10 classic songs about masturbation
The world of pop music is never going to run short of love songs. The bread and butter behind every great song is love, and acts like The Beatles have made an entire career out of humanity’s strongest emotion. Although love songs might take up a good portion of the charts, there are a handful of songs by The Who and Violent Femmes that have more to do with masturbation than actual love.
As far back as the ‘60s, there were songs that had something to do with self-loving, from wanting to have a wank out of desperation or needing some shot of endorphins. Although the song may have been fun to listen to at the time, it gets a bit awkward trying to listen to it with fresh ears, knowing the origin.
Not all of these songs are out in the open about their sexual proclivity though. For every song that’s precisely about masturbation, a few are veiled in metaphors, as the band takes ‘artistic license’ to create a song that could be about wanting someone in a different way.
Although they may have tried to get out of it, it’s hard to see these songs as anything but odes to masturbation when reading the lyrics on their own. Love songs might be a little bit hard to write from time to time, but these artists found the way through when writing about their own anatomy.
10 classic songs about masturbation
‘Muscle of Love’ – Alice Cooper
In the early days of shock rock, Alice Cooper was the sign of everything taboo about the genre. Even though The Rolling Stones had their fair share of controversy, nobody could touch what Alice was doing, from bringing out a guillotine onstage to decapitating baby dolls for his audience’s pleasure. Although the horror aspect may have been the main draw, Cooper could get into a pubescent hijinx when he wanted to.
On their final album as a band, Muscle of Love’s title track isn’t leaving anything to your imagination. In the first few lines, Cooper talks about getting into the naughty side of his father’s photos and then locking the door to the bathroom. Fans can pretty much tell what’s happening from there, especially when wondering what the titular muscle of love is.
Granted, Cooper was never a prude about these topics either, with a song later on on the record called ‘Woman Machine’ about his sexual proclivity. Cooper may have been dark and grimy by parental standards, but this song should satisfy the 15-year-olds in his fanbase a lot more than the adults.
‘Holding My Own’ – The Darkness
There was always a touch of tongue-in-cheek humour when it came to The Darkness. Although songs like ‘I Believe In a Thing Called Love’ were great to belt from the rafters in the car, it was never clear whether they were making a mockery of ‘70s rock tropes or doing them justice. The band may have held onto their sincerity, but there was nothing serious about the closer on Permission to Land.
On the surface, ‘Holding My Own’ sounds like a song about hanging tough in the face of adversity. As Justin Hawkins has confirmed in interviews, though, this is about not having any at the end of the night and getting hot and heavy on your own.
Considering where the album started, the entire album journey feels a lot more funny when you listen in context. Hawkins may have been singing about a thing called love just a few minutes ago and begging some motherfuckers to get their hands off his woman, but now he just seems content by his lonesome.
‘I Touch Myself’ – The Divinyls
At the start of the 1990s, it was unclear what the next phase of rock and roll would be. Though Nirvana had broken onto the scene yet, there were still dozens of bands trying for the prime spot on the charts, hoping their unique stab at rock would catch on. If time had been different, there’s a good chance that fans could have been led into a new phase of rock with The Divinyls on ‘I Touch Myself’.
While The Divinyls already had a unique sound for the time a la The Pretenders, the attention behind the song almost came strictly from the title. Chrissie Amphlett is holding nothing back, saying that she masturbates while thinking of the listener. Whereas most songs like this could come off as gross, this is one of the few that land a different feel.
Compared to the gross implications of most of these songs, this is a tale of seduction, as Amphlett wants to make the listener unnerved by how open she is about her sexuality. The song may have had an uphill battle with a title like that, but never has a song about masturbation been this alluring.
‘Severed Lips’ – Dinosaur Jr.
Every song coming out in the 1980s indie scene had free reign in terms of lyrics. The giants of the day, like R.E.M. had songs that were nothing but Michael Stipe singing nonsense into the microphone. It was more about the noise being made than the lyrics, and Dinosaur Jr. tested that theory on ‘Severed Lips’.
When talking about masturbation songs, most artists like to be a little cagey about the whole thing, almost as a joke to their audience. Not so with Dinosaur Jr. Throughout the entire song, listeners get a pretty clear picture of what’s going down, from talking about the stains that he’s leaving on his pillow to needing one last burst before he retracts.
The song even takes a darker turn in the final few minutes, when fans realise that J Mascis has been singing to a rubber doll this entire time instead of an actual human being. Other songs knew to leave some aspects of the song to your imagination, but if this song is any indication, Dinosaur Jr. haven’t even begun to discover the meaning of the word ‘subtlety’.
‘She Bop’ – Cyndi Lauper
Most songs about self-love are reserved for artists on the fringes of the music scene. Although songs can be made about anything, no one expects a song about having sex alone would grace the pop charts that often. No one is safe on this list, though; one of the biggest names in ‘80s music had her own song about masturbation.
Although Cyndi Lauper was known more for hits like ‘True Colours’, ‘She Bop’ is one of the peppiest songs there is about masturbation. Compared to most of the other songs on this list, Lauper is the most cagey about what the song is actually about, not saying much outside of getting something better ‘down South’ than what she’s getting from the men in her life.
Lauper has even admitted that the song was about masturbation in interviews, saying that a bop a day is good for her audience. Her biggest hit might have been about girls just wanting to have fun, but ‘She Bop’ has a little more than fun in mind behind closed doors.
‘Darling Nikki’ – Prince
In terms of songs about sex, Prince can be put in almost every category. From the first time he stepped on a stage, ‘The Purple One’s music always reeked of sexual energy, some of which can get a little uncomfortable on songs like ‘Sister’. When he first met the big screen, Prince had the perfect steamy song to fit in with his persona when he met a girl named Nikki.
In the context of the film Purple Rain, Prince talks about his encounter with a dirty girl he came across on the road, first seeing her as she was masturbating with a magazine. The masturbation section is the least of the problems here, moving to Prince getting intimate with her later in the song and being left with only a note from her, asking to call her up again whenever he wants to grind.
The song ended up being so controversial it was placed on ‘The Filthy 15’ by the PMRC, deemed too risque for parents to subject their kids to. Although 90% of Prince’s catalogue is about sexual desire, he had to be doing something a little more than sexy to inspire the Parental Advisory sticker to be created.
‘Longview’ – Green Day
In the mid-’90s, Green Day were writing from the same perspective as their fans. Billie Joe Armstrong wasn’t too far removed from his teenage fanbase, and his songs were all about the trials and tribulations of being a young punk with nothing to do. When he had nothing but time on his hands, Armstrong found a way out of boredom by writing about having…something else in his hand.
Centred around Mike Dirnt’s persistent bassline, ‘Longview’ captures the feeling of being stuck at home with nothing to do. As Armstrong flips through the channels and doesn’t find anything he likes, he figures that masturbating is the next best thing, dismissing the myth that it makes him go blind and letting it take him away to paradise.
Armstrong did admit that he got a bit of a nasty reputation after the song came out, as people thought he masturbated 15 times a day strictly because of the song. When left to his own devices in the ‘90s, though, Armstrong knew this was the next best thing when he couldn’t find anything good to watch on TV.
‘Pictures of Lily’ – The Who
As for rock lyricists, Pete Townshend might be one of the best in the business. Outside of his Mod origins, Townshend always knew that rock could mean more than just party songs, and his deconstruction of the rock opera model on Tommy gave storytellers a gateway into rock and roll. Then again, fans weren’t expecting that out of the same mind that gave us ‘Pictures of Lily’.
Although Townshend has never said it, it’s widely accepted that this song is about masturbation, as a young kid finds a picture of a gorgeous woman from his father. Considering the father is talking to his son about the pleasures that come with the picture, it does get a touch bizarre towards the end, watching this kid come of age in the grossest way possible.
Granted, The Who were still finding themselves at the time, and having a song like this right next to the goofy tune ‘Happy Jack’ would have made for a risque teen comedy at the time. The Who may have thrived on turning rock inside out, but there might have been potential for them to become one of the leaders in comedic rock as well.
‘Turning Japanese’ – The Vapors
As punk was slowly turning into new wave, there were The Vapors. Although the band might have had a nervy punk-ish sound like The Jam from around the same time, they were the first to get major chart success on both sides of the Atlantic. And while ‘Turning Japanese’ might have been about the wonders of Eastern culture, the common consensus has something a bit more disgusting.
For years, this song has been linked with masturbation, saying that Dave Fenton has a picture of this girl and mentioning that he loves himself and wants to kiss her when there’s no one else around. Though most of the song plays on themes of desire, the band have always denied it’s apparent origination.
If the song isn’t about masturbation, though, it makes a lot less sense, especially when the perviness gets too weird when he talks about wanting a doctor to take a picture so that he can see his crush’s insides as well. More than anything, ‘Turning Japanese’ captures a slice of time when rock was heading in a different direction. It was going to get weird, and not even masturbation was off the table.
‘Blister in the Sun’ – Violent Femmes
Violent Femmes tend to get left in the dust in terms of alt-rock pioneers. Although they held onto their acoustic guitars through most of their career, their snide attitude made them sound like one of the brattiest punk bands that never bothered to plug their guitars into an amplifier. Then again, when a band’s first exposure to the mainstream is a song about masturbation, they might not be long for the limelight.
Written around one of the catchiest guitar riffs ever written, Gordon Gano talks about wanting to blister in the sun for as long as he can, knowing he can strut his stuff on his own and rely on his hands if needs to. As much as this sounds like a folksy good time, it gets a little too uncomfortable when it gets to the second verse.
After breaking down the barrier about masturbation, Gano slows the music down and starts singing the tune in a whisper, almost as if he’s masturbating while recording the vocals for this song. Despite being pretty gross, there’s a certain freedom about a song like this. The alternative scene was wide open, and even a song like this could find itself on the radio if it had the right melody behind it.
