Kylie’s risque lyrics have got me spinning around

Mid-to-late-Eighties was the period of my first musical awakening. I started to watch Top of the Pops regularly and to discuss the latest hits with my schoolmates in the playground. I forced my parents to play my tapes in the car until they finally decided it was better for everyone if they got me a Walkman.

My tastes were about as vanilla as you might expect for a middle-class eight-year-old in semi-rural Cambridgeshire. The first albums I got, mostly as birthday and Christmas presents, were by Europe, Bros, T’Pau and Erasure. We also had a “Hits, Hits, Hits” collection that came courtesy of some BP vouchers. The opening song was one of Kylie Minogue’s early number ones.

Back then, Kylie was all curly hair, plaid shirts and the locomotion – the epitome of child-friendly hitmaker. My brother and I used to sing along with gusto to the identikit Stock, Aitken and Waterman tracks that made her – and a raft of other young things – wildly famous.

Thirty-five years on, Kylie is still bringing catchy tunes to the masses. So catchy, in fact, that the other day I caught myself joining in with her latest smash, “Tension”, which is currently a staple of the Radio 2 playlist. Regrettably, the lyrics aren’t quite as innocent as those Eighties gems.

“Oh my God,” I sang along unthinkingly, “touch me right there. Almost there, touch me right there... Baby break the tension.” It’s less “put your hand on your heart”, as she was singing in 1989, and more “put your hand on my clitoris”.

And that’s all very well, but will anyone think of the children? Certainly, I wasn’t considering them, until I realised several bars in that the words that were coming out of my mouth, and out of Kylie’s, were perhaps not the ideal accompaniment to my young son’s bowl of Cheerios. Fortunately, I think he was too engrossed in the sports pages of the newspaper to be unduly harmed. But still, it’s a funny thing to be echoing round the house at 7.15am.

Risque song lyrics are, I realise, as old as the hills, but at least they used to cause controversy. The Kingsmen’s version of “Louie Louie” sparked an FBI investigation in 1963, when concerned parents became convinced that their teen children were listening to absolute, if indiscernible, filth. Even in the Eighties, people had the good grace to be moderately outraged by Madonna’s wilder moments and by Frankie saying relax.

Now, 55-year-olds are merrily demanding to be touched “right there”, while the rest of us are eating our toast, without so much as a batted eyelid from the radio DJ. As for less mature pop icons, there appears to be no limit to their open smut. At the modest end are remarkably unsubtle references to hardness and wetness; among the less tempered are lyrics that I couldn’t possibly repeat without blushing – and I’m not a total prude.

For better or worse, my children may end up being less appalled by these things than I either was at their age, or am now, such is the nature of the world in 2023.

As a teenager I remember regularly skipping a song that included the phrase “when we made love”, so excruciating did I find the thought of my parents possibly hearing it. I’d probably still skip it now if mum and dad were within earshot, or if the kids were. Frankly, I hope my children will have the decency to do the same when they discover the likes of “Deepthroat”, by Cupcakke, which leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Of course, things do occasionally go full circle. Maybe younger generations will tire of musical pornography smashing into their ears and will demand a return to less fruity pop. Will it happen though? I should be so lucky.