Who knew that pop-tarts could get hard

Certain words in pop music are used to distract the masses from listening to the awful lyrics being spewed out over the radio-waves, and like moths to the flame we flock to these pop-tarts and their filthy-cute words.

By Abby Wiseman [co-ordinating editor]

As a music fan whose taste sometimes ventures into the shiny world of commercial pop, I have noticed the not-so-new tactic in composing pop songs: the gratuitous use of sexual double-entendres.

To be honest, I really enjoy the odd throw-in of sexual innuendoes. It can be the difference between the song you tune-out in the car and the song you put on your sexy-time soundtrack. It’s effective; it’s cheeky; it’s sexy–but it’s often done poorly.

Kesha, the trashy girl-next-door stumbles home shitfaced wearing cut-off jean-shorts and cowboy boots. Her newest song “We R Who We R” is about being young forever and partying hard, and that’s all gravy. But then she drops in the line: “hitting on guys…” and with a breathy half-second pause “hard.”

Not clever.

We know she dropped in the word “hard” so that everyone in the club jacked up on party-pills will think about sex. I’m sure that none of them care that the lyrics they are dry-humping to are persuading the masses to be in a perpetual state of hot-and-bothered but still, a little consideration for our intelligence is appreciated.

And then there are songs written entirely around a sexual double-entendre word. Take Rihanna’s song “Hard,” where she declares to the world that she’s “so hard” while straddling the shaft of a tank-gun wearing Mickey-Mouse ears.

Again, not clever.

The entire song is built around the word “hard” because, obviously, a woman saying she is hard is sexy, even if it’s anatomically incorrect. I wonder if they would play the song if the line was “I’m so wet.” Would she be straddling a submarine?

Clever sexual play-on-words are in songs like Beyonce’s Big Ego. It’s pretty obvious that she’s talking about her love for a man’s large penis, but really she also enjoys his self-confidence, which is probably boosted by his large penis. It’s not poetry, but it at least has trumpets.

Another interesting note is that while thinking of songs with sexual double-entendres I could only come up with songs sung by females.

Phrases like “so hard”, “touch-it”, “ride it” and “come into me”, sound so much more salacious coming from a female’s red lips–even though Prince was singing about cream in the 80s and 50 Cent boasted about his “magic-stick” well before Gaga told the world she wanted to ride the disco-stick. A dude says it and you forget about it; a woman says it and she’s controversial and “unladylike.”

When I hear Rihanna talking about how hard she is, I think about Lil Kim’s controversial song “How Many Licks”. I think that Rihanna should take after Lil Kim and keep it anatomically correct and put female-oriented foreplay on the table; between every rap artist talking about blow-jobs and how much pussy they get, it would be nice for a pop-tart to tell it how she means it: I want some cunnilingus.