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.

Album Review: Haiku Redo – Disco Summer (2025)

As I read through the Failsafe Records promo blurb for the Auckland-based Haiku Redo’s debut album Disco Summer, I’m reminded of the ancient proverb “mighty oaks from little acorns grow”.

The little acorns, in this instance, are a bunch of demo recordings from the late 90s, made by drummer and songsmith Craig Horne and his bass playing partner, Barbara Morgan. The mighty oak, if you will (hey, just go with it), is Disco Summer itself.

The demos were recorded during a period when both Horne and Morgan were preoccupied elsewhere, working alongside Kiwi pop chameleon Andrew Fagan (The Mockers), as members of the band Lig. The shelved demos never really went anywhere, but they did catch the ear of Failsafe Records guru Rob Mayes, and roughly a quarter of a century later, they were the remote catalyst for a brand-new album release.

 The timeline isn’t totally clear for me, but at some stage in the Haiku Redo backstory there was a suggestion that those demos be tidied or spruced up for wider consumption and a release on Failsafe. Horne decided he wanted to do a little bit more than that, and he wound up writing a whole bunch of new tunes. Those new tunes, plus one solitary original demo, became Disco Summer.

Joined by another former Lig associate, guitarist Kevin Moody, plus fellow guitarist Dianne Swann (The BADS, Julie Dolphin, many others), Horne and Morgan formed Haiku Redo, and the band released a series of catchy digital singles across 2024 ahead of Disco Summer’s more recent release.

All of the advance singles feature on the album itself, with the best of those for me being ‘Thinking of You’ which opens Disco Summer and almost works as a statement of intent – it is tight, melodic, and full of exactly the sort of guitar-led goodness most of us readily associate with Failsafe and indie rock in general.

Horne writes well. For the most part these songs are clever and well-crafted low key indie pop gems, with hooks aplenty, and there’s a deceptively strong element of humour threaded into the lyrics of many of the twelve tracks on offer (‘My Sisters Name’, ‘Fleetwood Mac Cover’).

The band can do slow and light (the title track, plus ‘It’s Just Too Long’) or they can do fast and heavy (‘Radio 1’, ‘Change is the Only Certainty’), but the overriding sense I get listening to Disco Summer is that this is a group of musicians who know what they’re about and what they want to achieve. A sense that they’ve played together a lot and enjoy that experience. I guess, also, their past connection from as far back as two decades ago would tend to support that notion. It all feels quite effortless.

The final track ‘Fleetwood Mac Cover’ might feel like a belated add-on at first, an irreverent lightweight novelty track perhaps, but it becomes quite a charmer when afforded the familiarity of a couple of listens. It isn’t, naturally, a Fleetwood Mac cover, rather it scoffs at the idea of performing one, and it’s a pretty cool way to close out the album.

You can pick up a copy of Disco Summer at Haiku Redo’s Bandcamp page (here).

 

Top 10: Songs about space travel and aliens

Here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it: make a list of the best songs about space travel, aliens and giant monsters from space, without mentioning either that bloody song by Bowie or that effin song by Elton John. Sure thing, Ed.

10 of them? … nah, let’s make it an OCD-defying 11.

The B-52s: Planet Claire (1979)

From their esoteric but brilliant self-titled debut is a song about a mysterious woman who has just arrived on Earth. “Planet Claire has pink air/All the trees are red/No one ever dies there/No one has a head.”

Released as a single in 1979, it failed to sparkle in the commercial world, partly, or even wholly, due to the nearly two-minutes of instrumentation before the lyrics kick in. Radio DJs were never going to be enticed by that. The Foo Fighters have been known to do a heavier live version.

Radiohead: Subterranean Homesick Alien (1997)

Radiohead’s finest album is definitely subjective, but for myself, you can’t go beyond their superb OK Computer, from where ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ can be found. The title is a play on Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, one of the great observations of the 1960s counterculture. But there’s no similarities in the slightest between them.

Rather, Thom Yorke sings of isolation and wishes that an alien colony can take him away just so he could be a silent observer instead of an active participant in the game of life.

 Kraftwerk: Spacelab (1978)

A star turn on the Man Machine album, ‘Spacelab’ was performed by Kraftwerk with an astronaut in-orbit live in 2018. The collaboration, with German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who was on the International Space Station, closed out Kraftwerk's set at the Jazz Open Festival in Stuttgart.

With Kraftwerk co-founder Ralf Hütter, Gerst played the robo-emotional melody from the song. The time lag made for a few hiccups, but few in the audience were caring.

The Pixies: Motorway to Roswell (1991)

In 1947 debris from a military ballon crash in New Mexico led to various suggestions and rumours that it was a space craft and aliens on board were taken into a US military facility in Roswell. The accident has spurned countless TV series and movies. Pixies singer Frank Black is fascinated by aliens and space and wondered if the visitor(s) “ended up in army crates?/And photographs in files.” 

The Buchanan Brothers: (When You See) Those Flying Saucers (1947)

This was written shortly after Kenneth Arnold shot to global fame after claiming to have seen nine silver-coloured discs flying in unison near Mount Rainier, Washington state. Arnold even estimated their speed at being 1200 miles an hour.

‘(When You See) Those Flying Saucers’ ponders the objective of those aliens in the sky and finds a novel of way of surviving. “You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers/It may be the coming of the Judgement Day/It’s a sign there’s no doubt of the trouble that’s about/So I say my friends you’d better start to pray.”

The Byrds: Mr Spaceman (1966)

Taken from Fifth Dimension, ‘Mr Spaceman’ had surprisingly modest results with this single failing to chart in Britain. Music journalists dubbed it space-rock.

The protagonist wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a UFO in the sky. He then dreams of being taken along with the inhabitants. “Hey, Mr Spaceman/Won't you please take me along/I won't do anything wrong/Hey, Mr Spaceman/Won't you please take me along for a ride.”

Parliament: Mothership Connection (1975)

Here’s an entire album with an outer-space theme, but with black people at the core. The album's concept would form the backbone of Parliament and the sister band Funkadelic’s concert performances during the 1970s, in which a large spaceship prop known as the Mothership would be lowered onto the stage.

As well as the title track, there were songs with titles such as ‘Unfunky UFO’ and ‘Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication’. The cover featured a spaceship and the sounds were very much … out there.

Devo: Space Junk (1978)

From Devo’s 1978 debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!, generally regarded as the weirdo post-punk band’s finest hour. Even back in the 1970s the amount of discarded space craft parts was beginning to became a problem ... and in this track, it resulted in tragedy. “Well, she was walking all alone/Down the street, in the alley/Her name was Sally/I never touched her, she never saw it/When she was hit by space junk/When she was smashed by space junk/When she was killed by space junk.”

 Destroy All Monsters soundtrack (1968)

Akira Ifukube can be considered to be Japan’s equivalent to Ennio Morricone, a composer extraordinaire who has scored so many of the country’s greatest films, including several Godzilla ones. Among the best of the series of magnificently bonkers keiju movies is this classic from 1968 which features Gojira up against a series of guest opponents. This soundtrack is regarded as one of his finest and in many ways set new standards for film-scores in monster movie making. 

Pink Floyd: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (1968)

Syd Barrett played on guitar on this, which was quite an achievement in its own way as by mid-1967 he had begun acting extremely strangely and would play one chord for an entire gig – or none at all. It is said that it is the only song that the first five members of Pink Floyd played together.

Songwriter Roger Waters borrowed the lyrics from a very old book of Chinese poetry and the title was derived from a 1965 novel by science fiction writer Michael Moorcock.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers: Here Come the Martian Martians (1976)

The Modern Lovers are often included on proto-punk albums heralded as one of the many bands that were instrumental in fanning the flames of the punk movement.

Richman’s debut album Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers is light-hearted with child-like backing vocals and a curious version of ‘Amazing Grace’. ‘Here Come the Martian Martians’ is certainly in that vein following two songs entitled ‘Abominable Snowman in the Market’ and ‘Hey There Little Insect’.

Album Review: The The - Ensoulment (2024)

It’s been a very long time since a truly new studio album from Matt Johnson dropped, a quarter of a century in fact, if you cast aside esoteric soundtracks, the odd single and spoken word projects. Craig Stephen offers some thoughts on Johnson's 2024 return, Ensoulment ...  

The master of a quartet of dark but sublime albums in the 80s and 90s – namely Soul Mining, Infected, Mind Bomb and Dusk - has a lot to live up to. But the production of an album in 2024 is a remarkable feat, not merely given Johnson’s semi-retirement from the music industry, but due to an emergency throat operation he went under just four years ago. It hasn’t apparently affected his voice which sounds as ever like the narrator of a teenage thriller movie and Leonard Cohen with an English accent.

 Matt Johnson’s name is front and centre of virtually everything related to The The, but Ensoulment is a record made by a five-piece band. That group comprises guitarist Barrie Cadogan, keyboardist DC Collard, bassist James Eller, and drummer Earl Harvin. Eller and Collard are old hands having been involved with The The in the late 80s and early 90s and the five of them toured as The The in 2018.

With every The The album there is a mix of the political and the personal. And Ensoulment is no different. On ‘I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget)’, the protagonist looks back on a time that, while recent, still seems far in the distant. “The fireplace glow – the coal-tar soap/The Sunday roast – the tobacco smoke/ The jamboree bags – the penny chews/All now, disappearing from view.” It has something of a 1984 in song feel about, as fears surface about how the “machines are here to correct our thoughts” and how our dreams are now monitored and monetised.

Similarily, Johnson sings, on ‘Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave of William Blake’, of a lost London which is becoming subsumed by the charge of modernity. The city, and indeed Albion itself, is now a land where the greedy are the new gods and the people are ruled by a “dictatorship in drag” re-shaped by quiet coup d’etats.

There’s a similar thoughtline on ‘Cognitive Dissident’, an Orwellian nightmare laid bare in song in which the population is now very much controlled. “Servile, surveilled/Dumbed down, curtailed/Screengrabbed, downranked/Untagged, debanked.”

And on ‘Kissing the Ring of POTUS’, The The return to a theme developed on 1986’s Infected, of an America that is a frightening world dominator and where Britain was described as the 51^st state of the USA. Sadly, for Johnson, little if anything has changed in the global superpower game of control: “The Empire of Lies secures allies/Like a spider ties up flies/Those hand-picked parasites ruling the servile satellites/Know who they dare not criticise/A psychopathic superpower spies from the sky/Transmitting viruses into the mind's eye.”

There are also a few tracks exploring Johnson’s other fascination in life, love and romance. His lustful, depraved voice reminds me of Tom Waits but is much easier on the ear. It is a tome that is very fitting for an exploration of modern day romance on ‘Zen & The Art Of Dating’ in which one of the protagonists goes on a journey from microwave dinners made for one to “That familiar throb deep inside,” after finding a lover by swiping right. It is somewhat cringey, with lines that come across as banal and repetitive but its redeeming feature is that Johnson tells the tale so well that you are riveted by the journey into whatever it is the two protagonists after searching for, be that a long-term romance or a casual affair.

Ensoulment is performed in a variety of styles – it has elements of English folk, indie-rock, jazz and a simmering of electronica. Nothing gets out of hand, it doesn’t develop into the sort of stirring pop that was the signature tune of, say, the single ‘Heartland’ or the ‘Beat(en) Generation’. It is, not, on the other hand, a yawning descent into MOR banality. The mood is right in the middle. That’s somewhat contrary to the lyrics which, as we have seen, are arresting and challenging.

You get the sense that Johnson is at home with his band, who are both engaging in their playing manner and allowing the singer’s talent to shine.

A case therefore of welcome back, and a demand that Ensoulment can be a spur to more material without such long gaps in between.

Album Review: Blur - The Ballad of Darren (2023)

Craig Stephen on the recent-ish Blur return …

In a recent review on this site, I noted that The Libertines were no longer spiky, noisy larrikins but had matured into almost sensible chaps. Likewise, Blur are now at arms and legs length from their manic Britpop days.

It’s hardly a radical about-turn, as the mood of The Ballad of Darren is to some degree an extension of the cynicism and tales of life of a middle age quartet that permeated its predecessor, 2015’s The Magic Whip (has it really been that long?).

 The friction of a band that has seen too much of each other and has led to the period of absence remains. But it is what spurs them to some extent. And yet it’s also clear that there is immense platonic love within the band. These are brothers to all intents and that means squabbles and hugs galore.

The first thing to note about The Ballad of Darren, is the cover. A lone, skinny male swimmer in an outdoor pool without another paddler or spectator around but plenty of empty chairs including the one the lifeguard should be sat at. Behind the pool are grey skies and the threat of rain. There’s a sense of isolation and troubles ahead. 

So, what does the record say? Third track ‘Barbaric’ has elements of gothic literature: “Empty grove, winter darkness. We are taking down the scaffolds very soon. We have lost the feeling that we’d never lose. It is barbaric darling.”

As we continue through the ten tracks, some rather slow, some rousing, we discover a tone of resignation, with Damon Albarn singing about moving on from a broken relationship(s). But from the standpoint that this has all happened before. And so, there’s little point getting too depressed about it, is there?  

It's quite an adult work, not in the sense that there are words that airline pilots should never utter (though ‘St Charles Square’ begins with “I fucked up”) but of a realism that comes with reaching and extending beyond middle age. ‘The Everglades’, for example, exhibits a sense of regret that is natural when you look into the past. “Many paths I’d wish I’d taken. Many times I thought I’d break,” sings Albarn in that near monosyllabic manner he has developed over recent years. ‘Country House’ and ‘Pop Life’ seem decades ago. As, of course, they were. But just as we are wondering if the narrator is consumed by a maudlin mid-life crisis, we are informed that “And calmer days will arrive.”

Some reviewers have referenced the tortured break-up album of 13 from 1999, the album that dimmed Blur’s star, but this feels like it should have been recorded by one of Albarn’s side projects, The Good the Bad And The Queen, of which Clash bassist Paul Simonon was a member. That act, which only released two albums in more than a decade, was an art project, with the second album Merrie England an attempt to understand where the country was post-Brexit and concluding that there was little to enthuse about.

Albarn’s melodies are beautifully formed and he forms a call and response liaison with guitarist Graham Coxon that adds a little frisson to the record. The production is polished but not overdone, and the band’s chemistry is the right measure to ensure that the 36 minutes glide magnificently by. 

As I put the record back in the sleeve, I look at the cover again. And I see not a scene of desolation but of peacefulness, of the kind of solitude we all aspire to at times. The swimmer is reaching his goals. Whatever they may be.