- 2 days ago
We all sang along to these catchy tunes, but looking back, the lyrics were way more adult than we realized! From “SexyBack” to “My Humps,” these songs filled our childhood playlists with suggestive beats and hidden meanings. Join us as we revisit the hits that made us dance while making our parents raise an eyebrow. Get ready for a trip down memory lane full of nostalgia and a little bit of cringe!
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00:00So ladies, ladies, do you wanna roll my Mercedes?
00:04Welcome to Ms. Mojo.
00:06And today, we're counting down our picks for the raunchy hits that are more adult than we probably realized,
00:12but we still sang along to as kids.
00:21Number 20, Sexy Back, Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland.
00:31While it's not a bad word in the traditional sense,
00:35there's something a little uncomfortable looking back on how much we loved this one.
00:39There was a lot of hype around Justin Timberlake's 2006 album, Future Sex Love Sounds.
00:44You see these shackles, baby, I'm the slave.
00:48I'll let you whip me if I misbehave.
00:52His post-NSYNC moment saw him busting out of his relatively tame image of the boy band Frontman,
00:58but his audience was still largely young and impressionable.
01:02Sexy Back is an example of a relentless beat that can wear you down by the end.
01:13Timberlake's groaning, altered voice on the track was just another clue
01:16as to what exactly he meant by bringing sexy back.
01:26Number 19, Lady Marmalade, Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Maya, and Pink.
01:40Originally recorded by LaBelle in 1974,
01:44this sultry soul classic is about a New Orleans sex worker and her various clients.
01:49Famously, its most erotically charged lyric is sung in French.
02:00The version that was included on the soundtrack of the 2001 hit film Moulin Rouge revived the track
02:06for a millennial audience.
02:08From the flashy music video to its dynamic mix of powerful but distinctive voices,
02:13the new Lady Marmalade took the charts by storm.
02:16How were we supposed to know what it was about?
02:26Even original performer Patti LaBelle claimed she had no idea what it meant until after recording it.
02:41Whistling sounds like the most innocuous,
02:44inoffensive thing a song could possibly be about.
02:52Those opening notes with the whistle hook and strumming of the guitar
02:56don't really suggest a song about what we're to understand is an act of a sexual nature.
03:01Flo Rida's 2012 hit asks one simple question.
03:05Can you blow my whistle?
03:06Blow my whistle, baby, whistle, baby, let me know.
03:10Girl, I'm gonna show you how to do it and we start real slow.
03:15The double meaning was obvious to everyone.
03:17Though Flo Rida is not the first to bury a dirty metaphor in a song,
03:21this one is pretty apparent from the first line.
03:23Maybe that's partly why we bumped it so much.
03:34Number 17.
03:36Promiscuous.
03:36Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland.
03:39How you doing, young lady?
03:41The feeling that you're giving really drives me crazy.
03:43To be fair, most of us had probably never heard the word promiscuous
03:47before Nelly Furtado brought it into our lives.
03:50So really, she was doing her part to educate the youth.
03:53Although we're pretty sure it wasn't on any of our vocab tests,
03:57we thank her just the same.
03:58You expect me to just let you hit it, but will you still respect me if you get it?
04:02With a beat this bouncy, you're gonna catch listeners who have no idea what's actually being said.
04:07This song is just too fun.
04:11Iniscuous girl, whatever you are, I'm all alone.
04:15It's unforgettable chorus and hooks are like a siren call
04:19for anyone who was young enough to have this song permanently lodged in their brain.
04:23When it's good, you already know
04:26Yeah, I'm all alone.
04:29What you waiting for?
04:31Number 16.
04:32Thong Song.
04:33Cisco.
04:34Hold on, though.
04:35What's up?
04:36What's this?
04:41As one of the first worldwide hits of the new millennium,
04:44this song gave new meaning to the phrase one-track mind.
04:48Cisco's lyrics consist of unfinished ideas,
04:50as the song's narrator is rendered speechless by various features of his date's body.
04:56And she had bumps like a truck, truck, truck,
04:59dies like a, what, what, all night long.
05:02The title garment is the star.
05:04Thong Song has been called everything from sexist to indecent to just downright bad.
05:10Let me see that song.
05:16Baby show.
05:17Yet its scandalous music video, its silliness,
05:20and its bizarre sense of drama make it an irresistible cultural object.
05:24As the years go by,
05:25Thong Song is more likely to make us laugh than to make us clutch our pearls.
05:30Number 15.
05:31Macarena.
05:32Los Del Rio.
05:40How could Macarena ever be inappropriate?
05:43It's got the funny little dance,
05:44and your P.E. teacher might have even put it on sometimes.
05:47Would the Clintons and the entire audience of the 1996 DNC dance to a song that was inappropriate?
05:54Who with me, tell with me, and if you could, I'd take you home with me.
05:58Originally, this Los Del Rio track was about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend
06:02while he's away enlisting with the army.
06:04As for the famous dance remix by the Bayside Boys,
06:07that one's about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend with his two friends while he's out of town.
06:11Everybody dance!
06:12What is that?
06:18Hey, Macarena!
06:20Bye!
06:21Number 14.
06:22Smack That.
06:23Akon featuring Eminem.
06:26Akon.
06:31This is another one of those songs that was produced to be as catchy as possible
06:35despite being about some fairly adult themes.
06:38Reaching number one on several charts across the globe,
06:41Akon's club hit is a prime example of the R&B sound that dominated the mid-2000s.
06:53Suggestive lyrics about meeting a woman at a club and taking her home
06:57are described in vivid, if sometimes goofy, and dated detail.
07:01A feature from Slim Shady himself drives home just how mature this one was meant to be.
07:08He's the one singing the song that's playing.
07:10I feel you creeping, I can see it from my shadow.
07:14But you can't stop a good song.
07:16Smack that hat all on the floor.
07:18Smack that hat, give me some rules.
07:20Smack that hat till you get sore.
07:22Number 13. Milkshake, Khalees.
07:25In 2003, many of us were still too young to know what the word euphemism means.
07:29But you know what we did understand?
07:31The deliciousness of a sweet and creamy milkshake.
07:43Why did Khalees bring all the boys to the yard?
07:45Well, why not?
07:46Boys can like milkshakes too, right?
07:48This one has an air of plausible deniability to it.
08:00Even as an adult, you hear it and you know what she's talking about,
08:03but she doesn't ever truly say it.
08:05Whatever questions we had,
08:07we knew milkshake was hard to forget and incredibly easy to dance to.
08:16Number 12. Baby Got Back, Sir Mix-A-Lot.
08:20I like big butts and I cannot lie.
08:22You other brothers can't deny.
08:24That when a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist
08:26and a round thing in your face, you get sprung.
08:29Released to fanfare and major blowback in 1992,
08:32the artist behind this now iconic hit
08:34explained that it was a tribute to curvaceous women.
08:38Baby Got Back has one of the most famous spoken word intros
08:41of any song ever made.
08:43Oh my god, Becky, look at her butt.
08:47It is so big.
08:48She looks like one of those rap guys' girlfriends.
08:52Its risque lyrics and graphic music video saw major pushback.
08:56So naturally, it went on to become a hit at weddings,
08:59family functions, and backyard barbecues.
09:02Fellas, yeah, fellas, yeah.
09:04Your girlfriend got your butt.
09:05Hell yeah.
09:06Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake that healthy butt.
09:09Baby Got Back.
09:10This one was hard to get away from.
09:11It even appeared in Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party
09:15because someone thought that was a good idea.
09:18I like big butts and I cannot lie.
09:20You other brothers can't deny.
09:22Number 11, If You Seek Amy, Britney Spears.
09:25Baby, baby, have you seen Amy tonight?
09:28Is she in the bathroom?
09:30Is she smoking up outside?
09:32You mean to tell us she wasn't talking about a girl named Amy?
09:35What if we told you If You Seek Amy was actually a piece
09:38of extremely clever wordplay from the princess of pop herself?
09:42This one caused controversy when it was released in 2009.
09:46The Parents Television Council called for it to be restricted from the radio.
09:50I just wanna go to the party.
09:52She gon' go.
09:53Can somebody take me home?
09:55Ha ha hee hee ha ha.
09:56As usual, this probably just made it more popular.
10:00Presented in Britney Spears' usual glossy pop sound,
10:03it's an ear-catching track that encourages spirited sing-alongs.
10:07Love me, hate me, but can't you see what I see?
10:11All of the boys and all the girls are begging to lift you seeking me.
10:14If anything, it certainly made a whole lot of kids very interested in spelling.
10:19Number 10, Peacock, Katy Perry.
10:22I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock, your peacock, cock.
10:26This is one of those songs where the meaning is obvious,
10:29but you also get the plausible deniability.
10:31She wants to see your peacock.
10:33What's wrong with that?
10:34Who are you to say that Katy Perry isn't really just interested in ornithology?
10:46Like much of her music during that time,
10:48it's bubbly, buoyant, and almost naive-sounding.
10:52Even with that, there's no escaping the real meaning behind Peacock.
11:02Dressing up such a suggestive idea in an innocent-sounding cheer is kind of ingenious.
11:07It broadens its appeal and makes it much easier for young ears to respond.
11:11It is one of those songs that might have an obvious innuendo in it.
11:18It's really a cute song.
11:21Number 9, Get Low.
11:23Lil Jon and the East Side Boys featuring Ying Yang twins.
11:32This really explicit early 2000s hit popularized the crunk genre
11:36in the mainstream.
11:38The chorus starts with,
11:39To the window, to the wall.
11:40We'll let you fill in the rest.
11:42We know you remember it.
11:43Can I play with Joe Pantin line?
11:46The club gonna say I need to calm down.
11:48Security guard gonna swim in now.
11:50Get Low has some of the most memorable lines of any song of the era.
11:54There's even a call and response structure
11:56that makes it impossible not to sing along.
11:58Not that we had any business singing along to it.
12:01Drop your ass to the floor, you scared, you scared.
12:03Let me see you get low, you scared, you scared.
12:05Drop your ass to the floor, you scared, you scared.
12:07Even in its less explicit radio edit,
12:10Get Low includes at least one vulgar euphemism
12:12that got past the censors.
12:14Let me see you get low, you scared, you scared.
12:16Drop your ass to the floor, you scared, you scared.
12:19Let me see you get low.
12:20Number 8, Blame It.
12:22Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain.
12:24Blame it on the losers, got your feeling losers.
12:27Blame it on the throne, got your feeling to go.
12:29There are plenty of songs about excessive drinking
12:31and impulsive behavior,
12:33but none quite as easy to sing along to.
12:36Blame it is an ode to overflowing alcohol,
12:38backseat liaisons, and impaired judgment.
12:41Now I'm knowing she tipsy,
12:43She pulled her body on me,
12:45And she keeps staring me right in my eyes.
12:49Jamie Foxx and T-Pain made it all sound so cool.
12:52The repetitive chorus just lodges in your brain even more.
13:02Bumping this track gave a lot of us a window into a world
13:05we were still a few years away from experiencing.
13:08In our defense, there are adults who probably don't recognize
13:11how questionable some of the antics in this song are.
13:14You see the video?
13:15It's like us.
13:16I'm just like trying to be hard,
13:18and I'm just like rolling like this.
13:19And it's just all of us going.
13:33Like many of the pop girlies of the late 90s and early 2000s,
13:38Christina Aguilera's image was about merging youthful femininity
13:41and sexual confidence.
13:42There's a streak of self-determination in Genie in a Bottle.
13:53It's as much about tantalizing a potential lover
13:56as it is about advocating for her own pleasure.
13:59Of course, that's a pretty intellectual view of a song
14:01that we just uncritically added to the playlist of our childhood.
14:09The song's images of physical touch and repression
14:12are all tied to the central metaphor.
14:14But even in isolation, they're pretty steamy stuff.
14:23Number six, It Wasn't Me.
14:26Shaggy featuring Ricardo, Rick Rock, Ducent.
14:35A catchy enough song can make you glaze right over the lyrics.
14:39In It Wasn't Me, the narrator and his friend
14:42come up with myriad ways to throw a woman off the scent
14:45when you're being unfaithful to her.
14:54Where other songs might take these themes seriously,
14:57this track finds humor and mischief in them.
15:07When you grow up a little and learn a few things about relationships,
15:10this is one of those songs you go back to
15:12and wonder what about it spoke to you when you were young.
15:15Let's just hope its message didn't take.
15:17All this time, she was standing there.
15:21She never took her eyes off me.
15:23You know what, you know what, you know what?
15:24It wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't me.
15:27Number five, Candy Shop, 50 Cent featuring Olivia.
15:30I'll take you to the Candy Shop.
15:33I'll let you go, I'll let you pop.
15:36Go ahead girl, don't you stop.
15:37Like any great poem, sometimes a song finds fun and interesting ways
15:41to say something without saying it.
15:44Candy Shop's metaphor works on multiple levels.
15:5350 Cent actually devised the track as a challenge to himself.
15:57Could he write an intensely sexual song without having to be vulgar or obscene?
16:02Mixing the sweet, innocent imagery of Candy and sweets
16:05with an undercurrent of sensuality fits the bill.
16:07Cause I ain't never put it down like
16:09As soon as I come through the door she'll get to pulling on my zipper
16:12It's like it's a race who could get undressed quicker
16:15Yeah, it's pretty obvious when you're an adult.
16:17If you're young enough though, it might be easy to take the lyrics about lollipops at face value
16:22and maybe that's for the best.
16:23You can have it your way
16:26How do you want it?
16:27Gonna back that thing up or should I push up on it?
16:30Number four, Love Game, Lady Gaga.
16:33I wanna take a ride on a disco stick
16:35Don't think too much, just bust that stick
16:37I wanna take a ride on your disco stick
16:39Once upon a time, there was a brand new artist with an interesting name
16:43and even more out there fashions.
16:45One of Lady Gaga's earliest singles doesn't leave a lot to the imagination.
16:49You've indicated your interest
16:52I'm educated in sex, yes
16:54And now I want it bad, want it bad
16:57Love Game has some of the best hooks on her debut album
17:00but she also had a singing about disco sticks.
17:03What could she possibly mean by that?
17:05Maybe it's our minds that are in the gutter
17:08Because the lyric in the song is
17:09Do you want love or do you want fame?
17:11So I have a torrid, torrid, torrid love triangle
17:15between love, fame and myself
17:18Surely this is a song about having fun at the club with your friends
17:21We're gonna choose to live in ignorance just like our parents did in 2009
17:33Number 3
17:34Work It
17:35Missy Elliott
17:43Fewer Y2K era songs were so well-written yet so full of filth.
17:48Work It is a masterclass in R-rated poetry.
17:51Missy Elliott doesn't get the credit for how layered, complex and hilarious her rhymes are
17:56Even if they are full of adult-oriented meaning
17:59And that goes for the words that aren't hidden behind that elephant sound
18:07It's kind of impressive what she gets away with in these words
18:10It's not all that explicit
18:12But it is as suggestive as it gets
18:18This may not be for kids
18:20But it didn't stop us from jamming out to it
18:22Who didn't see child performer Alison Stoner's dance in the music video
18:26And wonder if that could be us someday?
18:29It's worth it, let me work it
18:31I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it
18:34Number 2
18:34S&M
18:35Rihanna
18:36Yeah, the clue here was in the title
18:42Rihanna's absolute bop from 2011 was originally envisioned for Britney Spears
18:47But by the time it was released, the umbrella hitmaker had put her own spin on it
19:00Obviously, the whips, chains, and other taboo sexual imagery are what lands this squarely in the inappropriate column
19:07So much so that we can't even show you most of the music video without YouTube flagging us for it
19:12Not that Rihanna has ever not been for adults
19:21Still, this one takes the cake
19:23If only it weren't so fun to sing
19:25Provocative, knowingly naughty, and well-produced
19:29It was like catnip when we were still learning about the birds and the bees
19:39Number 1
19:40My Humps
19:41Black Eyed Peas
19:50If you put a catchy enough beat behind a song, you can get away with a lot
19:54At first listen, My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas just sounds a lot like any other bouncy and repetitive
20:00pop song
20:08Sure, there's the overarching theme of materialism and money
20:11That's not exactly imparting a wonderful message
20:14Radio-friendly references to lovely lady lumps
20:17And all that junk inside your trunk
20:19Were not quite as innocent as we may have first thought
20:30It didn't stop us from bumping it on our iPods or getting it played at the middle school dance
20:42What song from your childhood makes you nostalgic and a little uncomfortable?
20:47Sound off in the comments