Sex and Song: Prince, “Strange Relationship”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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TRIGGER WARNING: This piece discusses abuse within the context of partner violence.
Prince tends to threaten lawsuits on anybody who posts his original music, so Andy decided to record her own version of “Strange Relationship.”
Prince has made a lot of different types of love songs through the years. Two were based on driving-as-sex metaphors (“Dirty Mind” and “Little Red Corvette”), one (“Darling Nikki”) outraged Tipper Gore and led to the advent of Parental Advisory labels, and one explored the possibilities of sexiness while keeping one’s pants on (“The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”). Then there are the love songs that Prince sang as a woman named Camille.
My Minnesotan queer friends tell me Prince is something of a gay-hater these days, but he can’t take back the queerness of those days in ‘86 and ‘87 when he sped up his vocals, took on the persona of Camille, and sang a handful of smart, gender-bending songs. Singing as Camille, Prince arguably wrote the most prescient, subtle love songs of his career. As if to balance out all of the reckless, fun sex jams of his wonder years, “Strange Relationship” is a downer, taking on the decidedly un-sexy but super-important subject of emotional abuse.
“I know you know me well, I don’t like winter,” Camille begins, “but I seem to get a kick out of doin’ ya cold.” Let’s parse what’s going on here: Camille says that she is the abuser; she’s intentional about it. She could stop it. And she continues: “Oh what the hell, you always surrender.” And in one verse, Camille has unfolded two key, interlocking elements of abuse: that it’s the abuser’s fault, and still the abuser will blame the surviving partner.
The chorus takes us through the whole cycle, from the obvious abuse—“Baby, I just can’t stand to see you happy”—to pleading and maybe reconciliation—“more than that, I hate to see you sad”—to more victim blaming: “Baby, if you let me I just might do something rash.” Terrifying. Stark. Vital. “Strange Relationship” teaches the listener about the psychology of a victimizer in three minutes.
Earlier recordings of this song feature Prince—the non-Camille version—singing the song (prominently, with a sitar and slightly different lyrics; I used these earlier lyrics in my cover version posted above). That Prince made “Strange Relationship” into a Camille song is also notable and thought-provoking: the Camille vocal drives home the point that abusive behavior can come from people of multiple genders.
Prince has touched on many aspects of love throughout his career, but his true measure as an artist is that he has written about the joy and the pain with equal amounts of intelligence, efficiency, and attention to detail. Romance can yield both wonder and evil, and there’s justice—especially in our era of short attention spans—that someone spent time making that point into something radio-friendly.
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Andy Bowen is an organizer and artist. She plays bass for the DC punk band Southern Problems; is Social Policy Organizer for DC Trans Coalition, a transgender activist organization; and is releasing her first solo album, the 26th Anniversary Edition, in May. You can hear her music and follow her etherized presence at andymbowen.com.
Sex and Song: The Knife, “Full of Fire”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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At first i was kinda clueless about what to write in this column. My sexuality doesn’t deal with Beyonce’s ass or naked chicks posing in front of a car, the things that represent sex in the average music video. Then I remembered this amazing video my friends made for The Knife. I met the director, Marit Östberg, a few years ago when I was an extra in one of her Queer Feminist Porn shoots and all the films of hers I’ve seen so far have been uncompromising and radical. As she describes the intentions of “Full of Fire” in her own words: “The film ‘Full of Fire’ started to grow as an embryo in the song’s lines ‘Who looks after my story.’ Who takes care of our stories when the big history, written by straight rich white men, erase the complexity of human’s lives, desires and conditions?”
For me, the video shows sex on a broader scale than what’s usually perceived. A hug can be very sexy. More importantly, it offers all sorts of options across the line of hetero-normativity. “Full of Fire” shows beauty in a lot of things that usually get swept under the rug. Old people’s sexuality, gender fluidity, people with disabilities, fetishes. They all deserve attention. And this is exactly the story to look out for here.
The video was shot about a year ago in Stockholm, around the time I had the first date with my ex-lover, who was part of the film crew. I was on tour at the time and she visited us at our little backstage party. Seeing this video now brings back the wild and early days of this relationship. She threw up in a glass in the most graceful way possible next to people doing stick-and-poke tattoos and a bunch of drunk teenagers, who were friends of the support band, were going crazy. What a mess.
Mika Risiko is a Berlin-based musician, promoter, and tour manager. Listen to Crime, her new band with Sarah Adorable of Scream Club. She also plays in sissters.
Sex and Song: MELT-BANANA, “Dog Song”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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I heard MELT-BANANA for the first time 10-plus years ago, when I was about 20 years old. After that, all things involving music were never really the same for me. I have never been let down by anything I have heard them do. Ever. As far as my standards go, whatever they are doing, they are doing it right.
But a couple years ago, they released a live album titled MELT-BANANA Lite Live: ver 0.0 that blew my expectations to bits… MELT-BANANA Lite is just like your normal MELT-BANANA, except sans guitars and with waaaaaay more effects, samplers, synths, distortion and so on. I fell in love/lust with it in a more intense and different way than any other albums by them—or anyone else.
This album turns me on. Like, a lot—and pretty much every time I hear it. It also motivates and inspires me, making me excited and ready to take on the world—maybe clean my room, play some more “music” of my own, and then fuck around.
It’s loud and totally abrasive, but in a safe, consenting way. It’s all over the place and a total chaotic lay of an album. It takes a break and slows down, but only for a second when it wants to. And it was recorded live!! Sometimes, when I’m listening, I pretend like I’m there. Makes for some adventurous imagining. I’m listening to it right now and might just have to hit mute to finish writing how I feel about it…
There is so much to this record when it comes to sex and safety for me. It’s not a man screaming at me through a microphone. It’s not what I think most people would consider normal. It’s weird, it’s powerful, it’s fun, it’s diverse, it’s totally chaotic…and a little creepy at times. Those are all ways I’d like to describe the sex I’m having too.
Why “Dog Song” in particular? The woofs and other barking sounds! If you know me, you know I am a total femme puppy at heart and that shit killlllllllsss me in the best Dog-Damned way…
Thanks MELT-BANANA, that was real nice… Round two???
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gregdean! is in a world of her own most of the time. It’s surrounded with dogs, rats, friends and music that is way too loud. She frequents the space in front of a wall of speakers with her band +HIRS+ and is the comic relief for her other band XANAX.
Sex and Song: Madonna, “Like a Prayer”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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I was raised Catholic.
Not really, deeply Catholic. I didn’t go to Catholic school. We didn’t even go to church every week. But Catholicism and its associated guilt was sort of always… there. It hung in the air like cigarette smoke after you’d go to a show. You’d come home and your clothes would smell and your hair would smell and the next morning, you’d wake up and your pillow would smell like smoke. You could leave the church, but, like the smoke, the guilt would follow you home.
I went to CCD (also referred to as “Catechism”—like Sunday school, but on Wednesdays) from elementary school through Confirmation in high school. There I learned the difference between a mortal and a venial sin and I learned that if I committed a sin it was okay as long as I managed to go to confession and forgive my sins sometime before I died. If I accidentally died some time before I confessed that sin, it was off to eternal damnation.
None of this made a lot of sense to me, but it still managed to make me feel scared and bad. About everything.
It was 1989 and I was 9 years old. I knew absolutely nothing about sex, except that it was bad and that it should only happen when you are married…and maybe a penis was involved, but I wasn’t really sure how. I knew that sex was only for creating babies and that having sex for any other reason, or even just acting “sexy,” was wrong.
So, when my 9-year-old self saw the video for “Like a Prayer” by Madonna, I was entranced. It was clearly religious…but sexy, too! My brain didn’t know how to comprehend this.
Madonna is dressed in a skimpy black slip, with the straps falling off her shoulders. There is a black Jesus statue and burning crosses. Is this about race? (I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and could easily count the number of black people I knew on one hand.) Madonna keeps looking longingly at Jesus. What if they have sex? They aren’t married, are they? Can Jesus even have sex? (I won’t even go into the story line about man-Jesus getting framed and going to jail.) There were so many unanswered questions!
And that’s what was great about it. The video helped me to think outside the box and see a way that religion and sex and race could interact, when previously they’d been in very discrete silos in my 9-year-old brain. I didn’t quite understand it—not sure I do now—but it somehow made things less scary. I don’t think that clinging guilt will ever go away completely, but I felt when I saw “Like a Prayer” (and still feel now) that Madonna was there to shepherd me into a new, more nuanced and complicated world.
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Hilary Jones grew up in the Midwest but now lives on the East Coast. She has been playing in bands since she was 16, but is now more than twice that age. She currently plays guitar in the feminist rock band, Whore Paint, who you can find on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter.
Sex and Song: Paula Abdul, “Opposites Attract”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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i was 9 years old when i first saw this video.
i would daydream about being mc skat kat… walking around the neighborhood dancing on trashcans and caressing paula’s torso with my long, voluptuous tail. i wanted to know the comfort of being in a bestial toon relationship where paula and i were united by our differences…
she ~ a beautiful popstar megahuman who is clean and likes to make the bed.
me ~ an anthropomorphous cat cartoon in sunglasses and suspenders who smokes and steals the covers.
together we would defy all odds with our unlikely friendship and family-accepted innuendo.
my parents hated mtv, but i remember asking my mom if i could watch “just this video…” and her saying “yes.” with that yes, my mother implicitly agreed to the sex that was being sold to me via paula and skat kat—sex that promoted fun and intimate communication between two very different individuals. later in life i took a job making masks for a furry costume company. at one point i took a trip with my boss to a weekend-long furry convention in atlanta, ga, where we presented our wares. it was expected that each attendee of this convention have a moniker that reflected their animal alter ego. the name i chose was pork rinds—an obvious statement about my overall standing in this convention, saying “hey, i’m here for work—not to express some deep-seated need to have a cute hybrid animal character for you to connect with sexually or otherwise.”
now, when i think about it, i can see how it could be useful for many of us to find outside inspiration when trying to communicate those base needs that can get caught up in our repressed upbringings… where talking about sex is deemed taboo and uncomfortable, and therefore ignored, certain damaging hang-ups and neuroses can result.
i guess that’s who mc skat kat was and continues to be for me… an inspiration. he has helped me to see how openly expressing myself can be beneficial in my quest for reciprocated love.
so here goes…
~ dear paula abdul,
i’m 32 years old. i don’t like cinnamon candy, lace or miss piggy. i know you are a good bit older than i, and that you are a high-profile celebrity… but if you don’t discriminate against any flavor of hard candy, have a thing for risky garments, and like all of the muppets—maybe we are two magnets whose opposites attract.
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Nathaniel Rappole is a South Eastern coastal seabird who lives in Philadelphia. Listen to his music on gullface.com.
Sex and Song: Nine Inch Nails, “Closer”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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“Closer” by NIN makes me hot because 1. It doesn’t cheapen sex by making it “sexy” (i.e. Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again”) 2. Instead, it makes sex seem raw, life-altering, and like the deepest possible “Fuck yeah!”—which, to me, is sexy as hell. The video has roaches crawling about, a monkey strapped to a cross, and a Claude Colbert look-alike holding an animal’s skull. It makes sex dangerous, religious, and something to be contended with. Most mainstream music talks around sex. They ‘beat around the bush’, so to speak, flippantly alluding to sex as something you can either buy, or get by buying the right things (the right bikini, the right hair product, the right style of jeans). None of them hit the bulls-eye with their tongue like Trent Reznor did with this song.
I was a really innocent teen when I first heard it, seemingly light years away from getting laid, though I was pretty sure I knew what sex was. When Reznor said, “I wanna fuck you like an animal” something inside me quietly said, “oh. oh my.” Because even then, I knew what he meant.
This song is bestial, and that’s an aspect of sex that marketing professionals and pop princesses are usually afraid to acknowledge. We are beasts of nature, and no matter how much we post witty comments on Twitter and put on suits and take our SATs and plan for our retirement, we want to be fucked so hard that we forget our name. We want to be gasping for breath, both killed and reborn by someone who dares to violate and consecrate us. As a teen growing up amid the hum-drum of the suburbs in an age of technology, it was terrific to see that bestial element of sex represented. It made sex potent, magical, and yes—when it finally happened—closer to God.
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Sabrina Chap is a writer, editor and musician. Her anthology, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction includes essays on art and survival by Amanda Palmer, Nan Goldin, Margaret Cho, Swoon, bell hooks and more awesome renegade artists. Her studio debut, “Oompa!’ has been lauded as a knee-slapping, bawdy good time. Her latest release, “We Are the Parade” is a queer-tastic horn explosion, full of vaudevillian laughs and sweetly sung expletives. Check her out at sabrinachap.com.
Sex and Song: Björk, “Cocoon”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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“Cocoon” by Björk is one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever heard. It seems almost otherworldly in its mood and atmosphere, but as the title implies there’s something in it that always makes me feel warm and safe. I was obsessed with Vespertine when it was first released, but I don’t think I actually heard most of the lyrics on the album until well after I started listening—I was too focused on the entrancing music and vibrant production.
The sounds of “Cocoon” are seductive—the fluttering percussion works as a subtle sedative while the gentle and vulnerable timbre of Björk’s voice seem to peel back the layers of the world, inviting you to be vulnerable as well. I was so mesmerized by the sounds of the song that it took me probably a year to hear everything it was actually saying. I don’t know of another song that so compellingly describes the vulnerability and intimacy of lovemaking. There are thousands of songs that talk about fucking and remind us how much fun that can be, but “Cocoon” talks of sex the way Romeo and Juliet talks of love. It makes you desire and hope for the best of it.
“Cocoon”—especially the repeated lyric “who would’ve known”—leaves the ego out and focuses on the hazy high we feel as lovers. There’s a sense that the singer has reached the heights of love and sex all at once, a moment of complete bliss and perfection where two people are entirely lost in each other. Some of us have felt this with a lover—pure ecstasy, trust, love, desire, and the reciprocation of all these things. I’d guess that for most of us the combination of all these things at once, in harmony, is rare. “Who would’ve known?” is a reminder that moments like these can take us by surprise.
To be touched or even looked at in a way you weren’t aware that you desired, to exhaust each other and fall asleep entangled, these are the things we hope for in the same way we hoped to find a Romeo or Juliet when we were young. “Cocoon” is a memory of every time I’ve felt complete with someone, falling asleep fulfilled, feeling that death could scoop me up and whisk me away and I would just smile because I had shared this moment with the creature beside me.
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Brendan Ekstrom is the guitar player for the band Circa Survive. He enjoys sandwiches and always knows where his towel is.
Sex and Song: Salt-N-Pepa, “Push It”
You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate the connection between sex and music. Still, we thought it would be fun to hear what they have to say about it. In our “Sex and Song” series, curated by drummer and producer Katy Otto, musicians share a song about sex, love, or both, and what it means to them.
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“Push It” is one of my all-time favorite jams. It was my ringtone for years (“pick up on this!”) and always puts me in a good mood. Plus, I can’t not dance when I hear it (and we all know dancing is like sex with clothes on).
While I don’t think we can take any song or video too literally—or else we might never find a video that exhibits healthy and positive sexuality, since without drama there is no story—I think the general vibe of this song and video are rather feminist. Which is a very good thing in my book since, real talk here, feminists do it better. They know what they want, they’re not afraid to ask for it (or give it to themselves while you wait) and, therefore, they are more genuinely happy to reciprocate. If you want to help us feel good, we’ll help you. Two-way street.
So here are Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella dancing, taking charge of the crowd and their crew, and being sexual because they like sex, not because they are being objectified. They are communicating their needs (“Can’t you hear the music pumping hard like I wish you would? Now push it.”) And they’re having SO MUCH FUN. That is what sex should be! Full of communication, fun, mutual pleasure and a little bit of naughtiness… like when that bass drops in.
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Shawna Potter is a member of War On Women, a punk band from Baltimore. She also runs Big Crunch Amp Repair with Brooks Harlan (War On Women, Office of Future Plans), heads the Baltimore chapter of anti-street harassment movement Hollaback!, and is ordained to perform wedding ceremonies. She loves love and hates hate.
Sex and Song: Blonde Redhead, “23”
So much music creates a path to enjoy, complicate, and understand sex. As someone who makes music and has also struggled in love, it occurred to me that musicians might have a unique perspective on sex and love, especially as viewed through the filter of music. But you don’t need to be a musician to feel the intimate link between music and sex. I created the “Sex and Song” series for anyone who loves both. (And that’s a lot of us, right?) Each week a different musician will write about a song that has moved them in some way relating to sex, love, or a combination of the two. And it seems only fair to start with me.
I’ve loved Blonde Redhead since I first heard them. And I’ve always thought of them in terms of sex—one listen and it is hard not to. Blonde Redhead has seen me through so many experiences, both positive and painful. They occupy a very specific, very special place for me. I was often reluctant to talk about them with partners because they were simply mine. Privately.
When 23 came out, I didn’t think I could possibly relate to it as much as I had their earlier records, In Expression of the Inexpressible, La Mia Vita Violenta, and Fake Can Be Just as Good. Nevertheless, I listened to this record alone in my room—and, when the title track came on, something inside me shifted.
Your tainted heart, my tainted love… He was a friend of mine. He was a son of god. He was a son of a gun.
I cried. I’ve experienced a lot of loss romantically. I’ve survived intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Sexuality has not always been a source of joy for me. But—thankfully—sex and love have also been sources of great restoration. Of forgiveness. Of rebirth. Even now—in a happy, loving, stable, and healthy relationship—as I listen to “23,” I carry with me so much that came before. Memories surge.
How many times?
This song consistently provides me with immense peace—even with parts of my history that don’t afford much of that. I want solace. I want to be reminded of that which is sacred. Blonde Redhead offers me this. And I’m immeasurably glad they do.
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Katy Otto is an activist, writer, record label owner, and drummer for Trophy Wife. She grew up in the DC area, lives in Philadelphia, and works in social justice and arts communications.
