3-4-09

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:28 am

Recently one of my co-workers asked me who my favorite musical act was and I happily replied Made Out Of Babies. I asked him back in turn and he replied 2 Live Crew. I was very surprised by that answer, which got me thinking....

QotD: What are your feelings on sexuality in music?

Do you shy away from songs with very suggestive lyrics? How about songs with very explicit lyrics? How about in your own songwriting?

ujnhunter · Post by **ujnhunter** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:38 am

When I was 10 or 11 (?) I had to stand outside the record store... waiting for someone who was 18 or older who was willing to buy me a copy of 2 Live Crew... just so I could listen to "Me So Horny"... then again... I had to do that for all my Iron Maiden cassettes as well...

QotD: I don't think anything I listen to today has anything "sexual" about it... but I'm not sure it's because I shy away from it... I think it's just the things I listen to don't sing about it... ::shrugs::

jimtyrrell · Post by **jimtyrrell** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:45 am

Sexuality in music (like vulgarity, popculture reference, etc) is okay with me until people try to use it in place of good songwriting.

Billy's Little Trip · Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:56 pm

I love a good metaphor or innuendo in music that is very sexual. But straight up vulgarity is uninteresting to me. Cussing is ok when you are trying to conveying an emotion. But I have found that saying fuck in a chorus that is repeated, fails. I did it in one of my songs and realized it loses it's meaning after the first time. But after I heard the new Offspring song "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" on the radio that has the line "dance fucker dance" in the chorus, it seems fine to me.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:06 pm

Yeah, what BLT said. As for sexual content the girls Sarah Mclocklin, Tori Amos, Susanne Vega, Liz Phar all have some very nice lyrics. Also the Supreme Beings of Leisure have a great line whispered in Never the Same that always gets my attention. I like that stuff.

I hardly consider 2 Live Crew sexual. It's juvenile crude sludge, which I understand appeals to hormone flooded youth. But it ain't sexy.

Post by **Spud** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:53 pm

Octothorpe is a family-oriented band. We avoid direct sexual content, including innuendo, in most cases. Still, when SpudNut was in pre-school, and she wanted to take some of our music to school to play, she filtered through our first CD and nixed over half of them as being either too violent or containing bad words. Through the luck of the draw in a CoverFight, we did have to cover Hoblit's "Red Robot" once. What are you going to do? It's Hoblit. But Totally Digging Your Mom is probably as far as we will ever go in our own lyrics. It may be creepy, but it's pretty clean.

It is partly this that made it so fun to let it rip on the BLT-produced Rattlesnake, where I got to let it all hang loose and sing about that other Octothorpe member. Oops. Did I just say "member"?

The Weakest Suit · Post by **The Weakest Suit** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:26 pm

the closest i ever got was the sugar shaker. i needed to write something explicit to get rid of the mental barriers i had in my lyric writing.

bambamoozle · Post by **bambamoozle** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:34 pm

jimtyrrell wrote:Sexuality in music (like vulgarity, popculture reference, etc) is okay with me until people try to use it in place of good songwriting.

These are my feelings exactly.

I've written songs with suggestive content, which vary from the mild ("Let Me Be Bad" which I've played at coffeehouses as long as there weren't kids, as it's only a reference to wanting to have fun) to outright evil ("Things Aren't Gonna Change Around Here", which can only be played in drunken bars when my wife isn't there because it suggests very directly that I have other intentions). But I've discarded far more ideas that were just rude because there wasn't enough behind them.

While his writing is on another planet from mine, talent wise, I think of someone like Leonard Cohen as to how one can incorporate urges or outright actions and be very musical. After all, "giving me head on the unmade bed" isn't vague in any way.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:26 pm

I would never even consider stooping to resort to profanities or gutter-minded potty-talk. I think it is important to maintain some standards and a certain respect for one's audience.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:11 pm

Today I improved the performance of my project by 40%.

qotd: I don't really care. I like over-the-top sexuality for its camp factor. Don't much care for earnest sexuality. Some songs which try to get poetic about it just come across as extremely uncomfortably creepy. What other people listen to is their own business.

JonPorobil · Post by **JonPorobil** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:02 pm

QotD: I try to avoid being overtly explicit (both in recordings and in general), but sometimes, such as when narrating an overly-melodramatic character (see my "Love Me A Little Bit More"), I find it acceptable.

The same goes with overt sexuality, with the caveat that overtly sexual content usually tends to lack conflict, which usually makes for boring lyrical content. So there's two people having sex; so what?

ujnhunter · Post by **ujnhunter** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:45 am

Caravan Ray wrote:I would never even consider stooping to resort to profanities or gutter-minded potty-talk. I think it is important to maintain some standards and a certain respect for one's audience.

Kinda like Jack Johnson right?

Billy's Little Trip · Post by **Billy's Little Trip** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:55 am

Caravan Ray wrote:I would never even consider stooping to resort to profanities or gutter-minded potty-talk. I think it is important to maintain some standards and a certain respect for one's audience.

I know you are just dying for someone to mention your "In The Valley Song", so I figure I will.
....you owe me one.

big crouton · Post by **big crouton** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:47 pm

There's very few bands I listen to that get into sexual themes at all, though when Van Halen put out their Best of Both Worlds cd, one of the new tracks, 'Up For Breakfast' featured Sammy Hagar singing several suggestive fruit related metaphors, which I found thoroughly off-putting, and I haven't listened to that track again since the cd came out.

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:54 pm

Well, I like Prince. He's said stuff like:

I wanna be your lover
Take me, baby...I'm yours
I want to come inside of you
Won't you please let me lay you down?
I wanna do it...do it all night

Stuff like that? I don't really see anything wrong with it. I like sex and all, but it's not that exciting. Music with overt sexuality isn't really anything like sex, is it? Do songs about food fill you up? I wish I knew how to be explicitly sexual in lyrics, though. I'd like to write some overtly sexual material, mainly because it seems to make people pretty uncomfortable. WHICH IS RIDICULOUS. GROW UP.

JonPorobil · Post by **JonPorobil** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:23 pm

Good point, Oats.

For instance: my wife doesn't like porn. Not because it offends her, but because she thinks it's boring.

Go fig.

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