Whistle by Flo Rida (2012)

Whistle is an acoustic-guitar pop-rap song with a whistled melody for a hook and a chorus that is one request, repeated politely, with instructions. Flo Rida delivers it like a patient music teacher offering private lessons, which is unfortunately the whole problem. The verses supply the setting and a few compliments. Nothing in the lyric is explicit; everything in the lyric is understood, including by the children whistling it.

Released in 2012 from Wild Ones, it went to number one in the United States and topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, then went five times Platinum. Asked about the meaning, Flo Rida said he had kept it clean, but that if you listened you could take it another way as well, which is the most honest answer any writer on this list has given and a masterclass in having it both ways.

Its afterlife is as a lesson in deniability. Whistle proves that a chart-topping single can be about one act and only one act, provided the word for it never appears, and it remains the record people reach for when the argument about innuendo in pop needs a recent example. Children whistle it at birthday parties. Their parents smile and change the subject.