Clancy: I think I’ve finally listened to enough Tom Petty that I have George Michael out of my head.
Trumwill: That’s good.
Clancy: You do know George Michael, right?
Trumwill: WHAM!
Clancy: Well, I was talking about his solo stuff. I heard some the other day and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.
Trumwill: I’m actually vaguely more familiar with him as a solo artist, too. I didn’t even know he was with WHAM! for the longest time. But I just wanted to give you a keyword to demonstrate that yes, I do in fact know who George Michael is. I thought about saying “Faith”, but I hate that song. WHAM! at least had that one song of his that I liked.
Clancy: I remember when I was in junior high and “I Want Your Sex” was a top single. Casey Kasum refused to say the name of the song.
Trumwill: Well, I’ve give George Michael credit for something. A lot of crap 80’s songs that were about sex tried to be all coy and eye-rollingly pseudo-clever about it. Michael at least came out with it.
Clancy: There is that, I suppose.
Trumwill: I still hated the song. I think the music that has come out since taught me that there’s something to be said for subtlety, even of the coy and eye-rolling variety.
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4 Responses to Singing About Sex
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I say, depends on what you’re in it for. That particular song was as much about dancing as anything else. Dancing, of course, was a socially acceptable high school substitute for sex so it circled right back around, which was probably part of why it was as popular as it was.
“A lot of crap 80’s songs that were about sex tried to be all coy and eye-rollingly pseudo-clever about it. Michael at least came out with it.”
Took him much longer before he really “came out.” He was playing hetero.
Wow. I walked right in to that one…
Was “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” coy and eye-rollingly clever about its gayness? Or was it about as openly gay as a song and video could be, without being subtitled “I’m Gay,” and it’s just that back in the 80s the mainstream didn’t *get* it.