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: Gary Numan - Living Ornaments '79 (1981)

The news last week that Gary Numan was planning to play a one-off show at Auckland’s Studio (bar) this coming May was greeted with much excitement by Kiwi fans of the synthpop genre. I’m not so sure the promotional claim that Numan is the “godfather of electronic music” is particularly accurate (Kraftwerk, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, et al ... anyone?) but there’s no doubt he remains a significant draw for nostalgia freaks in this part of the world. Even as recently as a few years back I found myself rather obsessed with his Living Ornaments series of live albums – made during his commercial peak. Here’s a review I wrote at the time for the first album of the series, Living Ornaments ’79 ...

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Living Ornaments ’79 features Gary Numan as found in September 1979, live at the Hammersmith Odeon; part android, part voyeur into the future, part neo-classical posh git … and sometime pilot …

The album captures Numan at the start of what might be called his peak period as an artist – no longer operating under the Tubeway Army banner, and undertaking a serious assault on the UK singles chart, something that would continue well into 1980 and, albeit with ever diminishing returns, well beyond.

 

In 1979, Numan was bold, brash, and relevant; a genuine emerging commercial force on a fast expanding new wave/synth scene. Living Ornaments represents something of a seminal snapshot of that moment in time, but it’s also more than that – it is an album to prove that there was more to Gary Numan than merely hit singles, and in a “live” setting we see a human Numan (sorry! - Ed) rather than the robotic and distant, dare I say it – ornamental – individual, as characterised by marketing/branding imagery at the time. Though in saying that, the live aspect means the structure and pace (especially) of several tracks are notably different from their studio equivalents.

This is a 21-track two-disc set, and disc one opens with a dramatic extended intro, which then morphs into the instrumental ‘Airlane’ (the opener from Numan’s The Pleasure Principle album of the same year). Numan eventually sings – or rather ironically, finally “connects” with his audience – on ‘Me! I Disconnect From You’, before we’re launched into his biggest hit of the year, ‘Cars’.

‘Random’ and ‘We Are So Fragile’ are other highlights from the first set, but generally the second disc shades the first in terms of overall quality, opening with a superb version of early single ‘Bombers’ before the plain weird ‘Remember I Was Vapour’ leads us to Numan’s most famous cover, ‘On Broadway’, complete with what appears to be an electric violin solo.  

I’m not sure whether the playlist on the album is in the exact order the tracks rolled out on the night, but it strikes me that the climax to disc two would represent as strong a finale to a live performance as you’ll ever get from Numan – ‘Down In The Park’ followed by an uptempo ‘My Shadow In Vain’, the chunky slabs of beefy synth that make up ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’, and the under-rated closer, ‘Tracks’.

 

What we don’t get are versions of the two hit singles that dissected The Pleasure Principle and its follow-up album, Telekon – ‘We Are Glass’ and ‘I Die You Die’ – however these can be found on this album’s companion release, Living Ornaments ’80. (There is also a Living Ornaments ’81 for completists – Numan was nothing if not pedantic and organised).

Gary Numan has endured many professional and personal ups and downs during his 35-year recording career. A few of Numan’s mid-to-late Eighties and Nineties incarnations were cruelly mocked and parodied beyond all rationale or reason – given his wider influence and the eventual critical appreciation of his talents. But there is no question that this album demonstrates everything that was good in the first place and it has to rate as one of his genuine highs.

This is not the best quality clip, but here’s Gary Numan on the night in question …