What was the first song to say “c*nt”
It’s an expletive still packed with Anglo-Saxon venom when spat out of the mouth after surviving the crests and troughs of history.
Not that “cunt” was always so offensive. While generally understood in the English-speaking world to stand as the worst of the swears outside racial slurs, the C-bomb, as early as the 13th century, was merely the perfectly accepted word for one’s vagina.
An etymological mash of a little proto-Germanic “kunto” here and just a dash of Old Norse “kunta” there, medieval England’s linguistic heritage would see “cunt” benignly labelled in science research or titling the ‘world’s oldest profession’, Oxford’s 1230s red light district naturally named Gropecunt Lane before its eventual Magpie Lane revision.
But over the centuries, “cunt” grew into a bawdy joke when occasionally flashed in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, gaining notoriety by the time William Shakespeare wryly slipped in the vulgarity amid his clever wordplay in Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Henry V. Before long, “cunt” began to carry its modern-day profanity in earnest around the late 19th century, finding its way into literature with James Joyce’s Ulysses, then taking another 50-odd years to finally see utterances on TV and cinema.
Music took a while to lyrically embrace the “cunt”. Given just how flexible and potentially endearing the term can be Down Under, Australia’s TISM broke some ground in 1993 with their Australia the Lucky Cunt EP, followed five years later by www.tism.wanker.com’s second single ‘I Might Be a Cunt, but I’m Not a Fucking Cunt’. Back in 1988, grindcore gutteralists Anal Cunt may well have marked the first time a band had faintly orbited some mainstream recognition with the swear so boldly in the name.
It’s really punk and new wave that ushered “cunt” into lyrical attention. Marianne Faithfull’s explicit rant at a cheating lover with frank candour on 1979’s ‘Why D’Ya Do It?’ leaves little to the imagination, “Every time I see your dick / I see her cunt in my bed,” and Sid Vicious managed to enter the UK Top Ten the same year spitting “You cunt / I’m not a queer” on his punk rendition of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.
So, what was the first song to have “cunt” in it?
There are a few contenders. Released in July 1977 as their third single, the Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’ saw frontman John Lydon place gleeful emphasis on the final syllable when lyrically spitting the title as the song’s closing refrain, just about feigning enough innocence to win their first spot on Top of the Pops.
Two months later, Ian Dury let loose a “cunt” with a full chest on his debut with the Blockheads, New Boots and Panties!!’s ‘Plaistow Patricia’ unleashing the sweary volley of “Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks” in its gobby opener, all the more stark considering its lack of musical backing amid Dury’s introductory diatribe.
However, the centuries-old expletive’s first real dust-off marked The Rolling Stones’ double-opus Exile on Main Street. Dropped in 1972 and largely bookending the close of their golden album run in the eyes of fans, underneath Mick Jagger’s gutsy bluesy drawl on the ramshackle ‘Casino Boogie’ can be heard the quip “Kissing cunt in Cannes”, a line that barely raised an eyebrow at the time, likely due to the fact that nobody picked it up among the album’s muddy, lo-fi mix.
