Results for “female sexuality and shame”

Songs

Sheela-Na-Gig

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

Politician Man

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

Dedicated To the Press

Betty Davis

Betty Davis turns tabloid language into a defiant first-person address, staging her own scandal coverage as a call-and-response…

public shaming of female sexuality media scrutiny self-possession vs. respectability politics

Born on the Bayou

Betty Davis

Betty Davis takes John Fogerty's swampy CCR title and reworks it into a funk vamp about inherited female wariness of men that…

maternal warning and inherited caution reclaiming a borrowed rock lyric through funk sexual assertion and demand

Buddy

De La Soul

"Buddy" is a posse-cut party track from De La Soul's debut, built around an extended and deliberately silly sexual code word…

sexual innuendo through wordplay collective male bravado playful group identity

Dry Spell

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

I Take What I Want

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

Put It Right Here (Or Keep It Out There)

Bessie Smith

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

I've Got What It Takes, But It Breaks My Heart to Give It Away

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

Work It

Missy Elliott

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

Nasty Gal

Betty Davis

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

Gangsta Luv

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

5:15

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

One Minute Man

Missy Elliott

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

Ching-A-Ling

Missy Elliott

A club-floor victory lap built almost entirely from boasts and hook repetition, this track is less about narrative than about…

braggadocio female sexual agency wealth and status

A Rose Is Still a Rose

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin plays elder counselor to a wounded young woman, using the image of a rose to insist that sexual betrayal doesn't…

self-worth after betrayal intergenerational female solidarity resilience

Dirty Laundry

Danny Brown

Danny Brown turns a mundane household chore into a running double entendre for sexual and criminal grime, stacking…

sexual degradation as comedy poverty and hustling shame versus exposure

Respect

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin's reworking of a song originally about a working man asking for domestic peace turns it into a declaration of…

self-respect reciprocity in relationships female autonomy

They're Red Hot

Robert Johnson

A raucous, double-entendre-driven blues built entirely around a street vendor's cry, using hot tamales as a stand-in for sex and…

sexual innuendo commerce and desire boastfulness

Take Care of Business

Nina Simone

A playful, sensual number in which the narrator urges a lover to take charge physically and emotionally, framed as light…

desire and physical intimacy female sexual agency playful command and submission

WTF (Where They From)

Missy Elliott

A regional-dance chant becomes a vehicle for Missy Elliott to assert her singularity as a rapper, alternating between mocking a…

regional identity and dance culture braggadocio and self-mythologizing female sexuality and power

Lose Control

Missy Elliott

This is a call-and-response club track built almost entirely as choreography instructions and hype-man ad-libs, with the thesis…

surrender to rhythm bodily confidence collective release

Blackwaterside

Sandy Denny

This is a traditional British/Irish folk ballad given a spare, haunting reading by Sandy Denny, in which a woman recounts…

seduction and betrayal female shame and defiance broken promises

I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2

George Michael

George Michael turns a single, blunt demand into a sustained argument about desire, patience, and monogamy, dressing up a simple…

sexual desire and frustration persuasion and rhetoric monogamy versus promiscuity

This Is It

Betty Davis

This Is It is less a song than a live declaration of arrival, built almost entirely on repetition and vamp rather than…

self-assertion authenticity/rawness performance as proof

Digging In the Dirt

Peter Gabriel

A song about excavating buried psychic damage, staged as a confrontation between a wounded self and an internal accuser. Peter…

psychological excavation self-recrimination control and coercion

Golden Gal

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

Whole Lotta Love

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

Sixteen Blue

The Replacements

A quiet, unglamorous portrait of teenage isolation, framed around confusion about sexuality and identity. Instead of anthemic…

adolescent alienation sexual confusion loneliness

Werewolf

Cat Power

Cat Power turns the werewolf myth into a spare, almost hymn-like meditation on shame, desire, and the parts of ourselves that…

shame and secrecy duality of self compulsion and desire

Rockin' Daddy

Howlin’ Wolf

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

We Run This

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

Candy Man

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

Selah

Lauryn Hill

A confessional prayer set to a slow, mournful groove, tracing a narrator's spiral of self-deception and shame before a religious…

self-deception shame and guilt addiction to illusion

Down Home Girl

Betty Davis

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

King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1

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

Dragon Attack

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

It's a Sin

Pet Shop Boys

A confessional pop song built on the grinding logic of Catholic guilt, where every desire and action the narrator has ever had…

religious guilt internalized shame repression

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

Sleater‐Kinney

Sleater-Kinney takes the fan-idolatry that surrounds male rock stars and flips the gender of the fantasy, imagining a female…

gender and rock stardom fandom and desire female agency

Been Down So Long

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