Tyler, The Creator
Domo23 is a brash, scattershot flex track from Tyler, the Creator's Cherry Bomb era, built almost entirely around a chanted…
wealth and upward mobility defiance toward critics provocation and shock value
Arca
A reggaetón-inflected party track that doubles as a celebration of queer and trans nightlife, built around the image of Prada…
queer nightlife and visibility trans femininity and self-display sexual reciprocity
Betty Davis
A raw funk vamp that turns the language of politics into an extended sexual come-on, with Davis playing a swaggering seductress…
sexual power and control satire of political rhetoric female sexual agency
Perfume Genius
Perfume Genius takes on the persona of a defiant, diseased drag monarch, turning stigma into swagger. The song weaponizes…
queer defiance stigma and disease as metaphor camp as power
Kacey Musgraves
A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…
sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo
Led Zeppelin
A blues-rock boast built almost entirely on sexual innuendo and repetition, where the lyric functions less as narrative than as…
sexual conquest desire and excess masculine bravado
Howlin’ Wolf
A big man's boastful self-defense turns into an easy, unhurried seduction. Howlin' Wolf takes what could be an insult about his…
self-acceptance masculine boasting sexuality and endurance
The Replacements
A quiet, unglamorous portrait of teenage isolation, framed around confusion about sexuality and identity. Instead of anthemic…
adolescent alienation sexual confusion loneliness
Big Mama Thornton
A self-naming blues boast in which the singer claims her nickname, her size, and her sexual confidence as sources of power…
self-naming and reclamation body as power sexual confidence
Bettye LaVette
This is a straight-ahead blues boast, built on a classic call-and-response hook, in which the singer offers herself as the cure…
sexual confidence self-possession comfort over speed (blues innuendo)
Taj Mahal
A short, loose blues vamp built on a single stretched-out innuendo: an itch that needs scratching. Taj Mahal uses the old blues…
sexual innuendo bodily pleasure call-and-response flirtation
Eric B. & Rakim
An extended sexual metaphor built entirely around the language of music-making, where rapping, drumming, and tempo stand in for…
sexuality as performance music as body seduction through craft
Heart
A young woman narrates her seduction by an older, magnetic man, tracing her passage from girlhood to sexual awakening over the…
sexual awakening loss of innocence maternal anxiety
A boastful, sexually charged blues in which the singer claims mastery over both the physical act of "rocking" a partner and the…
sexual bravado transactional relationships masculine reputation
Missy Elliott
A brash, party-floor anthem in which Missy Elliott asserts sexual and regional dominance in equal measure, treating braggadocio…
sexual assertiveness regional pride/unity self-mythologizing braggadocio
Mississippi John Hurt
A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…
sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability
Ann Peebles
A declaration of sexual and emotional appetite delivered without apology, this song is Ann Peebles claiming the traditionally…
female desire and agency self-possession pursuit and conquest
Josh Ritter
A small-town girl is sent to Bible college to be straightened out, and comes back having absorbed scripture's actual ethics…
religious hypocrisy sexual freedom small-town conformity
A raw, funk-driven declaration of Southern Black identity that fuses food, sex, and soul music into a single unapologetic…
Southern Black identity sexual assertiveness reclamation of stereotype
Neutral Milk Hotel
An opening track that fuses childhood memory with domestic violence and adolescent sexual awakening, all delivered in a run-on,…
childhood innocence and its loss domestic dysfunction sexual awakening
Betty Davis turns dirty talk into a call-and-response ritual, offering total sexual and emotional surrender in exchange for…
sexual liberation dominance and submission performance of desire
DEVO
Devo frames sexual and chemical submission as a kind of evolutionary regression, with a narrator numbly describing his own…
loss of autonomy devolution/mutation sexual degradation
Queen
A groove-driven, riff-heavy jam built more on sensation than sense, "Dragon Attack" trades narrative for pure sonic and sexual…
sexual conquest altered perception surrender to instinct
Bessie Smith
A comic blues built on a pun: the singer boasts she has 'what it takes' — desirability, sex appeal, and money — but refuses to…
financial independence female self-sufficiency sexual innuendo
Steppenwolf
This is Steppenwolf's cover of the Muddy Waters/Willie Dixon blues standard, retooled as a hard-rock strut rather than a Chicago…
masculine bravado folk magic and superstition predestination/fate
LL Cool J
A Timbaland-produced club record built around a single hook-word that fuses sexual boasting with dance-floor physicality. LL…
nightlife excess sexual bravado status and wealth display
Animal Collective
A song built around a half-real, half-mediated female icon glimpsed through screens and reviews, with the narrator working out…
celebrity and mediated desire gender and sexuality fandom as devotion
The Doors
A straight blues workout built on a single inverted-fortune boast, this track uses the twelve-bar form's repetition to turn…
confinement and release blues tradition/lineage sexual demand
B.B. King
A twelve-bar blues built almost entirely on a single sexual metaphor, this is B.B. King working the oldest trick in the blues…
sexual desire longing and satiation blues tradition and formula
Dr. Dre
A West Coast G-funk cruising anthem that stitches together threats of violence, sexual boasting, and neighborhood pride into a…
street violence and retaliation gangsta identity and reputation Los Angeles car culture
Canned Heat
This is Canned Heat's take on the 1954 Jesse Stone/Big Joe Turner standard, a twelve-bar blues built around domestic complaint…
domestic frustration sexual innuendo distrust between lovers
Betty Davis takes the insults an ex has thrown at her -- witch, alley cat, dirty dog -- and turns them into a badge of honor,…
sexual autonomy reclaiming slurs female desire vs. respectability
SZA
SZA uses the imagery of childhood games—Barbies, video games, playground toys—to talk about growing into a sexual and emotional…
coming of age sexual awakening nostalgia
Missy Elliott's signature single is a maximalist celebration of sexual confidence and self-invention, built on a literal sonic…
sexual agency self-invention and reinvention female solidarity and hustle
Snoop Dogg
A slow-rolling G-funk seduction track built around a single boast-and-hook structure: Snoop cycles through sexual conquest…
sexual conquest masculine bravado material excess
Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey turns gossip about her sexuality into a defiant, winking anthem, refusing either confession or denial. The song stages…
queer identity and defiance gossip and reputation gender nonconformity
The Who
A disoriented young man rides a commuter train while his mind fractures into fragments of memory, sexual anxiety, and social…
dissociation and identity collapse adolescent sexuality and shame class and Englishness
A blunt, funny complaint about sexual inadequacy turned into a dance-floor demand, with Missy Elliott setting terms for a lover…
female sexual agency mockery of male inadequacy desire and demand
Bessie Smith delivers an ultimatum blues to a freeloading lover, dressing up a blunt economic demand in barnyard comedy and…
economic independence sexual and domestic reciprocity female autonomy
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey turns the offer of a woman's body into a confrontation, borrowing the name of a medieval carved figure to skewer male…
female sexuality and shame rejection and humiliation the body as spectacle