In the beginning, there was a simple flute. Created by a Neanderthal man and consisting of a singular cave bear thighbone that was drilled, hollowed, cleaned, and eventually blown through, it’s the oldest evidence we have of a musical instrument created by humanity. If there’s anything I’m sure about on this wonderful planet Earth, it was that the creator of that first auditory revelation made it to get laid.
We’ve had the music in us for about as long as we’ve had each other in us, so when we (meaning the entire Ink staff) began working on our Spring issue, “Sex,” we (meaning myself, in the royal sense) hopped on the opportunity like a [insert long-winded euphemism here]. The goal? A playlist about getting freaky, with a twist: none of it puts you in the mood. This is a playlist you can sit down, read your physical copy of Ink, and not feel distracted by the urge to grab your nearest significant other/text your sneaky link/sigh and grab the Jergens. Take a listen to everything I’ve rambled about here.
- “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” – The Beatles
- John Lennon wrote one of the heaviest songs ever created about seeing a girl so hot that you go literally f*****g insane in the mildly humorous winter of 1969. He truly was the voice of every generation.
- “Bang” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Not only rhythmically fun to sing along to, this early Yeah Yeah Yeahs track’s refrain of “As a F**k son, you sucked,” may be the most succinctly written tragedy since Hemingway.
- “Head” – Prince
- Any song could be on Prince’s “Dirty Mind” and the cover alone would make it a sex jam. “Head” gets special treatment because he devotes more than a tenth of the runtime on this jam to being about the best dome synthesizable by scientists under lab conditions, and then makes up his time deficit with a sub-two minute song about getting down with your sister. A man of dualities, that Prince.
- “Sexy Back” – Big Fun
- Justin Timberlake’s original is a perfect example of the kind of minimalist dance that would keep him relevant into the 2010s and not a second longer. This spitting, swagger-filled cover by Californian three piece Big Fun flips the flirty back and forth of Timberlake for distorted, “should we get out of here?” energy.
- “Superlover” – John Lee Hooker
- Blues lyrics tend to follow two different paths. The first is literally the most depressing thing you’ve ever heard. Spanish flu + dead dog + girlfriend left + my house is foreclosed + I’ve been doused in oil and thrown into the match factory + L + ratio, etc… The other half is a coal miner describing in just enough metaphorical detail how well-endowed he is. This belongs in the latter category.
- “Dogtooth” – Tyler, The Creator
- Tyler, The Creator, the man who started his career with the kind of lines about women that get you literally banned from a continent, wrote the summer’s greatest anthem about face-sitting and telling body counters to grow up. The growth of this man is exceptional.
- “Spread” – OutKast
- Contained within Andre 3000’s “The Love Below” portion of OutKast’s fourth release, this sparse, snare-led beat lets Andre drop what might not be his horniest lyrics but definitely his most blunt.
- “Sex” – The Dare
- The Dare is, apparently, swimming in sex in a comical, borderline Scrooge McDuckian way. There’s no other explanation for how he can craft a song that’s so perfectly bored of the whole operation — even having an apathetic audience of partners repeat “Like it’s homework/Like a chore” — yet so fun as a listening experience.
- “F*** the Pain Away” – Peaches
- I needn’t say more than two simple words: “Chrissy Be-Hynde.”
- “Your Love” – Frankie Knuckles
- All it took was a songbook of sappy lyrics about a girl to create one of the first truly great Chicago house songs ever.
- “Matador” – Model/Actriz
- Industrial dance group Model/Actriz have no shortage of endlessly horny songs (their debut record’s cover features a diamond encrusted dildo) but this earlier single has a bare drum beat and muted guitar that remind one of two lovers holding back. It also features lead singer Cole Haden screaming to “get hard” and “don’t f**k.”
- “Hollywood Cemetery Forever Sings” – Father John Misty
- Due to a lucky little coinkydink in regards to graveyard naming, Father John Misty’s tale of a girl (who might be Lana Del Rey) that he keeps bringing to the local necropolis to — pardon the pun — bone down is as relevant in Richmond as in the intended California.
- “Use Me” – Bill Withers
- We need more dudes who sound like they’ve worked a hard day writing tracks about getting a hard lay.
- “Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene” – Hozier
- Hozier has maintained a pretty solid career out of two intertwined characteristics: he’s Irish, and he’s incredibly well-read. Here, as he works his way through a hand-clapping hymnal about a woman euphemistically plowing his field, with all the Aran Islands sweater lyricism of Ulysses and the thinly-veiled poeticism of a first-year English major (the “small death” is what the French call busting a huge one), it makes me sad that his career seems poised for consumption by Noah Kahan, like a weird Stanley Cup girl rendition of “Saturn Devouring His Son.”
- “No Pussy Blues” – Grinderman
- Nick Cave wails about a girl who just will not have sex with him. It’d be an incel jam if the narrator didn’t sound so pathetic and if the song didn’t rock so hard.
- “Dogs” – Sun Kil Moon
- F**k Mark Kozelek. Benji rocks tho.
- “Bi Force” – SlutBomb
- Good ol’ fashioned hardcore about getting down with whoever you want.
- “Orgasm Addict” – Buzzcocks
- Good ol’ fashioned punk about gooning.
- “Cupid’s Trick” – Elliott Smith
- Elliott Smith was freaky, I guess, between the refrain of “sugar, lick me up” and that line about being caned (???).
- “Dr. Hellno & The Praying Mantis” – El-P
- El-P has always been an innovator. Between the dusty, lo-fi, glitchy drums covering his production, and his lyrics which range from the absurd, to the referential to the just plain weird, he’s consistently managed to remain at the forefront of the underground scene. This absolutely filthy track is the greatest demonstration of all these traits, as twenty years before Belle Delphine shot the concept into the mainstream meatspace zeitgeist, El-P brags about drinking a shot glass of his girlfriend’s bathwater. Incredible. No notes.
- “Never as Tired as When I’m Walking Up” – LCD Soundsystem
- “It feels like I’m in love again with what you do/but not with you” is maybe the most succinct musical description of a rebound put to tape. That mixed with the hungover guitar line and a bassline so plodding it sounds like a walk of shame creates a concoction so cathartic it counts as a morning-after cure-all.
- “Mechanix” – Megadeth
- Look up a picture of Dave Mustaine.
- “Aneurysm” – Nirvana
- Come on over and do the twist indeed. Kurt Cobain’s wails — some of the best ones of his career, mind you — alongside the rocksteady beat and bursts of staticky, aluminum-foil guitars feel less like a soundtrack to seduction and more like the score from a stalker watching through a window.
- “F*** and Run” – Liz Phair
- Liz Phair’s weary treatise against another one-night-stand in a lifetime of one-night-stands is so decidedly anti-anti-connection that it’s no surprise dudes at the time thought it was pro-sex.
- “Hoe Cakes” – MF DOOM
- Overflowing with the villainous braggadocio only DOOM was capable of, alongside some of his funniest bars. There’s also that one about a daughter, but that’s… we can ignore that one.
- “Songs Against Sex” – Neutral Milk Hotel
- When you have a band so known for their second record and so worshiped at the temple of internet RateYourMusic virginity as Neutral Milk Hotel, the fact that their debut has a really good, often overlooked song about how sex kind of sucks makes complete and total sense. Jeff Mangum’s indefatigable voice warbles out a story of a girl losing her virginity and just hating the entire experience over blown-out acoustic guitar and horns, confirming that some bands can be both really good and have absolutely zero sauce.
- “God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty” – Mac Miller ft. Kendrick Lamar
- The Divine Feminine is a relentlessly horny album. Mac can’t go more than three bars without talking about how he’s going to x, y, and z you in graphic detail. This is not bad, of course; the production on the record is slinky and sensual enough to back it up for the most part. The four-minute outro of an old woman talking will simultaneously tug at your heartstrings and turn your individual equipment dry and/or soft within a moment’s notice.
- “Natural’s Not In It” – Gang Of Four
- The lyrics compare the commodification of love and monogamy to the capitalistic drive for infinite growth and permanent ownership. The guitar sounds like glass crying. This is VCU, so someone’s totally had sex to this song already, but y’know what they say about comrades and bridges.
- “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues” – Mclusky
- Thank you Falco, I will eat what I want, be it [genital] or [secondary genital] or even, if I’m feeling frisky, [third, even more risque genital]. It’s my right as a red-blooded, bisexual American.
- “Ice Cream” – Raekwon
- “Why is this song unsexy,” you ask? Read the lyrics, surprisingly penned by some of the greatest rappers of all time — they’re bad enough to make any man a eunuch.
- “Sin” – Nine Inch Nails
- No, “Closer” is not here.
- “Pervert” – Descendents
- Descendents, fathers of pop punk and weird uncles of the genre we now call “incel-core,” penned this portrait of a dude who is very aggressive about how much he wants to hop on the good foot and do the bad thing.
- “bmbmbm” – Black Midi
- Sonically, it’s sex, i.e. a lot of mounting dread and a few seconds of spontaneous, world-ending freaking out. Socially, I think capping off a playlist about sex songs with Black F*****g Midi and then having that be broadcasted to the entire Ink reader-base is a surefire guarantee that I will be saving a small fortune on prophylactics for the rest of my college experience.
Graphics by Marty Alexeenko