February's Hungry and Horny Playlist
6 Innuendo-Filled Songs That Aren't Actually About Food... Probably
Earlier this week I wrote about “Buttered Popcorn,” The Supremes track supposedly about a man who can’t get enough popcorn. With lines like, “He likes it greasy and sticky and gooey and salty,” though, you have to wonder… is this really about popcorn?
Food has been used as a euphemism for sex for generations — in visual art, literature, music, and beyond.
Warrant wasn’t singing about cherry pie, Mariah Carey wasn’t singing about honey, Kelis wasn’t singing about a milkshake, and I don’t care what songwriters Berry Gordy and Barney Ales have said, but I don’t think The Supremes were singing about buttered popcorn either.
That’s part of the fun with these types of songs, though, isn’t it? The flirty “Is it or isn’t it?” wink only adds to their appeal. Here are six more really good songs about food. Or maybe “food.” Are they hungry or horny? You be the judge.
And be sure to tell me about your favorite hungry/horny songs in the comments! Together we could build a pretty delicious Valentine’s Day playlist.
“My Butcher Man” by Memphis Minnie
Blues singer Memphis Minnie loved to use food as a double entendre — her catalog includes songs like “I’m Gonna Bake My Biscuits” (which was covered by Mazzy Starr) “You Stole My Cake,” and “Selling My Pork Chops,” all of which could be interpreted to be about something else entirely.
She was a Black woman ruling in a very male-dominated blues scene by sharing her own experiences and expressing her sexuality in the early- to mid-1900s. She is a hero.
My favorite food-themed track of hers is “My Butcher Man” because the phrase “grinds my sausage” will never not make me giggle.
Horny or hungry lyric: “I'm going to tell everybody I've got the best butcher man in town / He can slice your ham, he can cut it from the fat on down / He slice my pork chops and he grinds my sausage, too / Ain't nothing in the line of butcherin' that my butcher man can't do.”
“Artichoke” by Cibo Matto
Cibo Matto wrote dozens of songs about food — “Apple,” “Beef Jerky,” “Birthday Cake,” and “White Pepper Ice Cream,” just to name a few from their 1996 debut Viva! La Woman. But, somewhat surprisingly, they’re not all thinly veiled sexual references. In several songs, the avant-garde pop band was having fun and experimenting with wordplay.
“White Pepper Ice Cream,” for example, really is about the delightful experience of eating white pepper ice cream — “I was shot with bullets of pepper / On my lips / I feel a nip.”
One exception is their song “Artichoke,” a minimalistic, sensual track that makes peeling back the leaves of an artichoke sound sexy AF. As singer Miho Hatori asks over and over again in sybaritic whispers, “Are you gonna keep on peeling me,” it becomes very clear very quickly that she ain’t talking about the vegetable.
Horny or hungry lyric: “Though I can't stop plucking off / I can't see my core / I keep asking for you more and more / Can you peel my petals one by one?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Snack and Destroy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.