Songs About Dicks of the 1980's
The 1980's made innuendo expensive. Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer came with a stop-motion video that won nine MTV Video Music Awards, Billy Squier's The Stroke became an arena chant that Squier insists is about the record business, and Whitesnake named a whole album Slide It In. The decade ended in court: 2 Live Crew's As Nasty as They Wanna Be, released in 1989, became the first recording a US federal judge ruled obscene, the best advertising it ever had.
- 1
The Penis Song (Not the Noël Coward Song)
Monty Python · 1983 · 0:57YouTubeSixty seconds, eight different words for it, and a dinner jacket. The densest track on the list by a mile.
- 2
Dick Almighty
2 Live Crew · 1989 · 4:53YouTubeOn the first album a US federal court ruled obscene, this is the chorus. The court lost on appeal; the dick did not.
- 3
Kobra
Donatella Rettore · 1980 · 3:27YouTubeRettore wrote it after a man said women can't compete because men have the "cobra", which she says is always current, provided it rises.
- 4
Tube Snake Boogie
ZZ Top · 1981 · 3:04YouTubeBilly Gibbons says a "tube snake" is a surfboard, then adds that it is first cousin to a "tube steak", which is not a surfboard.
- 5
Una luna de miel en la mano
Virus · 1985 · 5:21YouTubeArgentina's most elegant new-wave band asked their lyricist for words, and he said they would be about masturbation. They are.
- 6
Sledgehammer
Peter Gabriel · 1986 · 5:12YouTubeThe most-awarded music video ever made is five minutes of innuendo that you sang along to, loudly, as a child.
- 7
Lick My Love Pump
Spinal Tap · 1984 · 1:06YouTubeA delicate piano piece in D minor, the saddest of all keys, ruined beyond repair by its title.
- 8
John Holmes (una vita per il cinema)
Elio e le Storie Tese · 1989 · 4:09YouTubeItaly's defining comedy band wrote a biography of the most famous penis in film history and made it all up, except the measurements.
- 9
Kissing Willie
Jethro Tull · 1989 · 3:33YouTubeIan Anderson wrote a Benny Hill spoof for his prog band, took it to number six on US rock radio and waved carrots, for clarity.
- 10
Me pica un huevo
Siniestro Total · 1983 · 1:45YouTubeA minute and forty-five seconds about an itchy testicle, from the band that taught Spanish rock to be funny.
- 11
The Stroke
Billy Squier · 1981 · 3:38YouTubeBilly Squier says it is about the record business. He has said so for forty years. Nobody in the arena has believed him once.
- 12
Slide It In
Whitesnake · 1984 · 3:21YouTubeDavid Coverdale has called the title anatomically conversant and clarified, when pressed, that it is not about bananas. The chorus is one instruction.
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