Is Violent Femmes’ ‘Blister in the Sun’ really an ode to masturbation?
Just over four decades ago, the unique folk-punk band Violent Femmes released their seminal debut album. The iconic artwork depicting a young girl peeping through a window seems to represent a cheekiness prevalent throughout much of the sonic repertoire within. Most prominent is a pervasive tone of promiscuity and salacious depravity.
The single ‘Gone Daddy Gone’, for instance, transplants an entire verse from Willie Dixon’s classic 1954 song ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’. Gordon Gano frames the idea with his own tale of frustration in love: “Your love is gone / Gone daddy gone / The love is gone away”.
The album is famed most, however, for the upbeat hit ‘Blister in the Sun’. From the title, one might assume a dramatic case of sunburn, but upon closer inspection, one may just as easily imagine a scene wherein an adolescent male lays carefree in a sunbed, pleasing himself to the extent that he has blisters on the palm of his dominant hand.
This curious signature track leads with a propulsive acoustic rhythm which pulsates with adolescent fervour. Adorning this attack are Gano’s lyrics, which seem to refer to a romantic relationship put under critical pressure by a troublesome addiction to masturbation.
At the beginning of the song, the narrator reveals that he’s high and horny: “I’m high as a kite / I just might stop to check you out”. Shortly after, the chorus qualifies the title and seems to introduce genital-bound hands: “Let me go on / Like I blister in the sun / Let me go on / Big hands, I know you’re the one”.
Granted, at this point, one could assume that the hands are to be used for someone else’s pleasure. However, thoughts turn to masturbation in the second verse as the narrator reveals his partner’s frustration: “Body and beats / I stain my sheets / I don’t even know why / My girlfriend, she’s at the end / She is starting to cry”.
This interpretation gains momentum when viewed as part of the album’s running themes of raw human emotion. “We’re avant-garde because we’re so reactionary,” bassist Brian Ritchie told Rolling Stone in 1983. “We go back to improvisation, to raw emotions and primitive, old-fashioned sounds. And Gordon’s songs make the whole thing accessible.”
Despite the song’s seemingly obvious derivation, Gano claims not to have intended such a crude interpretation. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot to understand with the lyrics. In fact, it was maybe ten or 15 years later when somebody was asking me about that song and said something like, ‘Well, you know… You know what that song’s about.’ I’m like, ‘No. What are you talking about?’ ‘Well, everybody knows. You wrote it.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ And they told me the song was about masturbation. I had never thought of that.”
Listen to the song below and see what you think.
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