ABSTRACT
Popular music and sex have gone together like a horse and carriage ever since the days of the horse and carriage. Early in the 20th century, jazz and blues were noted (and vehemently criticized) for the sexual intensity of both their music and lyrics. (“You can’t keep a good man down,” Mamie Smith sang in an early blues song, and her meaning was not lost on her listeners.) In the 1950s, jazz and blues gave way to rock and roll, and the explosive sexuality of Elvis, Little Richard, and others. From the 1960s to the present, sexual themes have increasingly permeated popular music (Christenson & Roberts, 1998), in genres ranging from ballads to rock to rap. The portrayal of sexuality in popular music has become less subtle, more explicit; by the 1980s, George Michael was singing “I Want Your Sex,” and we had moved a long way from the subtlety and playfulness of jazz and blues.
