while experiencing the aforementioned ‘culture’. Hey, don’t take my word for it; look in any clothes-store front. Turn on your TV, radio or computer. Hell, just look out the window. History has always rewarded and worshipped beauty, but at what cost? The Chinese would bind their feet; in Burma, the women wear neck coils for that swan-like grace (I suppose) and even in the west, women young and old (and in this, the age of the Metrosexual, men too) are being injected and peeled and burnt and reshaped like pieces of fruit. For what? The untouchable, barely rational idea of beauty and desire the media has created for us? The notion that being sexually desirable is supreme in what should be a mature society is killing us. That having been said, there is nothing inherently wrong with sex. It’s fun, you get exercise and it can bring lovers closer together. But, with the rainbows comes the rain, and with the really good album comes the wanky press release; with the blending of sex, desire and power, the seemingly simple, passionate act can be turned sour and wicked. It can turn men to become sexually aggressive and dominative, women to lose their minds from pressure and social taboo, and vice versa. The idea that every woman doing her grocery shopping for her family, or knocking out data at a marketing firm should look and act and fuck like Britney Spears’ music videos is laughable beyond belief. Who comes up with this stuff?
I’m not trying to bring you down, kids. Sure, a few racy songs on the ARIA charts aren’t killing anybody, unless it was the track “Kill Everybody” by The Hypnotoad. And there are worse things one can sing about than a bit of racy action in the boudoir/ kitchen/ nightclub men’s room, but all things have effect. One song about loose sexual morality and the supposed power in beauty and desire could worm its way into one ten-year-old girl’s head and make her think; hey, maybe those strippers-cum-strippers who make singing noises are onto something. And before you know it, there’s twelve year olds in fishnets and hotpants, singing along to the Veronicas, shouting words they don’t even know yet. Sex is a part of life, yes. And musicians and artists (using the term quite loosely in some cases) are free to take inspiration from life, yes. But when Sex becomes a means to an end- the end being massive amounts of capital being made out of the “Sex Sells” mantra at the risk of decency- it becomes a new, nefarious thing altogether. Oh, I hate to end articles on a down note; here’s a joke: Why are there no casinos in China? Because they don’t like Tibet. Gold!
