Music: Mixlist: ’Til the juice runs down my leg: 23 songs that use fruit for sexual metaphor

1-2. Led Zeppelin, “The Lemon Song”
Robert Johnson, “Traveling Riverside Blues”
For some reason, lemons are the go-to fruit for nutsack metaphors. (Seems big, doesn’t it?) It may have begun with Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul in exchange for lyrics like “You can squeeze my lemon ’til the juice run down my leg,” from “Traveling Riverside Blues.” And if it was good enough for the most influential bluesman in history, it was plenty good for the blues lovers in Led Zeppelin, who first covered the song, then interpolated it (and brought the line to mass popularity) into “The Lemon Song,” and either grossed out or intrigued a nation of young ladies. Maybe some from column A, some from column B.

3-6. The Sultans, “Lemon Squeezing Daddy”
Bumble Bee Slim, “Lemon Squeezing Blues”
Sonny Boy Williamson, “Until My Love Come Down”
Charlie Pickett, “Let Me Squeeze Your Lemon”
Of course, lemons can be breasts as well: The Sultans, a mostly forgotten doo-wop outfit from the ’50s, brought the world “Lemon Squeezing Daddy,” a song mostly content to state that “I’m a lemon-squeezing daddy and I just got back in town.” So look out, lemon trees—these guys are back from California, where apparently the lemons are bigger. Bumble Bee Slim was a bit more direct, pleading, “Let me squeeze your lemons baby, until my love comes down.” That sounds a lot like Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Until My Love Comes Down”—though it’s hard to say who did it first—where the legendary Chicago harmonica player asks “Let me be your lemon squeezer, Lord, until my love comes down.” Williamson likes his lady’s other fruity assets too: “I like your apple on your tree / I’m crazy about your peaches too / I’m crazy about your fruit baby / ’cause you know just how to do.” How to do what? It, presumably. Charlie Pickett offered a slight variation on “Lemon Squeezing Blues” that’s worth hearing for its obvious influence on Jack White.

7. 112, “Peaches And Cream”
When applied to the female form, the term “peaches and cream” has traditionally referred to a fresh, glowing complexion, but in 2001, R&B quartet 112 took the phrase to a decidedly less platonic realm with this Grammy-nominated single. “And I can feel it all around / In the front, in the back of you / Ooh I love the taste of you / Girl you know what I’m talking about,” sings “Q” Parker, and just in case you don’t know what he’s talkin’ bout, girl, Daron Jones goes on to explain further: “Wanna taste it in the morning when I’m waking up / Like peach cobbler in my stomach when I eat it up / Got your legs around my neck so I can’t get up.” While the boys in 112 certainly deserve credit for their commitment to, um, eating, their insistence that “It’s even better when it’s with ice cream” portends a particularly sticky, messy experience for all involved.

8. Beck, “Peaches And Cream”
It’s hard to decipher the meaning of most Beck songs, but since “Peaches & Cream” comes from his 1999 album Midnite Vultures, it’s safe to assume it’s about sex. “Peaches and cream / you make a garbage man scream” croons Beck on the chorus, right before he compliments the fruit-symbolized subject on her sweater and “aluminum crutch.” And then there’s this beauty: “Give those pious soldiers another lollipop / ’cause we’re on the good ship ménage a trois.” It’s cockeyed come-ons like that that help make “Peaches & Cream” a winner on an album already stuffed with them, even if the “white-guy-does-ironic-R&B” thing usually sounds about as fresh as a bag of moldy tangerines.

9. Prince, “Peach” 
All things considered, Prince could’ve made “Peach,” a new song he attached to a hits compilation in 1993, much dirtier and more direct. (He’s not particularly known for sexual subtlety.) As it stands, the halfway-decent blues-influenced song—which includes a sample of a woman moaning that’s thought to be Kim Basinger—delivers just one killer line: “Her hot pants can’t hide her cheeks / She’s a peach.” 

10. Steve Miller Band, “The Joker” 
Steve Miller has been called a lot of things: space cowboy, gangster, even Maurice. But the man behind classic-rock jukebox staple “The Joker” is also an allegorical fruit lover, telling the presumed woman in that same song, “Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.” Certainly enough songs—and quotable Nicolas Cage Face/Off lines—have used peach-eating to allude to oral sex. But Miller, by invoking the woman’s “tree,” one-ups things. Who wouldn’t want to have their proverbial tree consensually shaken by the man who invented the word “pompatus”?

11. The Presidents Of The United States Of America, “Peaches”
Power-pop trio The Presidents Of The United States Of America seems innocuous enough on the outside. But dig a little deeper into “Peaches,” the band’s minor hit from 1996, and there’s some hanky-panky going on. At first, leader Chris Ballew seems to be extolling the succulent virtues of peaches, the fruit. Things take a juicier tone, though, when he sings, “Squished a rotten peach in my fist / And dreamed about you, woman / I poked my finger down inside.” It’s a good thing that Ballew focuses on making children’s music nowadays. Or maybe not.

12. The Stranglers, “Peaches”
Lewd, slinky, salacious, and sly, The Stranglers’ 1977 song “Peaches” unveiled the sleazier side of punk: While contemporaries like The Clash and The Sex Pistols got political, The Stranglers got perverted. Full of profanity and double entendres—including a word that could be either clitares, a French bathing suit, or, you know, something similar—the song is a showcase of frontman Hugh Cornwell’s leering celebration of “Walking on the beaches / Looking at the peaches.” 

13. Warrant, “Cherry Pie”
Here’s a reason to celebrate Warrant’s one big contribution to popular music, to offset the many reasons not to celebrate it: The lyrics do not make direct metaphorical correlations between “cherry” and virginity or “pie” and vaginas. People unfamiliar with the song probably think it does those things, but mostly it celebrates the entire woman—her experience level unknown—as a tasty baked good. The grossest line isn’t even that gross: “I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater.” Okay, it’s pretty gross.

14. Unrest, “Cherry Cream On”
Back when indie pop was much more comfortable with perversion and subversion, Unrest cornered the market by making songs that were cloyingly saccharine on one side and creepily sexy on the other. “Cherry Cream On” is one of the many highlights of the band’s 1992 classic Imperial f.f.r.r., and the titular double entendre is not meant to be subtle: “Cherry cream / Cherry suck on / Cherry cream on / Cherry girl,” croons Mark Robinson over an immaculately jangly riff, “Cherry cherry / I want to get inside her.”

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Music: Mixlist: “What have I done stuck my dick in?”: 15 songs about VD

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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