Top 10: Songs about sex workers

Who doesn’t love a bit of filth with their harmonies? How can anyone resist the temptations of sexual suggestion and lurid details of carnal activities? Well, Craig Stephen loves a bit of how’s your father, especially if it involves a strumpet or a gigolo. He’s back with another top 10, specifically looking at songs about sex workers. And just to prove he’s still alive, the site’s lazy-arse editor can’t resist adding an 11th in the form of a genuine red light Kiwi ska-punk classic:

Tubeway Army - Are ‘Friends’ Electric? (1979)

Number one in the UK for weeks, and yet few people would have sussed out what it was actually about, so here’s Gary Numan, the Tory-loving pilot, telling all to a journalist … “the lyrics came from short stories I'd written about what London would be like in 30 years. These machines - "friends" - come to the door. They supply services of various kinds, but your neighbours never know what they really are since they look human. The one in the song is a prostitute, hence the inverted commas. It was released in May 1979 and sold a million copies. I had a No 1 single with a song about a robot prostitute and no one knew.”

Cole Porter - Love For Sale (1930)

In the very conservative context of 1930s America, a white singer singing about her life as a prostitute was too much for many. After all, 1930 was the year Hollywood introduced the Hays Code which forbade the use of profanity and obscenity. ‘Love For Sale’ was labelled as "in bad taste" by one newspaper and radio stations kept a wide berth. So, to try to defuse the moral outrage, singer Kathryn Crawford was replaced by Elizabeth Welch, an African-American singer. It was later covered by Shirley Bassey, Boney M, Elvis Costello, and Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett for a duet.

Blondie - Call Me (1980)

The theme song from the film American Gigolo starring Richard Gere is presented from the point of view of a male escort, despite being sung by Debbie Harry. The Blondie star suggestively purrs for the listener to call her anytime and issues an invitation to call "day or night" because "I'll never get enough". ‘Call Me’ was composed by Italian disco producer Giorgio Moroder and contained more than a tinge of electronica. Given Blondie’s huge popularity at the time as they successfully bridged punk, new wave and pop, it was inevitably a worldwide hit and was named in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

 Ramones - 53rd & 3rd (1977)

A gay hustler stands alone on a street corner in New York unsuccessfully trying to earn some cash by turning tricks. When a macho man Vietnam Green Beret challenges him, the hustler slips out his weapon and does the dirty deed. “Then I took out my razor blade/Then I did what God forbade/Now the cops are after me/But I proved that I'm no sissy.” The song references what was once a popular hangout for male prostitution, and where Dee Dee Ramone tried to do business before joining the band. It appears on their much-hailed debut album Ramones.

Queen - Killer Queen (1974)

Queen’s first worldwide hit was about a woman who we learn in the first verse likes the luxuries of life: “She keeps Moët et Chandon/In her pretty cabinet/ ‘Let them eat cake’, she says/Just like Marie Antoinette.” Listening further, you can deduce that the lady in question serves pleasure to the men in high places. “Drop of a hat, she's as willing as/Playful as a pussycat.” 

Sharon O’Neill - Maxine (1983)

It probably said something of New Zealand of the time that there were two versions of the video: one for Kiwi eyes, one for Australians. The New Zealand video is tame and lame, focusing on O’Neill with her Bonnie Tyler-style hair singing along to the song. The one for the Aussie audiences is far more gritty, beginning with ‘Maxine’ out on the streets looking for business. We then see O’Neill pleading with her friend to give it all up, but it’s all in vain. Yes, MOR pop can sometimes tell a good story.

Morrissey - Piccadilly Palare (1990)

He’d later turn to boxing and other working class pursuits but in 1990 Morrissey was singing about male prostitution. “On the rack I was/Easy meat, and a reasonably good buy.” The title is a play on the slang term polari which was first used by male prostitutes in the 19th century and then taken up in the 1960s to disguise activities which were illegal in the UK until 1967. Apparently, Morrissey didn’t particularly like the song and reviewers weren’t entirely sure either. It was the fifth of five singles that were released outside of a studio album, and with ‘November Spawned a Monster’, also issued in 1990, it seemed that a studio album then would’ve been a cruel trick played on his fans.

 The Clash - Janie Jones (1977)

Despite the title, this track from The Clash’s incendiary eponymous debut album is more about an office worker who, having had a gutsful of his tedious job, jumps in his car and heads off to a brothel. Which is where Ms Jones comes in. Janie Jones was a one-time singer, who in the 60s had a minor hit with 'Witches Brew', became infamous for hosting sex parties at her home during the 1970s, and was jailed for ‘controlling prostitutes’.

Goodbye Mr MacKenzie - The Rattler (1989)

I don’t regret giving away records that I felt I didn’t need any more except for one - Good Deeds And Dirty Rags, the debut album by this Edinburgh band. Admittedly it was a mixed bag but it is still worth having for the likes of ‘The Rattler’ and ‘Goodwill City’. The former was released as a single in 1986. It didn’t go anywhere and was reissued three years later. However, it was rarely played on radio then due to it being about a male prostitute and description of what is euphemistically dubbed a sex act.

The Police - Roxanne (1978)

Sting was inspired to write this after seeing working girls operate outside of his hotel room in Paris while on tour. It revolves around a man who falls in love with the eponymous street worker. The narrator attempts to persuade her to give up her work, hence the lyrics: “Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light/Those days are over/You don't have to sell your body to the night.”

Editor’s Choice: Instigators - Hope She’s Alright (1982)

Not to be confused with the 1980s English anarcho-punk band of the same name, these Instigators won Auckland’s ‘battle of the bands’ title in 1981 before hitting the road and going on to enthrall local pub audiences for the best part of the next two years. Along the way, amongst other great tunes, they released a fine ska cover of ‘The Israelites’, followed by this brilliant slice of urgent punk rock. Released on Ripper Records, ‘Hope She’s Alright’ tells the story of a missing prostitute … check it out here:

Classic Album Review: Public Image Ltd - First Issue (1978)

Craig Stephen on a game-changing post-punk classic ... 

Most commentators head straight to Metal Box for the definitive PiL album. But I’ve always had a sweet spot for their coruscating and brilliant debut. Few contemporary bands ever matched it, and the Gang of Four are likely their only rivals for any post-punk accolades.

 The remarkable thing about First Issue is that its release in December of 1978 came just under a year after the infamous implosion of the Sex Pistols at the Wonderland in San Francisco. That chaotic gig was swiftly followed by acrimony and the band splitting up. Bassist Sid Vicious went on his own tragic path, drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones went in search of notorious crook Ronnie Biggs and singer Johnny Rotten renamed himself John Lydon and did a startling volte face to ditch the screaming volatility of punk for what would become the thoughtful confrontation of post-punk.

He recruited childhood friend Jah Wobble on bass, Keith Levene, the short-lived ex-guitarist of The Clash, and Canadian drummer Jim Walker. They would experiment in dub music, African rhythms and the avant garde. This would not be Sex Pistols MK II or another punk band.

First Issue begins with a statement of intent in the shape of the nine-minute ‘Theme’. The now John Lydon is laughing. Yes, laughing as he sings “Now I understand” to Walker’s incessant drum bashing and Jah Wobble’s insane basslines. Lydon’s vocal style is unmistakable but it’s not at the forefront, in fact you have to stretch your eardrum’s capabilities to capture his words amid the glorious din.

‘Religion’ comes in two parts, initially with Lydon on his own in spoken word format followed by the abrasive and much longer band version. The lyrics are the same, the approaches are very different. It was written on the Sex Pistols’ fateful tour of America where the then Rotten saw how much religion was embedded into the national culture. The other band members and manager Malcolm McLaren didn’t want a bar of it even after having a pop at that venerable institution, the British monarchy in the Pistols’ crowning moment ‘God Save the Queen’.

These lyrics made them look the other way: “This is religion and Jesus Christ/This is religion, cheaply priced/This is bibles full of libel/This is sin in eternal hymn/This is what they've done/This is your religion.”

The final track on the first side, ‘Annalisa’, is equally joyless and another prod at religion, based as it is on a real life story of a misguided exorcism in Germany that went tragically wrong.

The very name Public Image is Lydon’s riposte to his perceived ill-treatment at the hands of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the other band members, and in particular how he felt they viewed him as the image-maker, not the songwriter or the artist.

The eponymous debut single, which came out three months ahead of the album, reads like a bitter break-up letter: “What you wanted was never made clear/Behind the image was ignorance and fear/You hide behind this public machine/Still follow the same old scheme.”

It's actually the most accessible track on the album and sold enough to warrant a place in the British top 10.

After it comes ‘Low Life’, which could be another attack on McLaren though various other names have also been banded around. And it’s possible that Lydon has more than one character in mind when he wrote it.  This “bourgeois anarchist” is an “ego-maniac traitor … ignorant selfish”.

This is as good as it gets for First Issue … ‘Attack’ is three-minutes of infantile critiques of his former band members (“All our deals confiscated/Legaling with magistrate”) while ‘Fodderstompf’ is so moronic and pointless that Lydon was moved to dismiss it. It sounds like it was a studio joke lasting seven minutes and 40 seconds that somehow ended up concluding the album, presumably with nothing else in the can to use.

First Issue wasn’t to everyone’s taste – some reviewers panned it, a court in Malta ordered it be removed from stores because of the lyrics to ‘Religion’, and it was considered too uncommercial for release in the United States.

When it was reissued, a bonus disk included the B-side to Public Image, ‘Cowboy Song’, and an unedited 56-minute radio interview Lydon did with the BBC in 1978 which was never aired because of his less than idolatry attitude towards certain stars. One of those was BBC TV’s own Jimmy Savile – outed after his death as a paedophile, and Lydon hinted that he knew about Savile’s sick tendencies.