Los Angeles — Is romance dead, or has how it comes off the tongue changed? In recent years artists have abandoned the traditional approach to lyricism, supplanting abstracted imagery and symbolism for overt, to-the-point assertions. Nowhere is this more apparent than the love song, whose age-old formula has been refactored from innocent overtures and contemplations on the life-long covenant between lovers, to bawdy explorations of rhetorical implications like “what that butt do?”
One could argue that, to a certain extent, love songs have always been about sex. Certainly the two have co-existed and often intertwined dating back as early as the 1930’s. Songs like “Get ‘Em From The Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)” (1935) by Lil Johnson and “Baby Let Me Bang Your Box” (1954) by The Toppers put a spotlight on sexuality, though these were often cleverly veiled behind double-ententes. However, never before in music history have lyricists been as bold and uncompromising about their commitment to butt stuff as they are today.
Take these examples from recently released songs:
- “Fill me up with your love / Your long, wet, pink love.”
- “Girl only you make my heart go bump / I wanna stick this tongue in your rump.”
- “Give a butt-hug to her butt-rug / I don’t need no soap / Put a butt-plug in her butt-mug / Then I shoot my rope.”
- I’m in love with her ass [her ass] / I make love with her ass [her ass].”
While some critics have lambasted this transition away from traditional expressions of devotion as soulless, many more applaud artists on their honesty. “We have to understand music through the generation and cultural moment that produced it,” renowned producer and butt-lover Rick Rubin told reporters from his bathtub. “Just like how The Beatles were influenced by and themselves reinforced the psychedelia of the ‘60s, so too are modern artists groping at the a means to define the current ass-eating moment of today. We can’t put a microphone on stage and then fault the art that musicians sing into it.”
