What Makes A Sex Song Sexy?

by Alexandra Molotkow

This summer introduced me to the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s called “Marvin Gaye,” by Charlie Puth with Meghan Trainor, and listening to its refrain (“let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on!”) is physically wrenching. Put it this way: I’d rather listen to “Marvin Gaye” than lick a dead rat, but only because a dead rat carries disease. If you could guarantee that I wouldn’t get sick, I would totally lick the rat. You lick a rat and it’s done, but “Marvin Gaye” is inside me forever.

But Summer 2015 was also the season of “Often” by the Weeknd, which is hypnotically sexy, a spell of a song that changes the room it plays in. “These songs are if pure tension was an element; they want to meet you in the darkest part, the space between what’s good for you and maybe what you want,” Emma Healey wrote for Said the Gramphone, and she used the word “undertow,” which is the best single word for how this happens.

I never really listened to the Weeknd until this summer. I liked his music fine, but I found it sort of unremarkable; I never needed to know the name of one of his songs. I wasn’t paying enough attention. The Weeknd is more idea than virtuoso: he can sing, and his music is solid, but I’m not convinced he’s the new Michael Jackson. He’s more like the new Mick Jagger, who, in Marianne Faithfull’s words, “effortlessly reached inside them and snapped that twig.” He embodies a certain agony that is, in my experience, foundational to sex — it’s hard to put in words, because in words it’s a problem, but it’s a problem that most of us have a stake in. He sells ruin.

There are artists who sing about sex (…Charlie Puth?) and artists whose work is sexy. The difference is that sexy music is a demonstration: it makes a promise, not a suggestion. I’d been listening to “Often” on repeat for a week or so when D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” came on at the bar, which nearly snapped me out of it, but not quite. I wondered how we got here: from psychedelic wankers promising “magic carpet rides” to Iggy Pop’s feral rumbling to Prince and Teddy Pendergrass, men who promise to meet your needs and then some, or D’Angelo and Usher, performers more sly than slick who promise a great time.

Performing popular music, of course, has always been a way of carnival barking for your dick: as long as men have been singing for popular audiences, they’ve been telling little girls what’s in store for them. But the offers have usually made sense: I’ll give you pleasure, I’ll teach you new things, I’ll take you somewhere exciting. “I can only give you everything.” The Weeknd promises the opposite, and it’s — irresistible is the wrong word, it’s inevitable. The attraction is gasoline fumes.

It makes no sense and yet it seems much truer — to infatuation itself, which is more pain than pleasure, and closer, at least, to the way these trysts go. He picks you from the crowd, he invites you backstage, and then…