George Michael / Faith (2010 Remastered) / 1987
I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2
urgent, insistent, half-pleading and half-defiant
George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple come-on with rhetorical persuasion and near-liturgical chanting. The song is less about seduction as spectacle than about seduction as negotiation, complete with a built-in defense against the moral panic it anticipated.
sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity moral panic / public shaming of sex trust and patience
Who's speaking
A first-person male speaker addresses a specific, unnamed partner directly, alternating between vulnerable confession and confident assertion; the voice is persistent to the point of being unreliable about how much 'no' has actually been said.
What happens
The song opens with a philosophical shrug about uncertainty and trust between people, then narrows immediately into direct address: a man declares his patience has run out. The chorus states the desire baldly. The second verse escalates the tension, admitting loss of control, and the plea intensifies through a call-and-response bridge that reframes sex as natural, logical, even chemical. A spoken-word interlude challenges the listener's (and society's) definitions of obscenity, before the song circles back to reassurance -- he's not a threat, not family, just a lover -- and closes on unresolved suspense about whether the two will ever actually come together.
How it's built
Built on a repetitive verse-chorus skeleton but padded with an unusual amount of interlude and vamp material -- the whispered 'natural/chemical/logical' breakdown, the spoken pornography-definition section, and the closing vocal ad-libs all function like extended codas that keep deferring resolution, mirroring the lyrical content of desire being delayed.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song begins abstractly, musing on trust and hidden versus visible parts of the self, before pivoting hard into direct address. This sets up the whole track's tension between philosophical hedging and blunt want.
Pre-chorus vow
The speaker positions physical presence and honesty as more trustworthy than any external moral authority, a preemptive rebuttal to religious or social judgment of sexual desire.
Chorus
The demand is stated without ornament, functioning almost as a slogan. Its bluntness is the point -- there's no metaphor doing the work, only repetition.
Second verse
The speaker admits to losing control, shifting from confident persuasion to something more desperate. The earlier balance between patience and want begins to tip toward urgency.
Chant bridge
The whispered adjectives building toward the sex-is-natural declaration function as a mini-thesis statement, reframing the plea as a philosophical or biological argument rather than mere want.
Spoken interlude
“what's your definition of dirty”
This section breaks the musical flow entirely to directly interrogate the listener about moral categories, exposing the song's underlying argument: that shame around sex is a matter of definition, not nature.
Reassurance passage
The repeated disavowals of familial identity work to reassure the addressee -- and possibly deflect controversy -- that the desire being expressed is romantic rather than transgressive.
Closing vamp
The song ends not with resolution but with lingering uncertainty about whether the two will ever actually unite, undercutting the confidence of the chorus and leaving the persuasion unfinished.
Craft
- anaphora
- The insistent repetition of the central demand across the chorus creates a chant-like pressure, turning a lyric into something closer to a mantra than a statement.
- rhetorical questioning
- The spoken interlude interrogates the listener's definitions of morality, shifting the song from personal plea to social argument about who gets to define obscenity.
- antithesis
- Early lines set up pairs of opposites -- trust versus distrust, hiding versus showing -- establishing a framework of uncertainty that the rest of the song tries to resolve through directness.
- self-exculpatory refrain
- Repeated disclaimers that he is not a father or brother figure work almost like a legal defense, addressing anxieties about impropriety before they're raised.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a study in seduction-as-rhetoric: desire is not simply expressed but argued for, using appeals to nature, logic, and personal integrity, while simultaneously performing reassurance against social judgment. A secondary reading, given the controversy the song generated on release, sees it as a deliberate provocation -- using directness about sex to challenge censorship and moral panic in the culture, with the spoken pornography-definition section as the clearest evidence of that intent. Both readings can coexist: the personal plea and the public argument reinforce each other.
Context
The song was released in 1987 as the lead single from Faith and became notorious for its explicit refrain, drawing criticism from religious groups and restricted airplay from some broadcasters, including a partly obscured performance on television. It marked a deliberate departure from George Michael's earlier, more polished pop image toward a more adult, sexually frank persona. I'm not certain of further production or writing details beyond this general context.
Listen for
- the shift in vocal tone between the pleading verses and the flatly stated chorus
- the whispered call-and-response section building toward the 'natural' argument
- the spoken interlude's shift in delivery, almost conversational compared to the sung sections
- the recurring disclaimers about not being a father or brother figure
- the unresolved, questioning tone of the closing vamp
About George Michael
George Michael was an English singer-songwriter and record producer. Regarded as a pop culture icon, he is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.
1963 - 2016 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue