"Sexual Healing" - Classic or dud?

Plus, there is the singing. Oh yeah.

Nothing against the people here who listen to this as a booty call song. I mean, I've never slept with you.

(Against his better judgement, he presses send...)

As a suburban white boy weaned on the Beatles and Gordon Lightfoot, I was grossitated by its clumsy sexual forthrightness, but it fascinated me, too. I couldn't quit listening, and it came to be one of those songs I hoped to hear whenever I turned on the radio. It's remained a personal favorite for twenty-some years.

Heard it a couple years ago, for the first time in AGES, and was struck by how perfectly in tune with its time it sounded. Listening to it now, in the early twenty-first century, it sounds like a perfect 80s period piece. Sadly, I can no longer hear in it the timeless strangeness I perceived as a kid.

But it still rules. I love the totally dishonest conflation of selfish sexual need with something nearly spiritual. Marvin's coming straight out and saying not only that he requires booty, but that he's intentionally using it to distract himself from life-pain. His entreaty has nothing to do with "her" specifically. It's all about him: his anguish, his need, his eventual consolation.

Yeah, sure, but it all sounds like pure, sweet love. Nice trick...

"You're my medicine, open up and let me in"

"the idea of turning sex into something dark and violent and territorial into something soft and sweet and loving"

Should read:

the idea of turning sex FROM something dark and violent and territorial into something soft and sweet and loving

Interesting anecdote about the song's origins, by the way...

(sorry: couldn't resist)

The Freemasons mix of the Alibi Vs Rockefelller version > the original. I can only imagine if they had mixed the original song...

wasn't the critical reception at the time to this song & album pretty lukewarm? i seem to remember that being the case. it was ok back in the day, sort of appropriate background music for the dive bars i was frequenting then (underage drinking ahoy), but it was never one of his better songs.

The single was #2 and album was #8 on P&J, so not really.

hmmmm, well that's what happens when you're a teenage alkie (bad memory)

No-one likes this song! They like the Tr-808! The whole song is just a showcase for a drum machine!

And as for the lyrics, the whole thing hangs on a metaphor equating surgery with sexual intercourse - that's fine, that is perfectly logical - and yet he never once avails himself of the opportunity to use the word 'scalpel'. WHY NOT?? For this reason, 'Sexual Healing' is too much, and yet, in a more profoundly disappointing way, not nearly enough. The only healing he's going to get is the calming ministrations of mother fist and her five daughters.

No one wants to hear the word "scalpel" when they're about to start fucking unless they are also listening for "to your breasts" and "sautee until crispy".

Oh man, I was just down in the cafeteria getting a cup of coffee. The cashier is this v. v. pretty Southeast Asian woman about my age who is sorta flirty with me when I come in. I’m 3 people back in line when Sexual Healing comes on the radio! So I’m thinking to myself “that might be kinda an awkward song considering that most everybody in here is over 50.” Right then, a middle-aged black lady who was behind me in line, starts singing along under her breath and doinging a very slight hip-thrusting dance. It was a pretty awesome moment.

And then you hit it.

1) this is a great song, and would still be a great song without the 808

2) apparently hot 8 brass band's version became something of a minor hit in the uk/europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXcad_Qx7aM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s75WIkQBYzk

And then you hit it.

No, then I paid for my coffee and she was like "do you have 3 pennies" and I said "I'm sorry, I forgot."

Dunno if i'd say it was a "hit" exactly but i heard a few times on the radio and it seems to have become something of a cult favourite. Whatever, it's a fantastic version.

when i used to go see them at bean brothers in new orleans around '03/'04, they would always end the night with this tune and the whole club would be a big sing-along

This brings me back to Tuesday nights at the Maple Leaf watching Rebirth tear it up. So much fun. Thanks for the link.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/pictures/l/14/37/TOBF-5030.jpg

$240 Worth Of Pudding

We had the 240.00.. we had to have the pudding. Mister Bochet??! Let's get a good shot of this pudding.. now that is the kind of pudding that only $240 can buy.

Almost forgot to mention..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpuUemDBz-8

amazing, lush song

"Baby, I got sick this morning" is a great hidden line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZyqmEEpIS8

For curiosity's sake I read the Harvard Crimson column linked up top that prompted this thread. Apparently it was written by Spotify "digital alchemist"/Pazz & Jop poll runner/sometime ILXor Gl3nn McD0nald. The column is a run down of reflections on the original Motown versions of "The Tracks of My Tears," "Stop! In the Name of Love," "I Can't Help Myself," and "Tears of a Clown," among others. "Original Motown versions" because at the time he apparently only knew most of these tunes from covers by 1980s UK bands. How could this be? Where is he from? Did he only listen to college rock radio from the time he was 4 years old or something? Is he from England, and if so, had Motown completely evaporated from the airwaves there by the early eighties?

I guess I just assume that most people in the States have at least a passing familiarity with 60s Motown - most people between about 30 and 65 years old in 2015, anyway. So the aforementioned article read very strangely for me.

When I get that feeling
I get hexual ceiling pic.twitter.com/eiu4moNtpN

— Friz Frizzle (@FrizFrizzle) September 26, 2021