Ultravox / Ultravox! (Remastered) [Bonus Track Version] / 1977
My Sex
detached, clinical, melancholic with flashes of tenderness
An early art-rock meditation on sexuality as something fragmented, mediated, and inseparable from urban and technological imagery. Rather than narrating desire through a story, the song builds a catalogue of metaphors -- animal, mechanical, cinematic, architectural -- that circle the same unstable subject without ever settling into a single definition.
sexual identity as fluid and unfixed technology and the body urban alienation desire as performance/image fragmentation of self
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addressing the listener directly, treating 'my sex' almost as a third party or separate entity rather than a simple extension of self. The voice is analytical and somewhat estranged from its own desire, giving the song a reportorial, almost diagnostic tone rather than a confessional one.
What happens
There isn't a conventional story arc; instead the song proceeds associatively, each verse offering a new simile or description for the same unnamed subject. It moves from images of restraint and fragility, through circuitry and suburbia, toward an admission of appetite and multiplicity of partners, before dissolving into images of film and neon -- ending on repetition rather than resolution, as if the subject can never be fully captured.
How it's built
Built almost entirely from short declarative fragments beginning with the same phrase, functioning like a list or inventory rather than verse-chorus-bridge in the traditional pop sense. This anaphoric structure creates a hypnotic, incantatory momentum; the repeated phrase closing the song mimics a system looping rather than concluding.
Section by section
Opening stanza
“waits for me like a mongrel”
The comparison to a leashed animal frames sexuality as something barely controlled, dependent and restrained, setting a tone of tension between desire and discipline that recurs throughout.
Second stanza
The acrobat image, paired with contrasting numbing and mechanical comparisons, suggests precariousness and unpredictability -- sexuality as performance that can go from anesthetized to automated.
Middle stanzas
“savage, tender”
This pairing of opposites condenses the song's method: desire is characterized by contradiction, resisting binary categorization, and the following line about gender reinforces an unusually fluid, non-essentialist stance for a 1977 release.
Wardrobe stanza
Here the catalogue briefly turns personal, acknowledging multiple past and potential partners through a clothing metaphor, suggesting identity and desire are something tried on and accumulated rather than innate.
Closing stanzas
“an image lost in faded films”
The shift to cinematic and neon imagery dematerializes the subject entirely, ending the song with sexuality as spectacle or afterimage rather than substance -- a fitting close to a song more interested in representation than confession.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated opening phrase across nearly every stanza turns the song into a definitional litany, reinforcing the idea of sexuality as something endlessly re-described rather than fixed.
- mixed metaphor / catalogue
- The speaker piles up disparate comparisons -- animal, medical, mechanical, cinematic -- refusing any single coherent image, which enacts the song's thesis that sexuality resists singular definition.
- juxtaposition of organic and technological imagery
- Pairing flesh with circuitry and film stock blurs the line between body and machine, suggesting desire is mediated by modern life rather than purely natural.
- urban/architectural imagery
- References to suburbia, overpasses, and high-rises locate intimate experience within an impersonal built environment, reinforcing alienation.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as an attempt to depict sexuality as inherently plural and mediated -- shaped by urban environment, media imagery, and technology rather than being a stable essence. The gender-neutral, contradiction-embracing language stands out for its era. An alternative reading could frame it more narrowly as a portrait of sexual anxiety or depersonalization, with the mechanical and cinematic imagery expressing alienation or numbness rather than liberation; the ambiguity between celebration and estrangement is likely intentional.
Context
Released on Ultravox's 1977 debut, produced in the orbit of British art-rock and early synth experimentation (the band later became known for synth-pop with Midge Ure, but this era featured John Foxx as vocalist and a more detached, Bowie/Roxy Music-influenced sensibility). The song's clinical, image-driven treatment of sex fits Foxx's broader interest in urban dislocation and technology, themes that recur across the album.
Listen for
- the repeated phrase structure and how it mimics a system or loop
- shifts in tone between tenderness and mechanical detachment
- the way urban/architectural images replace typical romantic scenery
- the vocal delivery's flat, almost clinical affect against the subject matter
- the dissolving ending that trails into repetition rather than closure
About Ultravox
Ultravox were a British new wave band, formed in London in April 1974 as Tiger Lily. Between 1980 and 1986, they scored seven top ten albums and seventeen top 40 singles in the UK, the most successful of which was their 1981 hit "Vienna".
1976 - present / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue