Le Zizi by Pierre Perret (1974)

Perret wrote Le Zizi after the education minister Joseph Fontanet announced in 1973 that sex education would enter French secondary schools, and he delivered the syllabus himself, ahead of the ministry: a jaunty, encyclopaedic tour of the organ in everyday situations, sung with the air of a kindly uncle. The craft is in the vocabulary. The song never needs the adult word because it has a nursery's worth of childish ones, and French has rarely been used so precisely to avoid saying something.

Every station refused it until Europe 1's programme director put it on air in December 1974, after which it sold more than 500,000 copies in 1975 and became one of his signature songs. Louis de Funès had it removed from the end credits of La Zizanie in 1978; Mireille Mathieu sang it on television; the Quebec comedy troupe Rock et Belles Oreilles answered it with a parody called Le Clito, restoring balance.

Its afterlife is the national vocabulary. "Zizi" was a nursery word before Perret and a chorus after him, and Francky Vincent's 2009 hit is the same word with a proposition attached. Le Zizi is the gentlest entry on this list and the most educational, which in 1974 was the scandal, and which is still more than most curricula manage.