IN the days before internet porn, pop music was one of the few ways to get horny. Here are five come-to-bed tunes which have miserably failed the test of time.
Chanson d’Amour, The Manhattan Transfer, 1976
It didn’t matter that this was a shit song by a shit American band. It was in French, which was enough to get anyone’s juices going in the 1970s. You had no idea what the words meant: the lyrics could have been about selling fresh hen’s eggs and you’d still have been spanking away furiously when that sultry ‘rat-ta-tat-ta-tat’ vocal line came in. That’s how starved for erotic input everyone was.
Like A Virgin, Madonna, 1984
This song propelled Madonna to international fame and fortune while also feeding the sexual imaginations of an entire generation of men. The pop goddess never played up to the virginal image, but that didn’t matter. People had far more highly tuned imaginations then. They had to, because the internet hadn’t been invented.
More, More, More, Andrea True Connection, 1976
Andrea True starred in a series of adult films before becoming a singer, which made the breathy vocals of ‘More, More, More’ extra exciting. However, watch the video today and she looks like a nice primary school teacher doing karaoke rather than a porn star. Add to that the terrible sub-disco backing track and the fact that, nowadays, the phrase ‘How do you like it’? is something you’re more likely to hear in Starbucks than the bedroom, and you’ve got a horribly unsexy song.
Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby, Barry White, 1974
Barry White’’s ability to send women into sexual overdrive was a puzzling one. If being a large guy with a loud voice and a beard big enough for crows to nest in was supremely attractive, surely Brian Blessed would have been fighting the ladies off? Don’t take someone back home after a date and pop this on in 2023, though, as they will start worrying about your sanity and get out of there as soon as possible.
I Touch Myself, Divinyls, 1990
Back in 1990, this track about a woman flicking herself off was shocking, scandalous and had hordes of young men agog at the brazen sexuality on show. But in the age of Cardi B banging on about her wet ass pussy, ‘I Touch Myself’ seems quaintly innocent, like Victorian men getting turned on by the sight of table legs. What kind of explicit acts will people be singing about in another 30 years? The mind boggles.
