150. The Worst Song to Fuck To, Part 1
A MEGAPOST featuring Kristen Arnett, Ashley Ray, PAUL SCHEER, Susie Meister, Frankie De La Cretaz, and more!
I finally recently put my two besties,
and Mike Duquette, in a group chat together for them to talk about the Muppets and Prince and whatever the fuck the only good men in my life possess as interests, and as I pitched a few ideas to them for new megapost concepts we lucked onto “the worst song you could possibly have sex to.” I loved it, put on my big girl thong, and immediately ran out to ask people who I adore but am afraid of because of their talent, success, or both to contribute. The responses were overwhelming, not only in the enthusiasm of so many incredible people to participate but how funny and horrifically unhorny these chosen songs were. We had enough for MULTIPLE parts: this first part features mostly writers, and the next will feature some incredible, can’t-believe-they-know-I-exist musicians.And as for mine? The worst song you could possibly fuck to? The Steelers Polka.
I can’t believe (some of) you pay me to do shit like this. I am so grateful.
: “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khaled
“Unless you’re in it for a cheeky and ironic night of getting Biblical, DJ Khaled’s stadium hit “All I Do Is Win” ups the ante to a terrifying degree. The expectation to perform is burdensome enough; the expectation to *win* is overwhelming. DJ Khaled’s anthem is better suited for the big leagues, not the bedroom. Let’s just keep it simple: You don’t have to win, just have to not lose.”
hails from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and is the proud adoptive parent of a snaggle-toothed whippet named Otis. Sam is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Buffalo. More of his work can be found in Bullshit Lit, fifth wheel press, Gyroscope Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. You can buy Sam’s chapbook Intoxicating Sonnets via Bullshit Lit and subscribe to .
: “Like A Virgin” by Madonna
“Like a Virgin - Because it really puts you in your head”
Actually losing my fucking mind that Tall John Scheer agreed to be in this post. I am one of the “I am Hercules” contestants in the Schwarzenegger Hercules episode. That was ten years ago. Losing my fucking mind. Truncated from Wikipedia: "Scheer is best known for his roles in FX/FXX's The League, co-created and starred in Adult Swim's series NTSF:SD:SUV::, and has had recurring roles on ABC's Fresh Off the Boat and HBO's Veep. Away from his acting work, Scheer co-hosts two film discussion podcasts: How Did This Get Made?, alongside his wife June Diane Raphael and longtime collaborator Jason Mantzoukas, and Unspooled with film critic Amy Nicholson.” But the thing I will love Paul the most for forever is starring in a PSA for suicide awareness in Oklahoma, making its producer’s, my ex-boyfriend I’m still in love with’s, life:
also Monique, who will be in Part 3 (!!) read this and sent me this I can’t believe:
: “Go To Town” by Doja Cat
“It happened to me: I played an album on Spotify during a hookup and then the app’s radio autoplayed perhaps the most on the nose and least sexy song for the moment. Doja Cat has a lot of sexy songs, but unfortunately this happened before all of those came out. Needless to say, it was a bit abrasive for the mood. We didn’t really need Miss Cat narrating us through the motions. I think I just let it play out but let’s just say lessons were learned (do not let Spotify pick your sex playlist).”
is an internet and pop culture reporter with bylines in NBC News, Vulture, Bustle and more. Find her on Instagram and TikTok at @haveanicedaysia. Subscribe to her upcoming newsletter at yapyear.com.
Scott Interrante: "Sir Duke (Saxophone Only)" by Stevie Wonder as played by my dad
“Honestly I find myself distracted by any music during sex, regardless of the mood or style, so I almost always opt for silence. But one memory in particular haunts me. It was New Year's Eve and my college girlfriend and I were at my childhood home in my twin bed. I can't remember the specifics of why we thought we were alone, but my dad must have come home without us noticing. He's a musician and plays sax in a band called That 70s Band--they're quite popular on Long Island with the over-50 bar and club crowds. And he was getting ready for a gig that night, so he was downstairs warming up. Of course, many people find the saxophone to be a sensual aphrodisiac, perfect for love making. But when it's your dad playing the riff to Sir Duke downstairs? Not as much! Luckily he left soon after and I'm sure we successfully got it on, but honestly I don't remember that part!”
is a musician who makes music for reality tv shows and hosts a podcast called This Is The Greatest Song I've Ever Heard In My Entire Life. @Scottinterrante on bluesky and @gr8songpod on Instagram.
: “Fingertips” by They Might Be Giants
“Fucking to "Fingertips" would be like having sex in a car and in your rhythmic throes hitting the Seek button on the radio again and again with your butt. The songs-within-the-song like "Mysterious Whisper" and "Darkened Corridors" are when you're readjusting or taking a break to switch positions. "Please Pass the Milk" would make you both giggle, a little embarrassed for a moment. I'm actually making this sound not too bad. Maybe we should all be fucking to "Fingertips" in cars. When They Might Be Giants first performed "Fingertips" live in its entirety in November of 2000, John Flansburgh introduced it by saying, "There is no rehearsal, there are no refunds, this is the big time. See you on the other side," which would also be an awesome thing to say to someone before having sex with them.”
edits wig-wag, co-hosts Film Fest, and runs Montage. He lives in Bed-Stuy.
: “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex
“The true boner killer for me during sex would have to be "Cotton-Eye Joe" by Rednex. Don't get me wrong, I think it's completely possible that another human being could have sex with this on in the background and get off just fine (though that's horrifying to consider). For me, that song is a haunted memory - it was playing, loudly, the last time I felt truly humiliated. In high school, I was in show choir and our director was the kind of guy who would get incredibly angry and keyed-up for no particular reason. One day he decided that everyone would need to get up, alone, and dance to some specific choreography if we expected to be allowed back into show choir the following year. He chose this particular song for me. At the time, I was sixteen and not much of a dancer. I was also painfully, wretchedly shy. Standing in front of a room full of my peers while this angry man shouted at me that I wasn't getting the steps right while the Rednex twanged on about wanting to know where Joe came from, where did Joe go, made this song turn into a kind of funeral dirge for me. I burst into tears and spent the remainder of the day in the school bathroom, sobbing my eyes out. Having sex to this is something that might come to me in a nightmare???? Like the equivalent of suddenly finding yourself naked on stage or being woefully unprepared for a test. Definitely not the energy I want to bring when it comes to fucking another woman!”
is an American fiction author and essayist. Her debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, was a New York Times bestseller. She can be found on Instagram @kristen__arnett, Twitter @Kristen_Arnett, kristenarnett.bsky.social, kristenarnett.substack.com, and kristenarnettwriter.com.
: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles
“For me it would be Video Killed the Radio Star because then I’d be fucking to the sound of my father-in-law’s voice.”
is the author of the newsletter, which covers the intersections of queer sports and pop culture.
Just gonna let my best friend Jason Berk go nutnut here:
“There are many ways to approach such a topic I’ll refer to as “killer boner jams,” though in this particular instance we’re more discussing “boner killer jams.” There are plenty of “joke” answers — obviously nobody’s getting their back blown out to Darius Rucker’s “Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch” Burger King Jingle (though if anyone wants to try, my DMs are open).
Speaking from personal experience, I’ve had to pause the proceedings on at least two occasions, when my shuffled iTunes library started playing Ray Parker Jr.’s classic “Ghostbusters,” and on a later date The Lonely Island’s “Space Olympics.” But I knew they were bad choices of songs to fuck to, which is why I elected to turn them off.
There are some who disagree with the notion of music accompanying sex. These people are wrong, and should be shunned from polite society. They likely assume that us music-havers (read: sex-havers) put on cheesy smooth jazz — the kind you’d hear in a 90s porno (one that you actually would call “a porno” instead of just “porn,” because there’s nothing really pornographic about smooth jazz, harsh lighting, and soft focus). These are not the kind of people who have gazed longingly out the window of a bus or an airplane with headphones on, pretending they’re in a Zach Braff movie (the good one). These are also not people who live in apartments with thin walls who have some respect for their neighbors or roommates. Not to mention that real heads know that jazz is acceptable for sex if it ebbs and flows, with a mild undercurrent of spirituality and its own sense of tension and release. I’ve used Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” to great effect (again, my DMs are open).
Classic rock also has its place in the “music to fuck to” canon — in my teenage years I once spent hours making out to the entirety of Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” live album. It doesn’t have the raw power of “How the West Was Won,” which documented the band’s Southern California performances a year prior, but the orchestral textures provided by John Paul Jones’s increasing use of keyboards onstage wer— wait, where are you going?
Oh yeah. BAD songs to fuck to. Right.
Despite being a deeply horny, jealous, lustful song that would no doubt be the perfect underscore for a great sex scene in a tv show or movie, Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” doesn’t translate the same way in the bedroom. It starts very sparsely, the vocals at a low whisper, but suddenly you hear some coked-up “haga hooga hooga” chanting on the background and then suddenly — it’s THE 112-MEMBER USC MARCHING BAND!
I’m not saying it’s impossible to fuck to “Tusk.” Hell, it might even be the thing you need if you’re worried about your stamina and it’s the off-season so thinking about baseball isn’t doing the trick. And I can’t say it’s the worst song to fuck to, but if you’re anything like me, you’ve definitely put it on a playlist for the purposes of fucking, only to forget that it was on there once it was too late, and the sounds of your lovemaking are punctuated by 112 college students all blasting brass instruments.
My DMs, as always, remain open.”
Jason Berk is a singer/songwriter, musician, and freelance writer based in Los Angeles. He has performed with Cat Power, John Sebastian, Paul F. Tompkins, and Tim Heidecker, to name a few, and his writing has appeared in publications like Relix Magazine and HITS DailyDouble.
Sarah Artt on the perils of fucking to Leonard Cohen:
“Back in the era before your tailored fuck playlist, one sometimes had to select AN ALBUM as the soundtrack to your seduction (planned or unplanned). Personally, I always had great success with The Velvet Underground’s Andy Warhol album, Tom Waits’ Heartattack and Vine, and of course, anything by Portishead. A more uneasy soundtrack was Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man. In many ways a superb introduction to his gravelly appeal, containing the strange but still suitably sensual “Everybody Knows” and the plaintive “Take this Waltz” but this was followed immediately by the irritatingly weird “Jazz Police”. This temporal outlier feels as if it has escaped from an intellectually ambitious but ultimately boring science fiction short or television episode, and it ABSOLUTELY KILLS THE VIBE which is otherwise, filled with longing and surrender. The rest of the album is, quite frankly, the perfect length for a brief but sensual hook-up, perfectly paced for you to proceed from making out, to hopefully everyone involved having an orgasm, and perhaps capped off with a shared cigarette.”
Artt writes about cinema, perfume, and smells at Visual Aroma. Her book, Quiet Pictures: Women and Silence in Contemporary British and French Cinema is out now from Bloomsbury Academic (you can now pre-order the much more affordable paperback!)
: “Milkman” by Aphex Twin
“Let me lightly preface this by saying that when I teach workshops on writing poetry about sex/desire, I emphasize that what we think of as “erotic” can (& perhaps should!) be also funny, silly, etc., so the level of unsexy that had transpired in order to move this needle was, in a word, severe. The memory rushed back immediately: stealing away to an empty bedroom at a party years ago, on some substance that made me feel sparkly, the beautiful sort of idiot-horny that causes you to act like it’s a complete emergency…
... Only to hear, just a few minutes into it, the unmistakable, eerie-ass intro of Aphex Twin’s “Milkman”, blaring from rooms away. There was nothing we could do about it, & we bravely pressed on. But it’s pretty damn hard to block out the song’s creepiness, especially its (very repetitive) refrain of “I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits”. Bummer because it’s an ambient electronic track that could totally be a vibe, otherwise.
So if you’re having a raucous house party, maybe consider the lovers (however, uh, fleeting) when making a playlist. Or, to be fair, maybe the lovers should consider a second location…”
is the author of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award-nominated poetry collection Toska, published by Deep Vellum. You can find her work in various places, & her spirit in the astral realm. More at alinapleskova.com.
: “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler
“First of all, what I learned from this important assignment is that there is almost no song that can dampen my desire to do the naked pretzel. Macarena? No problem. Who let the dogs out? Who cares, let’s bang! So, it took a minute for me to de-horn and the song that did the trick?! [Sad trombone sound]: Wind Beneath My Wings. Listen, The Divine Miss M is singular; she has the voice of an angel and pipes that won’t quit, but I cannot climax with a song from a movie about terminal cancer. Even I have my limits!!! And if I’m honest, it’s a little too schmaltzy even in a non-carnal context. You know what, never mind, I’d screw to it, but I’d be a little distracted.”
is a PhD in Religious Studies, cast member on MTV’s The Challenge, and host of The Brain Candy Podcast. Instagram @susiemeister.
: “Surrender” by Cheap Trick
“The absolute worst song to have sex to is Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” I know from personal experience. I share a hometown with Cheap Trick, which means their songs were all over my youth. They played nearly every local concert and festival. One time, while navigating an obstacle-filled backseat car hook-up, the band started playing at a nearby racetrack. When you’re getting railed against a passenger seat, you don’t want to imagine if your mommy or daddy are alright. They may seem a little weird, but thinking about them while someone is going down on me is even weirder. Also it’s about his mom telling him not to have sex because he might catch something. Then it ends with him seeing his parents fuck on a couch while he tries to drown them out with his KISS records. It is impossible to surrender yourself to lust with someone begging you to surrender to your parents. “I Want Your to Want Me” works, though.”
is a comedian and pop culture critic based in Los Angeles, CA who runs the Substack , home to that viral JonBenet essay that I refreshed for updates 73 times, and has a comedy album called Ice Cream Money. Tara wrote this bio because I had to include the JonBenet essay:
My buddy with three that took me the fuck out:
“The three worst that come to mind, in order of not so bad to worst: cbat by Hudson Mohawke1, the You'll Be in My Heart cover by Boys Like Girls from Disney's "A Whole New Sound", and the worst song to have sex to, in my opinion, would probably be Dare You to Move by Switchfoot!”
Caleb is an American Youth Group Survivor now thriving in Warsaw, Poland!
Joe Rumrill: “(This Is The) Song That Doesn’t End” by Shari Lewis’ Lambchop
“I think the worst song to have sex to is probably “(This Is The) Song That Doesn’t End” by Shari Lewis’ Lambchop. The length of the song (which is, if done correctly, infinity minutes) sets an anxiety-inducing amount of pressure on the participants to last a dangerously long time…chafing is sure to happen. Also, I may be in the minority here, but I’ve long believed there’s a certain lack of eroticism in the timbre of Lambchop’s singing voice. In fact, I’d personally steer clear of her entire discography the next time you’re being intimate. Stick to music made by human beings (or, in a pinch, Crazy Frogs).”
Joe Rumrill is a Los Angeles based stand up comedian and writer who has appeared on the Chris Gethard Show and HBO’s Fantasmas. @joerumrillhooray
: “Kids” by MGMT
I’m a deeply auditory person, especially during sex, so I’m generally not into music during— I prefer the more organic sounds of the moment, in a manner of speaking— but the utter mindfuck of including Kids by MGMT on a playlist for such an occasion remains one of the worst experiences of mixing sex and music. Not only had it been overplayed to death by then to the point of hating it with the power of a thousand suns, but listening to those nostalgic, existential lyrics during what’s supposed to be a sensual moment? Absolute hell, friends. Would not recommend.
(depraveddame) is a fanfic writer tirelessly endeavoring to adorn fandom spaces with her penchant for kink, BDSM and sex positivity. Find her as depraveddame on Ao3, tumblr, and bluesky.
Tara jumping in: spoiler alert but this song shows up in Part Two as well! And possibly Part 3!
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 |
|
tysm for asking me to contribute to this!
I am roaring with laughter over here and flummoxed with not being able to finish at the same time. Cotton Eyed Joe and Wind Beneath my Wings are my faves on this epic list! Bravo!