1. The Coasters, “Poison Ivy”
Pop music has a long history of songs that obliquely reference sexually transmitted diseases with a wink, a smile, and a strained metaphor—Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” being a prime example—and The Coasters’ 1959 hit “Poison Ivy” would fall into that class, if not for the fact that its writers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, confirmed its inspiration in their 2010 autobiography Hound Dog. “Pure and simple, ‘Poison Ivy’ is a metaphor for a sexually transmitted disease—or the clap—hardly a topic for a song that hit the Top Ten,” writes Leiber. It’s possible to interpret “Poison Ivy” through a less sordid lens, as simply an ode to an irresistible but emotionally destructive woman, but once it’s revealed, the subtext becomes text, and there’s simply no other way to construe lyrics like “She’s pretty as a daisy / But look out man, she’s crazy / She’ll really do you in / If you let her get under your skin.” Calamine lotion isn’t going to help with that.
2. Woody Guthrie, “VD City”
Known for writing about everything from Communism to the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie never shied away from singing about social issues—including what was then called VD. Guthrie reportedly wrote several VD-themed songs—“VD Day,” “VD Waltz,” “VD Blues,” and so on—for the U.S. Public Health Service in 1949. None of them became barnburners, but Bob Dylan picked up “VD City” and re-recorded it in 1961, and Dylanologists have said that its images inspired at least one of his songs, “Desolation Row.” That makes sense, considering Guthrie’s way with a grim phrase. In “VD City” alone, he sings of “human wrecks,” “lost faces,” and “a whirlpool of raving insane,” all driven to desperate poverty and sadness since their skin’s gotten “worse than lepers” and “millions now burn in the fires.” Now those are some uplifting lyrics.
3. Kool Moe Dee, “Go See The Doctor” Kool Moe Dee’s self-titled solo album came out in 1986, but its five-and-a-half-minute leadoff track sounds even older, with its minimalist beat and Moe Dee’s somewhat stilted flow and corny rhymes. (“If I see another girl and I get an erection / I’m walking in the other direction.”) But it earns a pass for its classic line “What have I done stuck my dick in?” (sampled in Ice Cube’s “Look Who’s Burnin’”). Kool Moe Dee meets a woman on the street who’s DTF without the whole date charade of wining, dining, and talking about “the birds and the bees in my waterbed.” But like a Christ figure who went too far with his own Mary Magdalene, Moe Dee emerges three days later “drip drip dripping and pus pus pussing.”
4. Ice Cube, “Look Who’s Burnin’”
Ice Cube hits up his neighborhood free clinic for “20 free jimmy-hats,” but gets a booster shot of schadenfreude in this track from 1991’s excellent Death Certificate: “The bitch from up the street,” who had previously scorned Cube’s advances, has gone from “Miss Thang,” to “Miss Gonorrhea.” She hooked up with a college student, not realizing that “he probably fucked the whole university”—just one of the many zingers Cube scores in the song. He and producer Sir Jinx drive the theme home with nearly a dozen well-chosen samples, from that “Go See The Doctor” line mentioned above to Boogie Down Productions’ “Jimmy” and Fishbone’s “Lyin’ Ass Bitch.” Although she’ll get a shot of penicillin for this latest escapade, Cube suspects her time is running out: “A bitch like you’ll be returnin’ with the H-I-V, R.I.P.”
5. 88-Keys featuring Redman, “The Burning Bush”
88-Keys’ 2008 debut, The Death Of Adam, is a concept album about the nightmarish elements of sex and relationships, from unwanted pregnancy to erectile dysfunction (shockingly, it wasn’t a big hit), so venereal disease ranked high on its list of relationship horrors. On “Burning Bush,” the producer-turned-rapper turns the spotlight over to guest Redman, who shares a painfully hilarious story about contracting syphilis from an anonymous, Ecstasy-addled hookup. Redman, in his indelible turn of phrase, claims she “burnt me and then disappeared like Hoffa,” then invokes Kool Moe Dee’s advice to go see the doctor.
6. Frank Zappa, “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”
Even the shortest, dumbest song on Frank Zappa’s 1979 rock opera, Joe’s Garage—the smirking toss-off “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”—is given a high-minded background story. During a 1978 show in Munich, Zappa informed the audience of the song’s inspiration—a question posed by his road manager—and that the “type of the words in this song are really stupid, so therefore, we have a really stupid arrangement.” Set to “pseudo-English pomposity, with fake drama thrown in on the side, smothered in tico-tico,” the music is bloated and masturbatory, yet primal—in other words, the perfect accompaniment.
7. AC/DC, “The Jack”
If any rock singer can speak about STDs with authority, it’s the late Bon Scott of AC/DC. Infamous for his promiscuity—and for immortalizing his flings in AC/DC classics like “Whole Lotta Rosie”—Scott acknowledged the negative side of sleeping around in “The Jack.” Riding a grinding blues riff, the gravel-voiced lothario uses one of his favorite devices, the extended double entendre, to equate a poker game with a case of gonorrhea (known in Australian slang as “the jack”): “She’s got the jack and who knows what else?” he quips, having finally met his match in the lechery department. “She gave me the jack / She’s got the jack, and it hurts.”
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