If there’s one things male singers love, it’s asking fictional sex workers questions. What’s your name? Where are you going? What are you doing later tonight? Did you know you don’t have to put on the red light? Why do you do your job? Is it for money? Can I come over later? Am I different from all the other guys you know? Why are you wearing so much makeup? Why are you crying? Why aren’t you crying? Can I get a discount? Why are you walking away from me so fast?
Song: “What Do You Do For Money?”
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Songwriter: AC/DC
Tell us about her, stud: “Never gonna give it for free/ Your apartment with a view on the finest avenue/ Looking at your beat on the street/ You’re always pushing, shoving/ Satisfied with nothing”
What does he want to know?: “You make me wonder/ Yes I wonder, I wonder/ Honey, what do you do for money?/ Where do you get your kicks?”
Answer: She’s a sex worker. It seemed like you understood that fairly well in the verse, but things got shaky around the chorus.
Song: “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked”
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Songwriter: Cage The Elephant
Tell us about her, stud: “She said I never seen a man who looked so all alone/ Oh, could you use a little company?/ If you pay the right price your evening will be nice/ You can go and send me on my way”
What does he want to know?: “I said you’re such a sweet young thing/ Why do you do this to yourself?”
Answer: I don’t know, but that seems like a weird first question to ask someone. If I had to guess, I would say she does it for the flexible schedule and the financial renumeration.
Song: “What Would You Do”
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Songwriter: City High
Tell us about her, stud: “Saturday night I was at this real wild party/ they had the liquor overflowing the cup/ about 5 or 6 strippers trying to work for a buck/ and I took one girl outside with me/ her name was Lonni, she went to junior high with me”
What does he want to know?: “I said, Why you up in there dancing for cash?/ I guess a whole lot’s changed since I saw you last”
Answer: Most people change after junior high school; this is not unusual.
Song: “Wrong Way”
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Songwriter: Sublime
Tell us about her, stud: “The only family that she’s ever had/ Is her seven horny brothers and a drunk-ass dad/ He needed money so he put her on the street/ Everything was going fine until the day she met me”
What does he want to know?: “Happy, are you sad?/ Wanna shoot your dad?/ I’ll do anything I can/ It’s the wrong way”
Answer: I don’t know! Happiness is fairly subjective and conditional.
Song: “Family Man”
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Songwriter: Hall & Oates
Tell us about her, stud: “She had a sulky smile/ She took her standard pose
As she presented herself/ She had sultry eyes/ She made it perfectly plain/ That she was his for a price”
What does he want to know?: “But he said, leave me alone/ I’m a family man/ And my bark is much worse/ Than my bite/ He said, leave me alone/ I’m a family man/ But if you push me too far I just might”
Answer: I mean, the question’s implied, but he pretty much wants to shoot for plausible ethical deniability and get her to ‘make’ him have sex with her, which she may or may not be interested in doing.
Song: “When The Sun Goes Down”
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Songwriter: Arctic Monkeys
Tell us about her, stud: “I wonder what went wrong/ So that she had to roam the streets/ She don’t do major credit cards/ I doubt she does receipts/ It’s all not quite legitimate”
What does he want to know?: “I said, ‘Who’s that girl there?’”
Answer: Ask her yourself, and save the ‘what went wrong’ questions for your journal.
Tags: dudes love asking questions, idk why those weird parenthesis are there, music, sex work, singers
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I heard a jazz version of ‘Roxanne’ on the radio once which was great because then I didn’t have to bother with the lyrics (ugh lyrics generally, and in that case in particular). Anyone know where to find it, actually?
Wrong or right, but I love the version of Roxanne from Moulin Rouge. (Sorry – doesn’t even come close to answering your question)
that is the obviously superior version.
Oh yeah that’s pretty great, too.
“RoooooaaaAWAWAWWWKKSKSXXXXANNE!”
I had managed to forget that “What Would You Do?” existed. And now it’s all come rushing back and I remember all the lyrics and I’ll just be over here in the corner hating everything.
You’re only a stripper/prostitute because of your lack of moral fiber and go get’em attitude.
I always remember that I actively sang that song out loud as a 13 year old without quite knowing what most of it meant, never mind knowing what “smoking rock” was.
I went to a evangelical Christian camp the summer that song was popular. We were forbidden from singing it. And I was juuuust about old enough to start figuring out what the chorus meant but young enough to convince myself that NO IT DEFINITELY MEANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT BECAUSE IT WOULD BE TOO EMBARRASSING TO SING ABOUT *whispers* s-e-x…
girl yesssss never mind that he conflates strippers WITH prostitutes but is at a party where these striprostitutes have been HIRED and then has the fucking GALL to judge her for BEING a striprostitute. Her answer to “why do you do this” should be “Because you & your mates fuckin paid me to.”
The guy in What Would You Do is the worst. Stop being such a judgemental arsehole, seriously!
Are there any current or former sex workers here? If so, please check out my friend’s Tumblr post. She’s a former sex worker doing dissertation research on the Internet and the U.S. sex industry for her PhD in Sociology. Please click the link to go to her Tumblr post with her contact info. Thanks!
Ok City High is my jam though
I always enjoyed their cautionary tale about statutory rape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqy1aMxDf9Y&f…
I like that Arctic Monkeys song when it’s remixed with the Killers “Somebody Told Me.”
It becomes “Scumbody Told Me,” and it’s great: http://grooveshark.com/s/Scumbody+Told+Me/iykyu?s…
The Who, Trick of the Light. Entwistle song!
Was I all right?/Did I take you to the height of ecstasy?
But Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked answers the question in the chorus!
Clearly the lady is doing these things to herself because money does not grow on trees, she has bills to pay and mouths to feed, and food and bills (like all things in the world) are not free.
I’m not sure I ever realized that that song was about a prostitute (to be fair I think I know the chorus of the song). I think I thought it was about criminials in general, possibly drug dealers (I assume every song is about drugs/drug dealers)
It has several verses, one about a prostitute, one about a guy mugging the singer, and I can’t remember the rest? So you’re not wrong.
I assume every song is about prostitutes, because men are fucking fascinated by sex workers. Maybe if they ‘understand’ them they’ll ‘understand’ that the ladies just really really love it!
See I always liked Wrong Way because I thought it was about him trying to “save” her and she leaves the streets but then ditches him for something better. She saves herself. Was I totally misunderstanding that all these years?
My Vegas Showgirl friend says guys asked her these same dumb questions too. And she told then being a showgirl was morally better than working on Wall Street. Also, she paid her tuition at UNLV and now has a law degree.
No, you must be wrong. She must have done it because she has low self-esteem and the love of the right man will redeem her and he will be her savior who gets all the good sex from now on.
“Let me save you from yourself and sin. Because only I know the path of righteousness.”
Oh please, then why are you in Vegas talking to Showgirls?
To save them. He’s like Dostoevsky in a way.
How could you skip Maiden’s Charlotte Duology? Concern trolling with rhythm guitars!
Not limited to English-speaking singers…Le Sigh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eth9ICnlIu4
I imagine the girl with the broken smile’s answer to the question “would you like to stay awhile?” is “yeah, can I use your bathroom?”
Oh yeah that's pretty great, too.
Rhyming fictional responses to all the stupid questions listed above (in no particular order):
Get away from me unless you know this shit ain’t free.
Tell me how to spend my day? You gonna pay.
Offering up advice? Just buy a slice…of me.
Thanks for the concern. Hope you’ve got money to burn.
I had absolutely no idea that’s what Family Man was about. I always thought it was about being goaded into a fight in front of one’s children because I am terrible at subtleties.
I just remembered that William Gladstone was very much into “saving” prostitutes.
Are those dreams or are those prayers?
Also “Worked Up So Sexual” by The Faint. A song which I actually enjoy but which fits into this pattern pretty well. “It is a job/ It pays a lot/ It isn’t hurting anyone/ But what’s it like to get these guys worked up so sexual?”
I’m kind of new to The Toast/a casual reader so it’s possible this already exists here or elsewhere, but could we get some of this action in an article about how Drake/other male artists are obsessed with strippers and telling them they look sad/they are beautiful/etc.?