22 Orgasms and Outrage: the bizarre ‘sex rock’ fiasco
By the standards of today’s music industry, there’s probably not much left to truly surprise us. Gone are the days where a swear being dropped in would have you clutching your pearls or a reference to some bedroom action would have you running for the hills – because, in many ways, the once shocking notion of sex and drugs and rock and roll has just become a bit of old hat. It’s hard to remember, given our supposed liberal openness to what we hear now, that not so long ago, explicit lyrics could give rise to fiasco and even scandal – and you need not look any further than the case of ‘sex rock’ to tell you that.
The moral panic over so-called ‘sex rock’ exploded into the fore in 1975 when Time magazine coined the term, denouncing Donna Summer’s song ‘Love to Love You Baby’ for its seemingly scandalous content, which was purported to contain no less than 22 orgasms, in its span – 17 minutes total if you take on the long version. Although it’s now considered to have played a significant part in shaping rock and roll, Summer’s lyrics about female pleasure were received so shockingly at the time that the campaign against sex rock was launched primarily against her, and even to the point that she had to stop performing it live for fear of riots breaking out.
But Summer was not the only victim of the sex rock tirade. In its same original article, Time claimed that some 15% of songs played on daytime radio were explicitly laden, with everything from ‘Do It Any Way You Wanna’ by People’s Choice to ‘That’s the Way (I Like It)’ by KC & The Sunshine Band getting in the firing line.
They say social media is terrible for spreading fear – but if the standards of the mid-1970s were anything to go by, it seemed equally bad. Panic was abounded regarding sex rock and how it was supposedly corrupting young people, and from there, the tarring of the brush only continued to grow. Radio stations variously demanded lyrical changes from Rod Stewart’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’ and even began refusing to play ‘The Bitch is Back’ by Elton John. The phrase ‘touch some grass’ springs to mind.
But the fiasco didn’t stop there. Only a year after the initial outbreak of anger, in 1976, a group called Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) sprung into action to demand boycotts of record companies that failed to tamper with the sexual content of their songs.
As laughably parodical as this might sound to us now, believe it or not, this eventually resulted in a permanent and lasting change to music as a whole, as it set in motion the campaign for explicit content labels to be slapped onto albums the second hint of a sexual reference was sniffed out.
In that sense, sex rock – and in particular, Donna Summer – forever changed the way that music would be received all over the world. Everyone from The Rolling Stones to Prince has been bruised by its wrath, but in many ways, they deserve to wear their rebellious, sexy streak with pride.
Who knew singing about 22 orgasms could earn you a place in history?
