Alina Baraz

12 Days of Girly Juice 2021: 10 Perfect Songs

Kate Sloan

Music was, as ever, a huge part of my life this year – and, as ever, I’m gathering 10 of my favorite songs into a blog post here, and writing little essays about how they made me feel as I listened to them on repeat all year long.

Originally this list was titled “10 Perfect Sex Songs,” but this year I’ve changed it to simply “10 Perfect Songs,” because the way I feel about music is just so much bigger than its applications for sex. But plenty of these are very, very sexy nonetheless.

The best way to read this post is to hit “play” on the embedded player above each song before you read about it, so you can get a sense for the vibe of the track while you read. (Trust me, these songs are gooooood.)

As always, I’ve collected these songs, along with all the previous years’ selections, into a Spotify playlist which you are welcome to check out. I hope you enjoy this year’s picks!

Daniel Bedingfield – “All Your Attention” (buy it on iTunes)

Don’t want to share you with the stars in the night / I only want you to only want me / Now, then and forever / Even jealous of the sun in your eyes / I want you looking at me, only me / I want all your attention

When I got my very first cellphone at age 13 or so – a petite silver Audiovox flip phone – one of the first things I did with it was figure out how to create custom ringtones. I remember spending hours after school painstakingly editing music files into ringtone-friendly lengths and formats, so that familiarly bright musical stings could punctuate my days. One of the very first songs I set as my ringtone was this one.

I’d been enamored with Daniel and his music for quite some time, but particularly with this song. At that age, it struck me as one of the most romantic things I’d ever heard: the narrator of the song (or, in poetry parlance, the “speaker”) is beseeching his partner/crush to let everything else in her life fall by the wayside so as to focus her entire attention on him. This spoke to me deeply at that age; I was struggling with the same desperate adolescent longing to be someone’s central focus in a romantic way, particularly since boys were not exactly flocking to date me, with my blue-bracketed braces, zitty skin, and total lack of self-confidence. I dreamed of someone being as obsessed with me one day as Bedingfield seems to be with his mystery lady in this song.

That said, like many things I enjoyed at age 13, this one barely holds up. To a modern, progressive ear, it lands as selfish, whiny, manipulative, possessive, even abusive – but under the veneer of sexy sentimentality and melodious romance. I still think it’s hot and sweet in its own way, but only when I’m able to envision it as depicting a consensual kinky relationship, rather than real-life scary obsessiveness. Love can make us want to behave in inappropriate ways at times, but that doesn’t mean we have to let those impulses move beyond the realm of thought and into the land of reality.

Bo Burnham – “Sexting” (buy it on ITunes)

I’m getting hot at just the thought of what I’d do to you / ‘Cause in my head, I’m in your bed and getting through to you / They made the internet for nights like these / I love you, baby; send a picture of your tits, please

I didn’t know what to expect when my spouse and I loaded up Bo Burnham’s then-brand-new special, Inside, on Netflix and pressed play. Bo is traditionally the king of snarky silliness in song form, as his previous specials can attest, and I figured this would be more of the same. But Inside is so much more than that, as I wrote when I called it a masterpiece on this very blog.

As you know if you’ve seen it, the first half of Inside is rife with classic Bo goofiness that nonetheless hints constantly at the depressed, anxious mess beneath the surface, which we get to experience more directly in the darker, more existential second half. One of the first-act bangers is “Sexting,” a song that makes me scream with laughter every time I watch the video. In his razor-sharp way, Bo lampoons staples of millennials’ textual intercourse, like communicating in emojis (“you send me a peach / I send a carrot back / you send a Ferris wheel / that’s pretty abstract”), wanting nudes from a partner while being too insecure to send any oneself (“you send the pic and say it’s now my turn / Jesus fucking Christ, I guess I never learn”), and worrying about whether the asynchronous medium is breeding misunderstandings (it usually is).

However, then, as only Bo could do, he pivots easily from texty sexytimes into the crushing loneliness that can set in when the technology fails you, or when digital sex feels too starkly different from in-person sex to generate a meaningful oxytocin high, or when you put your phone down and wipe up the cum, only to notice with shocking intensity just how alone you actually are. “Another night on my own / stuck in my home / sitting alone / one hand on my dick and one hand on my phone,” Burnham laments, and to that, all I can say is: been there, Bo. Been there.

Lizzo – “Juice” (buy it on iTunes)

No, I’m not a snack at all / Look, baby, I’m the whole damn meal

I was late to the party with regards to Lizzo, because I just don’t listen to that much mainstream/top-40 music these days, but I’m so glad I finally checked her out. It must have been the third or fourth time I heard this song, and found myself physically compelled to dance, that I finally whipped out my phone to figure out what the hell I was listening to.

It’s since become my favorite medicine for low-energy days, for bad-body-image days, for everything-is-terrible days. I’ll put it on, start moving my body, and feel the greyness start to lift. In particular, I think it’s the all-time best song for dancing to while nude in front of a mirror; every time I do this, it feels like someone just injected me with liquid confidence. Sincerely, Lizzo, thank you for the gift that is this song.

My enjoyment of sex, or indeed my very ability to be mentally present during sex, can be strongly affected by my body image du jour. Intrusive thoughts about my thighs and ass and belly frequently interrupt otherwise sexy interludes, frustrating me and worrying my partners. Listening to this song feels like saying a prayer for body-positivity, accepting (and adoring) the things I cannot change, embracing all the parts of me because they’re me and thus inherently worthy. It’s worth putting on every sex playlist I make from here on out, if just because hearing even its opening chords makes my whole body relax, like it finally knows it’s beautiful.

Violents – “After You” (buy it on iTunes)

Life after you / Life overdue / My girl, you know that I had dreamed of you

What a lot of the songs on this year’s list have in common is that they seem to send a shot of dopamine directly to my brain. This one is no different.

Violents is a project by my all-time favorite singer/songwriter, Jeremy Larson. Normally he writes songs and a smooth-voiced collaborator sings them, but the EP this song is from, June, is about being a new adoptive father and all the feelings associated with that, so it made sense for him to sing this one himself. And it’s stunning.

“After You” is an open-hearted, revelatory, no-holds-barred love song for Jeremy’s first daughter. It marks a clear delineation between life before her and life after her. I have thought a lot about parenthood this year – mostly because I am reaching the age at which people start insisting women think about this topic, as if it would be a crime if we chose to stay childless – and, while I’m not at all convinced I ever want kids, pieces of art like this song make me wonder if I’d be missing out.

Brotherkenzie – “Wasted” (buy it on Bandcamp)

It’s not enough / Keeping up / When my chin is dripping with you / One hell of a view / Hopefully, I can make these legs move if I try

I don’t know what this song is about, but I know that when I first heard Nathan of Brotherkenzie sing these particular lyrics, I blushed. If indeed this section is about cunnilingus, which I believe it is, then it’s one of the gentlest, most anti-bravado and anti-machismo references to cunnilingus I’ve ever heard in a song. In context it sounds gentle, slow, gradual, sweet. The lyrics signal genuine enjoyment of the act and genuine interest in the pleasure it can produce. It’s just… nice.

This isn’t at all a conventional pick for a “sexy song,” and yet there’s something about it that feels to me like slow, familiar sex with someone who knows your body. The dependable rhythm of it. The prodding, plodding sweetness. The way your favorite face fills with rapture as it peers up at you from between your legs. One hell of a view.

Ben Hopkins – “IDK” (buy it on iTunes)

I don’t know how to pay for therapy / I imagine if I did, I’d have some clarity / I don’t know how to weather ignorance / Makes me wanna drink wine and eat some cigarettes

I don’t know how to even convey how much Ben Hopkins’s music meant to me this year. But this is a song about not knowing how to do things, so maybe that’s okay.

There’s a certain freneticism to my interactions with other millennials in recent years, a constant low hum of existential anxiety and manic dread. You can’t ask a clued-in millennial a question about their future, or the future of humanity, without them going into a bit of a tailspin.

This is gonna sound douchey but the current state of the world makes me really grateful I got to take some classes on existential philosophy in university, because I don’t know how I would make sense of our current world without existentialist thought to fall back on. One of the biggest revelations I picked up from those classes was this: When the existentialists realized there was probably no God, no “true path” for any of them, no “meaning of life,” initially they were distraught – but then, after a “dark night of the soul,” often there would come a point when the lack of any inherent meaning began to feel less like a burden and more like freedom. The freedom to create your own meaning, your own path, your own purpose.

So much of Ben Hopkins’s music, but especially this song, makes me feel that way. It’s music that commiserates with the listener about the pointlessness and absurdity of [gestures broadly] all this, but at the same time, finds some raucous joy and connection in all that madness. Ben and their collaborator Tsebiyah shout back and forth at one another in this song about all the things they don’t know how to do, and then come together in the chorus to chant, “I don’t know what I’m doing / I don’t know if it’s right / I don’t know what I’m doing / I don’t know if it’s right,” like a tragic, silly, sad, excited, terrified, brave millennial mantra.

John Legend – “Love Me Now” (buy it on iTunes)

Something inside us / Knows there’s nothing guaranteed / Girl, I don’t need you / To tell me that you’ll never leave / When we’ve done all that we could / To turn darkness into light, turn evil to good / Even when we try so hard / For that perfect kind of love / It could all fall apart

I’ve loved watching John Legend’s evolution as an artist over the past several years. A lot of his early music made him sound like a bit of a cad, even if those songs were fictional (I’m not sure if they were or not); he seemed to churn out endless songs about cheating on a partner, wanting to cheat on a partner, thinking about cheating on a partner, avoiding (or giving in to) the temptation to cheat on a partner, etc. But those albums all came out when he was in his 20s; modern-day John Legend is a mature man with a big heart and a beautiful way with words, and his songs land just as sexy for me now as they always have, but much more romantic.

“Love Me Now” is a type of love song I’ve never heard before, a love song arising from non-toxic masculinity and compassionate realism. It acknowledges the fact that even relationships we think will last forever might not, and that life goes on after those relationships end. Most notably, it states: “I don’t know who’s gonna kiss you when I’m gone, so I’m gonna love you now, like it’s all I have.”

You could interpret this to mean that John doesn’t want anyone else to kiss his lady-love when and if he’s out of her life, but I have a different read on it. To me, it sounds like he wants her to always have someone to kiss, because he wants her to be happy. But he knows he can’t guarantee that, so he’s going to do his best to make up for that future uncertainty in the present. This reminds me of every partner of mine who’s taken non-monogamy as an invitation to love me harder, not a challenge to love me “better than” my other partner(s). We all deserve someone in our life who wants nothing but happiness for us. We all deserve a partner who wonders, with hope and in earnest, who’s gonna kiss us when they’re gone.

Cruisr – “Wild Babe” (buy it on iTunes)

You make me pace / Make me chase / Make my heart race / I dig you when you ditch me cold / ‘Cause I’m a sheep / I’m a creep / And I’m losing sleep / No, I don’t know what’s right for you, baby / Wild babe / I just wanna be your prey

Cruisr has showed up on this list previously for their up-tempo kinky bop “Kidnap Me,” and I still listen to that one on a regular basis. But “Wild Babe” may have eclipsed it as my fave Cruisr tune, simply because it makes me want to be the wild babe it eponymizes. And when I dance to it, I feel like I’m becoming her.

To me, this is a song about that sunny feeling when a new crush bursts into your life and is instantly all you can think about. That feeling was in short supply for many of us during the pandemic; this song feels like it’d be the right thing to listen to on the walk to your first post-COVID date with your first post-COVID crush, heart pounding in rhythm with the drums.

Alina Baraz – “Change My Mind” (buy it on iTunes)

At the end of the day / Would you do what it takes? / If I fall, am I safe? / Validation hit different when you don’t gotta ask for it / Would you push your pride to the side? / Prove me wrong by doing it right

I’ve included an Alina Baraz song on this list literally every year since I started doing this, because almost every year she puts out stunningly sexy new songs. She’s an absolute queen of the slowjam genre.

This song sticks out to me most on her latest EP because it’s about stating your boundaries, holding your ground, lifting your head high and maintaining your standards. Some of Alina’s past songs have been about melting under a man’s touch, getting lost in the reverie of a new flirtation, bending her life and her self to accommodate a powerful infatuation. But this one is different. “Say you wanna keep up,” she dares him; “If you stay the night, you could change my mind.” It’s the ultimate fuck-you to a fuckboy – and a dare for him to do better, to be better, so he can be with her.

I’ll channel Alina Baraz in this song if ever I need to tell someone, in the future, that they’re not currently meeting my standards but that they’re always welcome to change my mind.

Silk Sonic – “Leave the Door Open” (buy it on iTunes)

You’re so sweet, so tight / I won’t bite, unless you like / If you smoke, I got the haze / And if you’re hungry, girl, I got filets

My brother Max tipped me off to this one. When he gives me a music recommendation, I listen, because 99% of the time, if he thinks I’ll like a song, I end up loving it.

You know that feeling when you get a “booty call” text from the person you’ve been secretly hoping would send you that exact text for hours, if not days or weeks? That feeling of jubilation, excitement, and promise? That feeling that makes you want to spring out of bed, shed your pajamas in favor of a flashier ensemble, slick on some lip gloss and head out to face the thrills of the night to come? This song is that feeling, distilled into a 4-minute-long radio-ready slowjam. It’s perfection.

The lines I quoted above are my favorites, because to me there’s something genuinely healing about a man expressing desire for a woman in a way that acknowledges that she eats – that her hunger is potentially not just sexual but literal, too. Sounds silly, maybe, but we’ve all heard (or experienced firsthand) those tropes about how women only order salad on dates. I’ve always appreciated beaux who showed zero evidence of fat-shaming or food-shaming, and in fact actively encouraged me to stay nourished enough to have good sex – by making me a protein-packed pre-sex steak for energy, handing me a bottle of Gatorade to refuel my electrolytes mid-session, or (in one case) bringing me a selection of refrigerated chocolate bars on a midsummer night to help pump me up for a round 2.

I have no doubts, after listening to this song as many times as I have, that Bruno Mars is a great person to receive a booty call from. He’s passionate. He’s polite. He’s gonna leave the door open for you. Dreamy.

 

What songs did you love most this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 10 Perfect Sex Songs

Kate Sloan

We have arrived at one of my favorite 12 Days of Girly Juice instalments: the one where I tell you about some of the sexiest songs I grooved on this year! I will admit that while this list was originally meant to be literal sex songs, i.e. songs you would want to listen to while having sex, it has transformed over the years and become moreso a list of songs that feel sexual or sensual in some way, but aren’t necessarily sexy, if that makes sense. You’ll see what I mean…

As ever, here’s a Spotify playlist that contains all of this year’s picks + those from every previous year I’ve done this. Enjoy!

Her’s – Low Beam

I know what you’re thinking / You can take me for a ride / Baby, hit me harder / ‘Cause I’m never gonna hide / You can keep on running, but you’re running out of track / I’m-a keep it coming, as a matter of fact

I wrote a bit about this band last year; they’re a duo who were tragically killed in a car crash in 2019, so listening to them is very bittersweet. I’m absolutely enamored with their sound – the peppy guitar parts, the sensuous harmonies, the singer’s deep and morose voice.

I don’t really know what “Low Beam” is about – this band’s lyrics can be charmingly opaque at times – but I do know that it was a central component of my first shrooms trip in February. For some reason, the line “You can keep on running, but you’re running out of track” got lodged in my head and became a mantra, an affirmation, a tether, an anchor. I begged my trip-sitter Brent to put this song on the stereo several times throughout that day, and danced my ass off every time. This song just… feels good in my body and brain, like laughing at a party with friends, or strutting down the street on a sunny day, or – yes – excellent sex.

Brotherkenzie – Poems on My Phone

I’ve got the thought of you inside my bed / That thought’s the only thought inside my head / Mezcal left over from my birthday week / Still here, but without you it’s hard to drink

Brotherkenzie’s Big What was hands-down one of my favorite new albums this year. It’s contemplative, groovy, worried, and weird. “Poems on My Phone” stands out as a particularly poppy, hooky tune, and is also probably the sexiest track on the record.

It’s a “relatable mood,” as the kids are saying, because it’s about that feeling when someone you’re crushing on goes away for a while and you just can’t get them out of your head. The beat of this tune has the same plodding inevitability as intrusive infatuated thoughts: they just keep coming, uncontrollably, while you’re trying to focus on other things, and all you can really do about it is write poems on your phone.

Marika Hackman – Send My Love

Are you coming home to feel alone? / Did you love me tonight, or any night of our lives? / It’s never gonna be like it was before / The writing’s on the floor

I discovered this song while trying to scope out some lesbian drama online. The ever-fantastic Amber Bain, of the Japanese House (a band that’s appeared on this list more than once), dated fellow singer/songwriter Marika Hackman for years (so I gather), and indeed, several songs on her quintessential breakup album Good at Falling are about Marika. One day I was creeping through Amber’s social media posts and saw she had given her now-ex’s new album a resounding recommendation – and her favorite track, she said, was “Send My Love.” Obviously I had to give it a listen.

Marika’s sweet, lilting voice was so interesting to hear for the first time after listening to her ex warbling about her in a comparatively sad, gravelly voice for years. This song feels to me like Imogen Heap and Phoebe Bridgers’ lovechild – a driving rhythm, a pretty melody, a thoughtful vibe, and gay undertones out the wazoo.

Sarah Harmer – Late Bloomer

Never thought I’d be the marrying kind / It was nothing to be always left behind / From the ship that would sail with everyone on it / I said, “Give me the land – I know what I want and where I’m wanted” / But you came in whistling, “I’ll go if you’ll go” / And I was waiting around to play like an old piano

Okay, I know not everyone will think this song is sexy, but something about Sarah Harmer’s voice makes me into a crushy queer mess – and this song overflows with romantic tension moreso than sexual tension, the former being, paradoxically, sometimes the sexiest kind of tension. (To me, anyway.)

Sarah sings in this song about (so far as I can tell) falling hard for someone at a time when you felt sure you’d never fall that hard again. She sings about two people who thought they’d never get married, realizing that maybe they want to marry each other. It’s a last-ditch romance, a late-arriving passion, lost opportunities fading away to make room for new love. Sarah’s voice is clear and high one moment, and sexy and throaty the next. To me, this song feels like having a crush – but maybe I just have a crush on Sarah Harmer.

Alina Baraz – Take it Home

You say that you want someone to hold / I just wanna get you all alone / You just gotta say it / Don’t you keep me waiting

Alina’s been on this list every year it’s existed and the reason is clear: everything she makes is sexy. She’s in fine form here – breathy and sweet, full of yearning, singing over deep beats and smooth guitars that feel like being laid out on a big bed in a dim room by someone you’re excited to fuck.

I still find it amazing that you can hit “shuffle” on Alina Baraz’s whole discography and it’ll make the ideal sonic backdrop for sex, no matter what ends up playing. I mean. Could Alina be any more perfect?!

John Mayer – Do You Know Me?

It’s just the strangest thing / I’ve seen your face somewhere / An early evening dream / A past-life love affair / Do you know me at all?

This song came out in 2009 so I’m not sure how it’s never made its way onto this list before… It’s one of the most beautiful things John Mayer has ever written – which probably doesn’t sound like a high honor unless you’ve been a JM superfan at some point in your life like I have, because his hit songs are never the prettiest/smartest/best ones. But he’s masterful with pretty jazz chords and delicate guitar riffs, and this song is a prime example.

The lyrics are simple and spare, so it’s not totally clear what the song’s about, but I think it’s about that feeling when you see someone across the room at a party or a bar and you get the immediate sense that they’re going to be meaningful to you. Sometimes this instant resonance feels like love at first sight; sometimes it feels more like déja vu. Either way, it can be so impactful that it knocks you off your feet.

Missy Bauman – Why Do We Fight?

Is loving me too much for you? / You say that that’s unfair to you / The way that I just stared at you / I love you, I love you

I’m a little biased because my brother played drums on this track, but it really is stunning. “Dreamy drug folk” singer Missy‘s voice is clear as a bell here, sad, sensuous, sparkly. This song kinda sounds like what would result if My Brightest Diamond covered a Weeknd song: haunting, tragic, yet oddly sexy.

You know that period of time near the end of a relationship when you’re still having sex, but you know with near-certainty that you’re going to break up sometime soon? This song feels like that. Like the last gasps of something that used to feel good, and still does, a little.

Broken Social Scene – All to All

Call of forgiveness / I’m like the beat of the hurt / I’m not the only one you tried to save / When you fell out

I stumbled across this song because I was fervently Googling the beautiful Lisa Lobsinger, big-haired and soft-voiced lead singer of the long-defunct band Reverie Sound Revue (who I’ve mentioned on this list previously). She occasionally sings for Broken Social Scene, a “super-band” known for its huge rotating cast of players from the Canadian music world, like Feist and Emily Haines.

One of the magical things about Lisa Lobsinger is that she can make you feel things even if you can’t understand what she’s actually saying (and you often can’t). She can also take lyrics that don’t really make sense, and make them feel like a coherent emotional statement. All this to say: I have no clue what this song is about, but I know that it feels like it’s about regret, remorse, missed opportunities, “right place, wrong time,” and the way we ruminate when a relationship ends but we desperately wish it had not.

Chet Atkins – Take Five

This guitar arrangement of the Dave Brubeck Quartet classic is searching and chaotic and weird. “Take Five” is known among jazz nerds for its unusual quintuple time signature; most songs count to 3 or 4 in every bar, but this one counts to 5. To me, this makes “Take Five” feel more like the way bodies actually move in the dark. Fucking isn’t always steady or predictable; sometimes there’s sudden pauses to readjust, or brief interludes of still whispers, or hard thrusts thrown in like a wrench in the works. Our bodies and their rhythms are deeply erratic and that’s part of why they’re also erotic.

I heard this guitar version of the song while I was out somewhere, and Shazam’ed it immediately, because I was stunned by the skill involved. The original is a sax playing an iconic melody over top of some supportive piano chords, but Chet Atkins has somehow managed to cram all that complexity into a guitar arrangement he apparently played all at once, all by himself. If the Brubeck version feels like off-kilter sex, this version feels like off-kilter masturbation – equally charming, but in its own way.

Andy Shauf – Changer

I heard you’re back in town / Working at the drugstore / Did you get the city blues? / That, I can relate to / Change on, changer

Andy Shauf’s The Neon Skyline is probably my favorite new album of 2020. What can I say – I just love the guy. A quiet Canadian indie legend who pens thoughtful songs about made-up characters in made-up situations, he’s the type of brilliant songwriter who can make me cry through a computer screen. (And indeed he did, this year, when he played the sad gay unrequited love song “To You” on a fundraiser concert stream. I literally could not stop the tears from flowing and flowing. I think I got a bit dehydrated. Dammit, Andy.)

“Changer” is the closing track of Skyline; the protagonist has just spent the entire album yearning for his recent ex, Judy, and awkwardly trying to get her back, and “Changer” is a moment of sad reflection at the end of a drunken night. Judy has changed, while her mopey ex has not. He still wants her; she just wants to move on. I can picture this song playing on the jukebox at the Skyline bar where the album takes place, as our hero slow-dances with someone whose name he doesn’t know, trying to forget the love he doesn’t get to have anymore.

 

What sexy (or sexy-adjacent) songs did you love this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 10 Perfect Sex Songs

Kate Sloan

Music is important. It’s a love language, a mood-setter, a spirit-lifter. When nothing else can make me feel sexy, music often can – which is part of why I highlight 10 of my favorite sexy and sex-adjacent songs for you here every year. Here are my 2019 picks! (Want to listen to all of these songs, as well as previous years’ faves, in one handy playlist? Here you go!)

Kid Bloom – Different State of Mind

Sinking right into the crimson clouds / Waiting for this thing to spin me out / I’m swimming in my head

This song is the musical embodiment of what it feels like to sit and people-watch in a park on a sunny Saturday while stoned off your ass. It’s slow and trippy and relaxing and makes me feel like everything is right in the world (a rare feeling these days). It’s also perfectly suited for sex, especially a languorous, lazy fuck on a weekend afternoon when you have nowhere to be but in bed and nothing to do but each other.

Kehlani – Honey

I like my girls just like I like my honey: sweet / A little selfish / I like my women like I like my money: green / A little jealous

I knew I liked Kehlani’s voice when I realized I’d Shazam‘ed the same song twice – this one – upon hearing it in public. Both times, I was struck by the feeling of needing to know who this masterful, smoky-voiced singer was. Kehlani sounds gorgeous in this song, like she deeply understands the feelings of love and sex and relaxation and can convey them directly from her own brain to yours, like an injection.

Carly Rae Jepsen – Everything He Needs

Soft rain / We roll the windows down / Sweat disco all night / It’s clear / We’d like to fool around / His hands reach for mine

Carly Rae is essentially the patron saint of unrequited love, so it’s rare to hear her sing an uncomplicatedly romantic song about someone she’s actually (presumably) dating/fucking. Maybe that’s why this song stuck out to me so much on my first listen-through of Carly’s latest album. This tune is like if Barry White and Carly Rae did a collab; I didn’t know how much I needed it to exist until I heard it. (Carly also, notably, released the ode to masturbation “Party For One” this year – but tbh, I like this one better.)

Bruno Major – Like Someone In Love

Sometimes the things I do astound me / Mostly whenever you’re around me

I mostly knew this jazz standard from Blossom Dearie’s adorable version. Bruno Major gives it an R&B update here, magicking this 75-year-old song into something new and sparkling. I think if a baby boomer and a millennial collaborated on an album specifically for ~romantic interludes~, it would all sound like this song: classic, yet seductively modern. It’s the sort of thing almost all of us can agree on.

The Japanese House – We Talk All the Time

We don’t fuck anymore / But we talk all the time, so it’s fine / Can somebody tell me what I want? / ‘Cause I keep changing my mind

Maybe it’s weird to say that a song about no longer wanting to have sex with your partner could be sexy, but what can I say – Amber Bain is a babe, and her songs are gorgeously sensuous. I have so many faves from her latest album, Good At Falling, but this is probably the one I’d most like to fuck to. The rhythm is driving, the lyrics are dark and sweet, and Amber’s voice is as pleasingly raspy as ever. I need the Japanese House to release, like, eight more albums, stat.

Tegan and Sara – Hold My Breath Until I Die

Shame on me / ‘Cause I can’t help falling at your feet / It makes me mad / To see you leave like that

I would not normally describe Tegan and Sara’s music as sexy – I mean, T&S themselves are, obviously, but their music isn’t always. However, this song has breath-play undertones (even if Tegan is actually singing about romantic anguish rather than kinky sex), and I’ve never heard Tegan’s voice sound sexier than when it goes a little breathy and plaintive in the verses of this track. I think if she sang me this song in person, I would faint…

Daniel Caesar – Japanese Denim

My blue jeans / Will last me all my life, oh yes / So should we

This romantic slow-jam makes me want to slow-dance in the dark with someone whose body fits nice with mine, which is kind of the gold standard for sexy songs, isn’t it? Daniel’s voice is like luxe purple silk. And he’s Canadian, like me!

Great Grandpa – Favorite Show

Laughing at myself again / I’ll zone out til I’m dying / I’ll zone out til I’m dead

I went through a period this year where I would wake up every day with this song stuck in my head. I don’t really know what it’s about; I just know it’s calming in its repetition, and it has the type of gently rocking rhythm that works really well for fuckin’.

Her’s – Under Wraps

I feel like I ran with a headstart / And you’re only just starting to live / Got a lot to gain / Not a lot to give

I only found out about this band because they tragically died in a car crash this year. My brother Max texted me about it, sad and shaken up, his own band having just played in a music festival with Her’s. Stephen and Audun sound angelically beautiful on this slow-grooving, sensual track; their octave-wide harmonies feel as old as time. Put on some good headphones and work your way through the Her’s discography – it’s a lovely (and kinda sad) way to spend an afternoon.

Alina Baraz – To Me

I’m not asking for too much / I’m asking the wrong motherfucker / Just ’cause we’re in love / Doesn’t mean that we’re right for each other

Alina makes it onto this list every year (literally… every… fucking… year), because she truly makes some of the sexiest music in the biz. If I’m having trouble getting into the mood to bone down (increasingly a problem for me as I get older, achier, and more ace), putting on some Alina tunes always helps at least a little. This song isn’t even particularly sexy – it’s more like “sad with a side of sexy” – but Alina sounds just as ethereal and captivating on it as she always does, which is to say, very.

 

What were your favorite sexy songs this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 10 Perfect Sex Songs

Kate Sloan

Welcome back to 12 Days of Girly Juice, my year-end celebration of all things sexy and beloved! Today I’m writing about 10 of the best songs I enjoyed for sensual (and adjacent) purposes this year… (As ever, you can listen to all these songs – and most of my picks from previous years – in my 12 Days of Girly Juice playlist!)

Cruisr – Kidnap Me

So, uh, as you might have intuited from the title of this song, it’s kinda kinky. I don’t know if that was the band’s intention – to write a love song that is at once adorably sweet and ruthlessly perverted – but that is what they have done. “Shackle me up and lock it; I can live in your pocket. When you gonna kidnap me?” the lead singer chirps. “Tie me up to a chair; I could live in your hair. When you gonna kidnap me?”

I’m sure a vanilla person would listen to this song and think it satirical, like montages in horror movies where a killer dismembers somebody to the stylings of ’80s pop. But when I listen to it, I just hear pure, deep, perverse romance.

Say Anything – Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too

Making playlists for each other (or perhaps mix tapes, depending on your era and your level of dedication to the analog arts) is sort of a millennial-romance rite of passage. It’s a way to show your beloved both how you feel about them and how brilliant you are. A double-whammy of confessional hotness.

My Sir and I engaged in this time-honored ritual way back in February. I remember I was running around the Playground Conference, ducking in and out of panels and workshops and podcast recordings, while receiving many a text from this new beau about the epic playlist he was making me. I listened to it on my way home from the conference and cried… a lot. It had Imogen Heap and Feist and the Beach Boys and the Beatles, musical theatre and bubblegum pop, classically millennial love anthems like “Such Great Heights” and “I Really Like You.” It made me feel cradled and appreciated and seen.

One of my faves in the playlist, though, was this Say Anything song, which is about phone sex – something my Sir and I had done a lot of at that point and would continue to do a lot of. “I called her on the phone and she touched herself,” the lead singer whines in the chorus, and maybe it doesn’t sound especially romantic, but to me, it was.

Hippo Campus – Warm Glow

After my first-ever knifeplay scene, Dick asked me what I wanted to listen to during aftercare, and I told him to play some Hippo Campus. They’re my favorite band, so I didn’t even really care which songs we listened to – I know all of them practically by heart. But when he hit shuffle on their discography, this song, “Warm Glow,” was the first one that played, and it was absolutely perfect.

Longer and slower than the Hippo boys’ usual fare, “Warm Glow” has been called “a perennial anthem of positivity,” and that’s part of why I love it as an aftercare song. But I also love that it’s comfortingly repetitive, full of beautifully soothing sounds, and takes its sweet time to build up to an emotional climax. It’s exactly what I need from an aftercare song. (Want more like this? Check out my Aftercare playlist.)

The Japanese House – Saw You in a Dream

This came up in one of my Spotify Discover Weekly playlists and I was immediately hooked. Dream-pop is my jam (thanks, Spotify, you know me all too well) and this song epitomizes my favorite qualities of that genre. It’s loopy and lazy and hauntingly beautiful and sweetly wistful.

I think most of us have had the experience described in this song, of seeing an ex-lover in a dream and feeling shaken up beyond reason by seeing them again, even just in unreality. People can seem so much lovelier in retrospect than they did when they were in your life, and sometimes it’s painful. “You were the sweetest apparition, such a pretty vision,” the Japanese House’s lead singer Amber Bain croons in verse 2. “There was no reason, no explanation: the perfect hallucination.” Sometimes reminiscing about an ex can be too agonizing to bear, but other times it can be a mollifying meander down Memory Lane. Maybe it can even turn you on.

P.S. If you can’t get enough of this song – and I can’t blame you – listen to this a cappella rendition. Ideally while blazed.

Ought – Beautiful Blue Sky

This song is sexy in the way that it’s sexy to fuck someone who is almost robotically dominant: “We do this my way, we do it efficiently, and we do it now.” The driving drums and mechanical guitars forge a rhythm that builds and builds, and then there’s Tim Darcy shouting erratically on top of it all. At times, he seems to be making fun of the whole concept of small talk – “How’s the family? How’s your health been? Fancy seeing you here! Beautiful weather today!” – and the effect is of someone who desperately wants to fuck you, and will do a good job if he does, but doesn’t quite know how to get there from here.

I want my G-spot pounded to the beat of this song. It just feels right.

Ben Rector – Paris

This song is the purest distillation I’ve found of what it feels like to be in New Relationship Energy – or to be in an established relationship that still lapses back into an NRE-esque mode, raw and fresh and sweet. “I haven’t seen her for a month or so,” Ben sings; “Young love feels like finding buried gold.”

I listened to this a lot while falling in love with my Sir. Ben sings in the second verse, “I feel sixteen while we are making love,” and that’s how I felt, too: transported back to a youthful mood where everything was warm and hopeful, and nothing could touch me because I was in love! That’s not always an explicitly sexy feeling – I could write a whole essay about how NRE makes me feel a bit like a haggard zombie running on endorphin fumes – but sometimes it is, and that’s what this song feels like to me. Lust, love, and silly optimism.

John Mayer – Love on the Weekend

My brother showed me this one first. We share a long-standing love of John Mayer – his problematic qualities notwithstanding – and when this song dropped, Max said, “You’ve gotta listen to this one.” Max is usually right about such things, so I did, and damn, the boy knows me: this track is very up my alley.

Like “Paris,” “Love on the Weekend” is definitely an NRE anthem. John sings, “I’ll be dreaming of the next time we can go into another serotonin overflow,” capturing the clinical reality of love’s early days without diminishing its effects. I found this song relatable as my Sir and I fell into a more-or-less monthly routine of one of us visiting the other for a long, luxurious weekend. “It’s a Friday; we finally made it. I can’t believe I get to see your face. You’ve been working, and I’ve been waiting to pick you up and take you from this place.” Oh, John. I’ve loved you for almost two decades and you still manage to sing what my heart is thinking.

Sufjan Stevens – Movement II: Sleeping Invader

This is a standout track on Stevens’ gorgeous instrumental album The BQE, which I’ve loved for years and listened to most memorably through noise-canceling headphones during a sensory deprivation scene with my Sir this year.

Sensory deprivation – like some drugs – can have the effect of amplifying the sensations you can feel. Listening to music while high or sensory-deprived (or both) can cause my brain to organize the input it’s receiving into a narrative that fits with the music I’m hearing. So as my Sir did painful/pleasurable things to my restrained, blindfolded, high little body, I found that those sensations mapped themselves onto the orchestral swells and pulses and pings of The BQE. The album wasn’t just background noise for the scene; to me, it guided the scene, echoed it, co-created it, fused with it.

This felt like a natural continuation of my relationship with this album, which I had once listened to while high and gotten so turned on from the beauty of it that I almost came, untouched. Music is strange like that.

Alina Baraz – Yours

Alina is on this list every year, and not just because it’s tradition at this point: she creates some of the sexiest music I’ve ever heard.

I got a little misty-eyed the first time I heard this song, because in the chorus, Alina sings: “Love me like I’m never gonna leave. Love me like I’m yours.” It reminded me so much of my Sir’s dependable assurances that he has no plans to break up with me, despite my anxious brain always fearing I’m about to lose him. There is something so sexy about simply feeling safe, especially when you go through your day-to-day life never being entirely convinced of your safety. I am skeptical of the whole concept of “lovemaking” – that ooey-gooey brand of hyper-vanilla sex that’s overrepresented in mainstream media and makes my skin crawl – but the arguably romantic act of my Sir murmuring “You’re safe” while he spanks me and steps on me and fucks me is nonetheless as hot and rejuvenating to me as a shot of cinnamon whiskey. It warms me from the inside out. So does this song.

The Esbjörn Svensson Trio – Eighty-Eight Days in My Veins

I can’t believe this song hasn’t made it onto this list before! I’ve loved it for at least ten years, since the days when I’d listen to JazzFM when I couldn’t sleep and take diligent notes on my favorite tracks if the announcers remembered to mention their names (this was pre-Shazam!). I remember hearing the intense, complex lead piano part on this track and feeling transported to another dimension, somewhere icy and angry and full of longing. (My love for this song, and this trio, deepened even further when I found out years later that Esbjörn Svensson had tragically died in a scuba-diving accident at age 44, with decades of beautiful piano-playing still left in him. Rest in power, you Swedish god.)

This song’s been in my aftercare playlist for a while, because it’s so familiar to me as to be soothing – I can sing along with the piano part as it skips erratically all over the musical map (what a nerd). But it’s a sexy song in its own right. One memorable evening this year, my Sir connected my phone to the Bluetooth speakers in the hotel we were staying at so I could pipe my aftercare playlist throughout our room after sex, but by the time we got to this song, we were already fucking again. He came in my throat sometime around the intense, syncopated climax of “Eighty-Eight Days.” It was for that reason that I texted him gleefully to announce when our relationship turned 88 days old. We are nerds and we are in love.

What sexy songs did you love this year?

Monthly Faves: Submission, Scents, & Psychology

Kate Sloan

What a lovely month in my sex life! My spreadsheet is a-burstin’. Here’s some of what went on in April…

Sex toys

• The Doxy #3 continues to be a fave. I went on yet another New York jaunt this month and appreciated, once again, this li’l wand’s portability and lightness compared to its bigger, bulkier brothers.

• I was lucky enough this month to receive a strap-on blowjob from a beautiful boy. I wore my raspberry-pink Aslan Leather Jaguar harness and my sparkly pink Godemiche Ambit. They made quite a gorgeous image, especially in combination with the mouth of one of my favorite people.

• After only trying The Butters lube on my own bits, it was a fun revelation to try it on someone else’s. It makes for excellent handjobs!

Fantasy fodder

• Lately I’m swoonin’ extra hard about my meta-kink for someone knowing exactly how to turn me on and make me come. (What would you call this, anyway? I have it listed on my FetLife profile as “you knowing exactly what I need” but I’m not 100% happy with that label.) Some recent quotes from my boyfriend that exemplify this perfectly and have been haunting my fantasy-brain: “I always want to get better at knowing the best ways to dom you and fuck you.” “I love being so good at you and learning what makes you tick even more deeply.” “Is that gonna make you come, if I keep fucking you nice and deep like that?” 😍

• Teasing and edging submissive boys is fuuun. I’m nowhere near a dyed-in-the-wool domme, so this isn’t something I’d want to do every day, but when it’s right, it’s sooo right.

Sexcetera

• I just got back from the AltSex conference! Lots of fascinating stuff about kink psychology this year – most interestingly to me, Petra Zebroff and Pega Ren‘s talk on what motivates doms and subs to take on their respective roles, and Samuel Hughes‘ talk on kink identity development. I took lots of notes and will be ponderin’ and implementin’ some of what I learned!

• I was invited back to the Bed Post variety show to play some sexy ukulele tunes, and it was so much fun! Sharing a bill with the delightful Erin Pim and her merry band of sex-positive weirdos is always a joy.

• Some of my work elsewhere this month: I wrote a piece for Cosmopolitan (!!) about the sex therapy concept of “sensate focus” and how it can apply to blowjobs. On our podcast, Bex and I answered common questions people ask sex educators, interviewed Dawn Serra and Mx Nillin, and got delightfully high on 4/20.

Media

• I’m loving Alina Baraz‘s new EP, The Color of You. I’ve profiled her music before (here, here, and here) because she makes some of the sexiest slow-jams in the biz, and that’s still true.

• Did you know that Emily Nagoski, of Come As You Are fame, also writes romance novels under the pseudonym Emily Foster? I devoured both of them this month and they reminded me exactly how clever and thrilling the romance genre can be. Having a super-smart and likeable female protagonist sure helps!

• Clementine Morrigan’s new zine “I Want You to Fuck Me” is a straightforward, plain-language statement of their sexual desires, boundaries, needs, and best practices. It’s only 10 pages long but it got me thinking about what my own wants and needs are and how I can optimally assert them when necessary. (If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you also need Bex’s Yes/No/Maybe list in your life!)

Femme stuff

• My boyfriend got me a birthday gift unlike anything I’ve ever received before: he commissioned Stephen Dirkes of Euphorium Brooklyn to make me a custom fragrance. SWOON! It’s called Aimanté and it’s feminine and sexy and complex. Should I write a whole blog post sometime about the process, my thoughts on the scent, etc.? Let me know in the comments…

• Shout-out to MeUndies for making the comfiest lounge pants I’ve ever owned. I have a pair in red and black plaid and a pair in plain black, and they are majorly important to my free-‘n’-easy freelancer/lackadaisical layabout wardrobe.

• GlamGlow makes a tinted lip balm called PoutMud which was on sale at Sephora when I placed an order there this month, so of course, I snapped one up in red. It’s got a slight minty tingle and a beautiful tint, so I’ve been wearing it a lot.

Little things

My darlin’ sending me flowers because I was depressed (and making a subtle Sweeney Todd reference in the attached note; what a nerd). Seeing Anais sing opera in a “Fluevog shoebox” of a concert hall (and Henry shouting, “Iconic!”). Collecting romantic memorabilia in the back pocket of my Moleskine. Improvisors making a tweet of mine into a hilarious scene (and then apologizing to me for it afterward). Pink and blue Blackwing pencils. Cam shows with respectful clients. Nerding out over vocabulary with my love. Beautiful cocktails at so many luxe places: Northwood, Mulberry, Maysville, Eleven Madison Park, and more. How lovely you tend to look in photos taken by someone who loves you. “I am generally known, where I am known, as one cool, collected queen.” Fancy chocolate. Useful attitude adjustments and meta-communication tricks that make relationships more harmonious. Bow-shaped gingerbread cookies in a heart-eyes emoji mug from Bex. Seeing my little brother open for Kate Nash at the Mod Club. Following along with Caitlin‘s updates from her training with Betty Martin (creator of the Wheel of Consent). Sir requesting a guitar in our hotel room so I could serenade him. The portmanteau “meetamour” (and the meetamour itself). Repairing the damage done by nonconsensual touch with consensual touch.