Results for “sexual submission and desire”

Songs

You're My Desire

Mary Wells

A brief, early Motown love declaration from Mary Wells, built around a spoken introduction and a repeated vow of devotion. It…

devotion romantic need reassurance

Make It Right

Tim Buckley

A raw, funk-inflected blues built around a single sexual proposition, repeated and intensified until it becomes a kind of…

sexual submission and desire urban drifting obsessive repetition

Talkin Trash

Betty Davis

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

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

Rock Me Baby

Big Mama Thornton

A direct, unhurried blues plea for physical and emotional satisfaction, built from the double meaning of "rock" as both comfort…

sexual desire bodily surrender patience and pacing

Love Me or Leave Me Alone

Brand Nubian

A conversational boast-complaint track in which the narrator lays out an ultimatum to a girlfriend who argues too much: accept…

gender power imbalance sexual boasting Five Percenter theology and self-divinity

Wear You Out

TV on the Radio

A dancefloor seduction song that stretches a club pickup into an extended rooster-and-hen conceit, using mating-display imagery…

sexual desire performance of masculinity seduction as ritual

Mary

Alex G

A sketchy, almost cartoonish sketch of obsession that curdles into something colder and more threatening by its end. Alex G…

obsessive desire objectification vs. selfhood power imbalance

I Just Want To Make Love To You

Etta James

Etta James takes a Willie Dixon blues lyric written for a male singer and, sung from a woman's voice, turns a checklist of…

desire and domesticity gender role reversal possessiveness dressed as devotion

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

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

T.V. Eye

The Stooges

This is a song built almost entirely on repetition, groove, and physical grunt rather than narrative or wordplay. It circles a…

voyeurism and being watched sexual desire primal/animal imagery

Down

Hot Chip

A dance-floor chant about being dismantled piece by piece, in a relationship or a job (or both), where submission and exhaustion…

self-erasure labor and love conflated submission and desire

Two Weeks

FKA twigs

A seduction aimed squarely at someone else's partner, delivered with total confidence rather than guilt. The speaker frames…

sexual confidence rivalry and displacement desire as intoxication

Morning, Noon and Night

Big Joe Turner

A bawdy, up-tempo blues-shouter number in which the singer catalogs domestic scenes and comic complaints about a woman he…

desire and frustration domestic life as comic material fidelity and suspicion

Start Me Up

The Rolling Stones

A relentless riff-driven come-on built almost entirely from a single mechanical metaphor: sex as an engine or vehicle that needs…

sexual desire machinery/car imagery as metaphor loss of control

Underwear

Pulp

A song built around a single frozen frame: a woman undressed in a stranger's bedroom, caught between arousal and panic as the…

sexual anxiety voyeurism and desire loss of agency

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

Rock Me Baby

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

Rock Me Baby

Steve Miller Band

This is Steve Miller Band's take on the blues standard tradition of 'Rock Me Baby,' a straightforward electric blues built…

sexual desire blues tradition physical pleasure

My Sex

Ultravox

An early art-rock meditation on sexuality as something fragmented, mediated, and inseparable from urban and technological…

sexual identity as fluid and unfixed technology and the body urban alienation

Just Like Water

Lauryn Hill

Performed live and introduced almost as an experiment in vulnerability after the confrontational 'Rebel', this song builds an…

surrender spiritual longing conflated with romantic desire purification

I Need You

Eurythmics

A stark, almost claustrophobic litany of need that keeps mistaking pain for intimacy. The song strips romantic longing down to…

desire and self-destruction performance of feeling control and submission

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

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

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

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

Only Loved At Night

The Raincoats

A sketch of a woman whose worth is only recognized under cover of darkness, while daylight exposes and discards her. The…

visibility and erasure gendered desire nighttime as refuge

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

It's Only Sex

Car Seat Headrest

A confessional, anxious song about the gap between emotional intimacy and physical desire, where the narrator loves someone but…

sexual anxiety disconnect between body and desire self-loathing

So Gone (What My Mind Says)

Jill Scott

Jill Scott maps the tug-of-war between intellect and desire, narrating a woman who knows better but keeps ending up back in bed…

desire versus reason vulnerability in intimacy bodily autonomy and surrender

Gloria (Backstage & Dangerous: The Private Rehearsal)

The Doors

This is a live rehearsal-tape performance of the Van Morrison/Them garage-rock standard, stretched by Jim Morrison into a loose,…

adolescent sexual awakening performance and improvisation desire and impatience

Little Red Rooster

Howlin’ Wolf

A slow, slinking blues built entirely on barnyard imagery, in which a rooster's absence throws the whole farm into disorder.…

sexual potency and absence domestic disorder masculine boasting

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

Not Fair

Lily Allen

Lily Allen turns a breakup-song template inside out, using cheerful country-pop instrumentation to deliver a frank complaint…

sexual dissatisfaction double standards in relationships female desire and entitlement to pleasure

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

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

Nasty Girl

The Notorious B.I.G.

This posthumous 'duet' track stitches archival Biggie verses with a Diddy guest turn and a Jagged Edge hook into a…

sexual conquest materialism and status posthumous branding

If Lovin' You Is Wrong

Faithless

A straightforward, unapologetic sex boast set to a dance-floor pulse, built around Maxi Jazz's rapid-fire verses of carnal…

sexual desire bravado and performance pleasure as defiance of judgment

Devil Eyes

Tim Buckley

"Devil Eyes" is a short, sweat-soaked funk vamp about erotic surrender, where restlessness and physical craving overwhelm any…

sexual obsession loss of control desire as possession