And you had it in hit songs like “How do you do?" with lyrics like, "Uh huh! I thought we could na na na na!” Cue mic drop.
Our third installment of Feel-bad Hits of the Summer lands us in the sex-crazed Seventies, the last decade of truly unbridled promiscuity. With the introduction of the pill, women were liberated to be as shitty as men, and men were encouraged to explore their sensitive side, all with disastrous results in the bedroom. If it seemed like everyone was sexually liberated but you, and the 'me' decade was merely an invitation to self-service, chances are you were listening to the hit parade and getting bummed out by songs that either made you feel left out of the sexual revolution or inadequate when you were included and wondered what you were doing wrong. So, let’s re-examine pop music sex in the 1970s, before the rot in erotica set in and before ecstasy gave way to STDs.
1970: 'American Woman' by the Guess Who
File under methinks the Canadians doth protest too much. Here, cantankerous Canuck Burton Cummings gets all revved up, thrusting a litany of anti-U.S. complaints about our war machines and ghetto scenes onto one poor Miss America. She is then told in no uncertain terms to stay “away-hey,” but right there, the dichotomy of “away” and “hey” seems to indicate a simultaneous desire to repel and attract attention. The fact that growing old with her is even being discussed at what would seem at best to be a one-night stand seems to indicate some kind of long game where revulsion will eventually lead to lovin’. Wonder how well this seduction technique worked on groupies of the day. “And another thing, I don’t like your trade policies and your flat-out rejection of the metric system… are you as turned on as I am right now?”1971: 'If' by Bread
People who think of Bread as a bunch of soft rock celibates haven’t taken the time to look past the milky white milquetoast of David Gates’ lyrics to find the gallons of testosterone chugging away just below the surface. In this ballad called “If,” Gates talks a good game of hypotheticals (“if a picture paints a thousand words,” “if the world should stop revolving,” etc.) but reveals his real intention of what he would do if a man could be two places at one time: “I’d be with you, tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.” Translation: "I will fuck you sideways so hard you will land somewhere into next week." Hey, “Bread” and “breed” are just one letter apart, and you’ll note I didn’t say anything about a yeast infection.1972: 'How Do You Do' by Mouth & MacNeal
I was almost going to go with Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” because that really was the feel-bad hit of that summer, and what bigger case of blue balls could there be but a guy who gets stood up at the altar and is about to jump off a conveniently located nearby tower. With ample parking, we can assume. But then I remembered this obnoxious oompa loompa of a song, the kind of meaninglessness that trivializes both sex and language in a way that is tailor-made to win Eurovision Song Competitions. This Dutch duo substituted “na na na na” to make every come-on sound even filthier, like those big black bars they run across tits on television to make unseen nipples even more foreboding. Has there ever been a more exacting phrase for couldn’t-care-less libidos than “Once I said I wanted you/I don’t remember why…”? Or “I thought why not, na na na na… just me and you and then we can na na na na!” Where do these na-na-na-naughty Netherlanders get off? In the back, na na na na. Behind the tuba players.1973: 'We’re an American Band' by Grand Funk
There’s so much to unpack here, and I don’t mean testicularly. There’s the famed groupie “Sweet Sweet Connie” Hamzy, who was immortalized in this song for “doing her act/she had the whole show and that’s a natural fact,” meaning she was willing to go through every roadie and lighting grunt on the tour just to get to the band. Amongst her many famous conquests were all of ZZ Top, the non-drug-injesting half of KISS… and Richard Carpenter?!! Why can’t we have a whole song about her? Better yet, a “Sweet Sweet Connie Suite,” that sounds like ZZ Top meets Kiss meets the Carpenters? Instead, we’re up all night with Freddie King and we learn “poker’s his thing.” But what about Strip Poker? Surely these horndogs were up for anything. How long before an already shirtless Mark Farner lost his socks and trousers to this bawdy bluesman? And what about the hotel detective – why was he so “outasite”? Before the orgy with “four young chiquitas in Omaha” commenced, was he just there to make sure everything in the rooms was truly sanitized for Grand Funk’s protection? And when did all this carnal knowledge turn Mark Farner into a Christian rocker? Honestly, there are more unsolvable mysteries here than Sasquatch and “Ode to Billy Joe” combined.1974: '(You're) Having My Baby' by Paul Anka and Odia Coates
Paul Anka gained unwanted notoriety in 2004 when a secret recording of him chewing out his band for wearing t-shirts onstage was widely circulated on the Internet. Sample rants: “I have a new philosophy. I don’t care if it’s Jesus Christ. I’m the only important one on that stage!” Before that, we had circa 1974 Paul Anka, a man who managed to make himself the center of attention … during the birthing process! “The seed inside you, do you feel it growing?” he asks, and you’re almost waiting for him to say, “That was me me me! I put it there!” After Anka got crucified by women’s groups for singing, she was having his baby, and Ms. Magazine named him their "Male Chauvinistic Pig of the Year." Anka acted quickly against the backlash and started singing “You’re Having Our Baby.” When the woman in love was facing morning sickness and prenatal depression (and no longer loving what love was doing to her), I can’t help but feel that Anka was already reading her and her midwife the riot act. “I’m in my form right now. If you guys are not going to come up and support me with the enthusiasm I’ve got for it, it ain’t gonna work. Because you’re all replaceable. D’you all like your jobs? D’you want your jobs? Do you?” If it turned out to be a cesarean birth, it would’ve helped to have latter-day Anka present, a guy who can “slice like a fucking hammer!”1975: 'Chevy Van' by Sammy Johns
This song promised listeners a fantasy begging for a corporate tie-in; if you pick up a hitch-hiking hippie chick and she falls asleep along the way, when she wakes up, almost as if by a post-hypnotic suggestion, she’s gonna take you by the hand and love you in your Chevy Van. Then you can drop her off barefoot in some Podunk town and never have to see her again. Though they never did a study on how many serial killers this song inspired, it was reported that van sales increased significantly the next year but because of the promise of a hand job implied by the lyric “she took me by the hand,” you wonder how many more manual Chevy vans sold compared to automatic ones the following year.1976: 'Muskrat Love' by The Captain and Tennille
Because of this song, somewhere on the dark web, furry-loving freakazoids are pleasuring themselves to a Susie and Sam OnlyFans page. Before the Captain and Tennille got their paws on this muskrat Muzak, it was released as a single in 1973, and its relative chart failure nearly brought down America the group. It would take a few more decades to bring down America, the country, but a tolerance for bacon and cheese-chewing rodents was not one of the deciding factors.1977: 'You Light Up My Life' by Debbie Boone and 'Float On' by The Floaters
I couldn’t decide which summer hit was hornier:1. A virgin daughter of Pat Boone who insists that this is a love song to God, but then sings “It can’t be wrong when it feels right.” My Catholicism is a little rusty, but isn’t there also a Commandment against addressing the Lord with “Hey, I love you”?
2. The astrological come-ons of Ralph, Charles, Paul and Larry. Each of the Floaters has a decidedly low bar about what qualities a woman must possess to take him to Loveland (e.g., “a woman who’s quiet,” “a woman who can hold her own”). Paul (a Leo if you didn’t already know) says he likes all women of the world because “...to me all women are wild flowers, and if you understand what I'm sayin’…” Errr, no comprende, Paul!
The Floater with the hardest screening process is Cancer-ous Larry, who says, "I like a woman that loves everything and everybody." Because of this stipulation, he’s permanently benched, wondering what every lady could possibly have against Ralph, Paul and Charles. And pineapple on pizza.
1978: 'Hot Blooded' by Foreigner
Shouldn’t Lou Gramm be contacting his medical provider with a fever of 103 and not out trying to haggle with a potential underage female fan like she’s a Moroccan street merchant? “Come on, baby, do you do more than dance?” What’s next? Kicking her tires? What does he have to do to get this strumpet into second gear? When you’re a rock star (and we’ve already examined “We’re an American Band”), hot-to-trot women will come to you. Why is this Foreigner having to work so hard, putting his hotel key in her hand, figuring out where they should meet, advising her on how to ditch her partner? And realistically, what’s he incentive to participate in what will be uneasy sex with a contagious guy suffering from discomfort, chills and nausea? Plus, he keeps advising her to “check it and see,” as if he’s lying about his temperature.1979: 'My Sharona' and 'Good Girls Don’t' by the Knack
The horniest one-two punch of any summer. In this publication, to this writer in 1994, Doug Fieger of the Knack explained, “The lyrics that I wrote, at least for that first album, were based on my remembered adolescence, and the way I remembered 14-year-old boys desiring girls.” Even so, then-25-year-old Fieger was lusting after a real-life 17-year-old girl named Sharona, so his teen remembrances were not as remote as Bob Seger’s creaky ruminations on youth. “My Sharona” zoomed to number one, the first indication that rock could push disco off the airwaves, at least for four minutes and 52 seconds.Less fondly remembered was the follow-up, where Fieger is no longer being kept at arm’s length by a girl, allowing the inner 14-year-old to blossom into a dirty old letch. Two lines were re-recorded for a clean version to appease Top 40 radio: “wishing you could get inside her pants" became "wishing she was givin' you a chance,” and the one where he offers the girl seating accommodations on his face became “til she puts you in your place.” By 1980, critics were already assuming a “Knuke the Knack” stance and ready to send out pedophile alerts for their next album, “…but the little girls understand.”
And the Eighties is where we will pick up next time, when we swapped out deadly sins to leave lust and give greed a chance.
