Obligatory Bondage Song

"She's just like a penguin in bondage, boy! OH YEAH! OH YEAH! OH YEAH!"

— Frank Zappa from Roxy & Elsewhere

A music/lyrics trope, and a Sub-Trope of Fanservice.

Eventually, an alternative music band (although sometimes even a relatively mainstream music band) whose lyrics usually do not deal with fetishistic and/or sadomasochistic sex, will at some point write a song that (almost entirely) deals with fetishistic and/or sadomasochistic sex. It could be because they are actually kinky in real life, or it could merely be an attempt at sounding Darker and Edgier. Frequently invoked by Industrial bands, but many other genres do it too.

This is when Intercourse with You gets kinky. Well, kinkier. Bondage Is Bad may or may not be invoked.

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Examples:

• "Venus In Furs" by Velvet Underground from The Velvet Underground & Nico is almost certainly the Trope Maker, way back in 1967. It's named after the 1870 novella Venus in Furs written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the source of the term masochism. This is all obviously Author Appeal, since the name of the band comes from a book about New York City's BDSM scene. "Some Kinda Love" also qualifies.
• This is one possible interpretation of "Pain" by Three Days Grace.
  Pain, I like it rough
  'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all
• "I Wanna Be Your Dog" from The Stooges' Self-Titled Album The Stooges. Iggy Pop alluded to it being about bondage in an interview. The lyrics are not so subtle.
• A very early David Bowie song, "Little Toy Soldier," borrows some lyrics from "Venus in Furs" for very creepy results since it's about a child's toy.
• Plenty of examples from Depeche Mode; "Master and Servant", "A Question of Lust", "Stripped", "Strangelove", "Behind the Wheeel", "Policy of Truth", "Rush", "In Your Room"...it would be easier to list the songs they've done that aren't BDSM-related in some way or form.
• "Neurotica" by Regal Pinion is about taboo-related sex, with the first verse about role-play through the eyes of a child abuse victim, now grown up, and the other two about BDSM with each one focusing on different aspects.
• "The Bondage Song" by London After Midnight
• "White Poem I" by X Japan. Both the music video and the live performance are BDSM scenes featuring Yoshiki Hayashi as the sub. The video features suspension hooks, whips, and looks like a BDSM acid trip. The live performance during Dahlia Tour is unique because it is an actual domination scene with Yoshiki being actually blindfolded, cuffed, whipped, and kicked around for real... and definitely enjoying every moment of it.
• "Catharsis (Heal Me; Control Me)" by SITD
• "Strap Me Down" by Leæther Strip. Leæther Strip write so many Obligatory Bondage Songs that they practically invert this trope and have Obligatory Non-Bondage Songs.
• Fully inverted by Die Form, where literally the vast majority of their songs are related to BDSM.
• "Torment Me" by Suicide Commando
• "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" by X-Ray Spex. Complete with saxophone solo. Although arguably a subversion, if you read the lyrics.
• "Happiness in Slavery" by Nine Inch Nails is another subversion. The title (and the fact the terrifying music video stars S&M Performance Artist Bob Flanagan, as well as the music itself to some extent) makes you expect a bondage song, but in reality the song is about Trent's experiences with TVT Records.
  • Granted, a lot of NIN songs have shades of this ("Closer," "Head Like a Hole," "Meet Your Master," etc.), though it's generally subverted because most of their OBS's usually mean something else completely. With them it's more like "obligatory bondage video", considering the music videos can get pretty...odd.
  • Over at Trent Reznor's other band How to Destroy Angels, "BBB" also has this vibe, with the "big black boots"-wearing narrator commanding someone ("Get down on the ground", "You do what you're told"), with the music itself having a sexual-feel to it. However, like previous Reznor-related examples it's about controlling someone in a non-sexual manner.
• "Torture Me" by Metric:
  Get the rope, tie me to the bedpost
  Because I can't find within myself the happy host
  If I find my peace of mind, torture me
  If I seem too serene, torture me
• "Bad List", "Hurting You Is Good for Me", and "Games" by Ayria
• "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)": "Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused" indeed.
• "Handsome Devil" by The Smiths has elements of this. "I crack the whip And you skip But you deserve it", etc.
  • "Reel Around the Fountain" as well.
• "The Masochism Tango" by Tom Lehrer, although it is an unbuilt parody of the genre, (as well as of Slap-Slap-Kiss tango dances. It's Tom Lehrer after all...)
  • Updated with Amateur Transplants, who made the original sound rather vanilla.
• Another humorous oldie - "Freakin' at the Freakers' Ball" by Shel Silverstein.
• "Eat Me Alive" and "Pain and Pleasure" by Judas Priest. However, despite the title, "Hell-Bent for Leather" is not one of these, instead being about leather-clad badassery. Neither is Island of Domination.
• "Whip It" by Devo. Although this is arguably a result of Misaimed Fandom. Word of God says it was actually meant as an inspirational song for Jimmy Carter, president at the time, to "whip" American policy into shape. When it was a hit, people thought it was about S&M, which amused the band enough that they said, "Sure, Why Not?" and made the video feature literal whipping.
  Jerry Casale: "All the DJs and people hearing it assumed it was a song about beating off or sadomasochism, so we let them think that. We didn't want to ruin it and tell them the truth."
  • Devo played the trope more straight in an early demo, "The Rope Song."
  I found a girl with a pretty face
  I tied a rope around her waist
  I know when she's in and when she's out
  But there ain't nothing to guess about
  ...
  One word from her, and she'd be free
  But she's exactly where she wants to be
• "Pretty Tied Up" by Guns N' Roses.
• The Anime Tenchi Muyo! featured an Image Song on a soundtrack CD called Ojou-sama to O-yobi, which loosely translates to "Call Me Mistress/Princess." It is sung by the Ojou Princess Ayeka. The song involves her explaining to Tenchi that she is going to put him through ''Juraian Bridegroom Training''. Especially after the music video, this song became a Never Live It Down moment in Fanon for both Ayeka and her people. And the creepy thing about it? Even Sasami helps Ayeka out in her training.
• Similiar to the Tenchi example, there is a Knight Hunters song titled Bosanova, Casanova with some provocative lyrics. And since it is a duet between male singers, it even plays into the show's Ho Yay factor.
• "Hell in a Bucket" by the The Grateful Dead.
• "She Whipped" by Peter Tägtgren's Pain.
• "Blood, Sex and Booze" and "Dominated Love Slave" by Green Day.
• "Little Mary Sunshine" from Reefer Madness: The Musical.
• Then, of course, there's "S&M (A Love Song)" and "Spank" by the Kidneythieves, the former featuring such lyrics as "pound the love out of me / beat the love out of me!" and in the latter "thick drops of rain sound like the way you spanked me / your pleasure thrills in every way you make me."
• By Vice Squad, "Latex Love" and "Spikey Hair."
  I wanna tie you up and whip you,
  Cause you're my dream-come-true!
• "The Thin Line" by Queensrÿche.
• "House of Pain" by Van Halen.
• Sarah Brightman, of all people, with "Once in a Lifetime." If you take her connections to Enigma and Gregorian into account, it makes a bit more sense.
• Lagrange Point's "Red Buzzer Beat" refers to pain and pleasure, kneeling, and being tied up in the lyrics, but in their usual poetic way that makes it even sexier than if they'd said it explicitly.
• Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment" takes place at a bondage club, and includes lyrics like "Take the pain, take the pleasure; I'm the master of both."
• Alice Cooper:
  • "Poison" mentions "Black lace on sweat" and says, "I wanna hurt you just to hear you screamin' my name."
  • "Bed of nails" is all about Intercourse with You with lyrics like, "Baby when you scratch / You know I'm gonna bite."
• Vocaloid and UTAU are basically a collection of user-generated content using the Vocaloid/UTAU program. This means that anyone can make a Vocaloid sing anything they want.
  • The Ginsaku Rin Kagamine song "Iroha Uta" opens up with a list of the various things the singer wants to be tied up with. The rest of the song is a touch more subtle, but the implications are still there. "Watashi no Inu" ("My Dog") is another Vocaloid example.
  • Buriru-P's Hatsune Miku songs "Doemu" and "Doesu" are rather explicitly about a codependent SM relationship. "Doemu" is sung from the perspective of the submissive, while "Doesu" is sung from the perspective of the dominant.
  • The singer in HachioujiP's Gumi-sung "KiLLER LADY" comes off as very dominant, comparing the person they're talking about to a dog at a few points.
• Shackles and Whips both feature prominently in the bridge of Justin Timberlake's Sexyback.
• Even The Go-Gos have one - one of their early punk songs was called "Fun with Ropes".
• The Marginal Prophets' "Mistress" is an ode to S&M.
• The title track of the album Bang Goes the Knighthood by The Divine Comedy approaches the subject with tongue planted firmly in cheek, from the perspective of a knighted man in high society who secretly visits a dominatrix for the thrill of it.
  So chain me, restrain me, and teach me to kneel!
  Bind me and grind me beneath your high heels!
  Crack goes the whip, and if someone should tell,
  Bang goes the knighthood as well!
• Lady Gaga's "Teeth"
  "Take a bite of my bad girl meat...I'm gonna love you with my hands tied/show me your teeth"
  • "Heavy Metal Lover" and "I Like It Rough" also play with this trope technically.
• Of course, Ludo's "The Horror of Our Love".
• "House of Wolves" by My Chemical Romance has shades of this, though they’re definitely too punk for this song to be UN-usual for them. Gerard hams up the preacher’s-sermon type lyrics at the top of his lungs to screeching guitars, and he seems to revel in going to hell.
  ”Tell me I’m an angel/ Take this to my grave/ Tell me I’m a bad man/ Kick me like a stray.”
• "Not My Slave" by Oingo Boingo. Well, it's one possible interpretation. Still, given that the song's "Club Dub Mix" begins with several musically-timed whip-snaps, one wonders how much ambiguity is actually existent. Oh, Danny Elfman...
  • "Nasty Habits" is a straighter example, although it's also about sexual habits in general.
• "Sado-Maso" by the Austrian pop-folk singer-songwriter Georg Danzer. Sung to the tune of the Flea Waltz.
• "Pleasure Slave" by Manowar. If the title didn't tip you off, the full fifteen seconds of screaming and moaning women in the opening will.
• "Submission" by the Sex Pistols from Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols was supposed to be this. Halfway through, the band got pissed off with Malcolm McLaren, who proposed the idea in the first place, and decided instead to make it a cheesy, innuendo-filled song about a... submarine mission.
• Madonna from Erotica.
  • "My name is Dita/ I'll be your mistress tonight."
  • "Hanky Panky" could also fit this trope.
• "Margaret's Eyes" by King Missile, in which the singer tries to describe the color of Margaret's eyes while she keeps him on a leash and puts out cigarettes on him. They also have Leather Clown, in which is described a fictional relationship with a non-existing leather-clad, female clown, consisting of "kinky clown-domination stories"
• "Love" by Abney Park.
• "Treat Me Like the Dog I Am" by Mötley Crüe has this in spades.
  • Not to mention their more recent hit, "The Animal In Me". Give their well-known sense of style, they probably ought to have more than they do. And don't forget that line from "Girls, Girls, Girls":
  Kinky girls, yeah just can't be beat
• "Whip Appeal" by Babyface.
• Although the lyrics are cryptic, the Kaizers Orchestra song "Kaizers 115. drøm" has some definite BDSM-y subtext.
• A rare reggae version of this trope: "How to Be a Master" from the Cult Classic movie musical The Apple.
• "So Painfully" by Saigon Kick.
• "My Latex Queen" by Dark Funeral.
• There's a few songs by the Deftones with BDSM overtones, occasionally overlapping with Lyrical Dissonance.
• Mainstream example: S&M by Rihanna. Lyrics:
  I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
  Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me
• Cubiky's "Erotic Platonic".
• "Anna mulle piiskaa", a hit song by the Finnish band Apulanta. The title translates as "Spank Me".
• "Queen of Pain" by The Cramps. Actually a rather sweet love song too.
• Good with Grenades gives us "Bruises and Bitemarks". Subject to a rather odd misaimed fandom at times, with people using it for Warrior Cats fan videos.
• The Queercore band Pansy Division, specifically "James Bondage", with a subversion in "Vanilla" which is about how the singer isn't all that kinky at all.
• The Adam and the Ants song "Beat My Guest" is a pretty straightforward example of this. As is their "Whip in My Valise"
• "Hatefuck" by Motionless in White.
• Helloween's "Mr. Torture".
• Green Jelly's "Whip Me Teenage Babe"
• "Lagartija Nick" by Bauhaus
• "Illuminati" by MALICE MIZER
• Here's an updated Bondage Jukebox (NSFW) that includes most BDSM tracks and album covers.
• The French song "Fais-moi mal", written by Boris Vian and sung by Magali Noël. It's also a Parody of this kind of song.
• Korn's 2002 song "Beat It Upright".
• "Oh My God" by P!nk.
• Razed in Black is yet another band that it's difficult to find a song in their discography that doesn't fit the trope.
  • "Behind The Wheel" counts as well.
• "Spread Your Legs" by Funker Vogt.
• The upbeat hit "Hurt So Good" by John Mellencamp.
  Sink your teeth right through my bones, baby...
• "Lace and Leather" by Britney Spears falls into this..even with a eletro guitar present. "Selfish" also mentions similar lyrics compared to "Lace and Leather"
• While there is no specific bondage mentioned, The Police song, "Wrapped around your finger" is about a dominatrix/submissive relationship (that changes places at the end).
• "Bata Motel" by Crass, much like "Oh Bondage, Up Yours," is both an Obligatory Bondage Song and a harsh rebuke of sexism in modern media and the fashion industry.
• Suicide Commando - Die Motherfucker Die
• Almost anything by Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio - with songs like "She's in Love With The Whip" and Imbecile, My Idiot Lover
• "Leather Queen" by by Mary Jane Girls
• "Hollow eyes hollow soul" by Gossamer
• "Choke Me, Spank Me, Pull My Hair" by Xzibit
• Joan Armatrading's "(I Love It When You) Call Me Names" - even without the verse that you don't hear in the radio and video edits ("She's wearing heavy leather with lace/He's dressed up in cowboy taste"), it's still fairly explicit.
• "Dominance and Submission" from Blue Öyster Cult's third album, Secret Treaties. It's even in the title.
• "Hooks in You" by Iron Maiden.
• If taken literally, The Judybats' "Pain (Makes You Beautiful)" appears to be a surprisingly sweet take on this:
  No sorrow tied, tied to my hurting you
  We delight in every torture I put you through
• Electric Wizard's "Torquemada '71" is this with a disturbing Spanish Inquisition twist. Their song "Venus in Furs", which is the same as the Trope Maker only in name, uses a more conventional approach.
• "Strangers" by William Control is basically this trope, and contains lyrics such as:
  ''he picks her up and ties the rope so tight
  her cuffs are swelling black and blue, pinching and bleeding.''
  • "The Filth and the Fetish" goes even further, opening with the line "I don't want your pussy, I want your body bruised and bloody" and all of the lyrics from start to finish dealing with rough BDSM, including the sounds of whipping and a woman crying in pain.
  • In general, William Control is essentially the Obligatory Bondage Song personified. Almost every song about sex is about BDSM and every album contains at least one (sometimes more than one). He was known for bringing attractive girls on stage to spank during concerts.
  • Subsequently Harsher in Hindsight after a number of his partners publicly accused him of crossing the line into non-consensual domestic abuse.
• In addition to Intercourse with You, Eurobeat often does this, such as in "Feel My Body and My Soul" by Leslie Hammond. "Do you really want to hurt me?"
• "Cuffed" by Hurt, with shades of Bondage Is Bad (or just Promiscuous Loveless Sex Is Bad but the fact that it's also bondage is telling.)
• The band Halestorm is almost an inversion, due to the number of songs with BDSM themes: "Love Bites (So Do I)", "Mz. Hyde", "Innocence", "Freak Like Me" and "Tell Me Where It Hurts" being some of the most obvious examples.
• Shakira's "Las de las intuición (Pure Intuition)" and "La tortura". Especially the former: "This time I plan to let you win, I'll be here and for subordination. I'll be devoted to your will, once and for all."
• Rammstein's "Ich tu dir weh" (I hurt you in German). Its BDSM content was so much raw and violent its title was even censored both on the back cover of the album and on the actual song! Hopefully, the censorship was later lifted. "Bück dich" (Bend over) and "Bestrafe mich" (Punish me) are also explicitly BDSM songs.
• "Leather" by Tori Amos
• "Holler" by Spice Girls. This was played up in the music video and especially the performance on their 2007 reunion tour, complete with lots of black leather, chains, and men in bondage-y outfits.
• Janet Jackson's "Discipline".
• "Your Joy Is My Low" by IAMX.
• "Electric Night" by Helalyn Flowers.
• Edge of Dawn's "Elegance", alongside straight Intercourse with You lyrics, has shades of this. "I'm not asking you to give, I want you to take". What's more, it also appeared in Project Gotham Racing 4, along with "House of Wolves" (see above), completely unedited.
• Lords of Acid has a lot of BDSM-y songs — "The Power Is Mine", "Slave to Love", "The ABCs of Kinky Sex", and of course, "Rough Sex".
• "Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation" by Mitch Benn and the Distractions is about the, er, one-player version of bondage.
• Ashley Monroe's "Weed Instead of Roses" in this verse:
  Lately, I've been dreaming
  You in leather, me in lace
  Let's put up the teddy bears
  And get out the whips and chains
• An Opera example, believe it or not, occurs in Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The aria "Batti, Batti, o bel Masetto" translates as, "Beat me, dear Masetto, / Beat your poor Zerlina. / I'll stand here meek as a lamb / And bear the blows you lay on me...." Though subverted as well, when he refuses and she takes that as proof that he really loves her after all.
• You might miss it on the first few listens, but it's fairly obvious that the lyrics to "Bone Machine" from Surfer Rosa by The Pixies can be interpreted as a guy who is really into being cuckolded ("You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me!").
• "Blindfold Me" by Kelis, featuring Nas.
• "Control" by Puddle of Mudd.
• ZZ Ward: Cryin' Wolf features a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar, which includes the line, "Don't forget about the kinkiness of playing with the cuffs...."
• "Sweet Pain" by KISS.
• "Pug" and "Annie-Dog" by The Smashing Pumpkins, both from Adore which take very different views on the subject.
• "Chloe in the Afternoon" by St. Vincent.
  • Also "Savior," though it's more a subversion as it talks about how disappointing most of the kinky stuff is.
• "Carved from Stone" by Fallujah, though it's about the sub/dom side of the equation as opposed to sadism and masochism.
• "Ne ostavlyay menya, lyubimyi" ("Don't Ever Leave Me, Love" in English verison) by Nu Virgos (aka VIA Gra) is not the BDSM song itself (it is about complicated relationships), but the music video is full of BDSM imagery (not in a typical leather style, though).
• "Tormentor" and "Wicked Love" by WASP.
• "Sweet Sweet Gwendoline" by Die Ärzte, which is named after a notorious underground BDSM porn comic.
• ASP's cover of "Sweet Gwendoline" by Umbra Et Imago.
• Shirley Manson was recruited to join Garbage after Butch Vig saw the music video for her band Angelfish's obligatory asphyxiophilia song, "Suffocate Me." Some other songs on Angelfish's first album also qualify as Obligatory Bondage Songs, especially "Dogs in a Cage."
• John Zorn: A lot of albums with Naked City have covers featuring people in sado-masochistic poses and bondage, including Radio. The track "S & M Sniper" from "Torture Garden" (1990) is a song example. "Submission", "My Master, My Slave" and "Dominatrix 5B" from "Heretic" (1992) too.
• Killer Pussy's "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage", though the bondage seems to be purely economic, and really is mentioned solely as a Shout-Out to grindhouse movie titles.
• "Torture" by The Cure has some bondage elements.
• "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift is possibly the most mainstream example.
• "Cottonmouth" by Emanuel implies this trope.
• "Slave to Love" by Bryan Ferry is a BDSM song and it's also in the Exit to Eden soundtrack. It's played during Elliot's bondage scene.
• The Divinyls' "Pleasure and Pain".
• Project Pitchfork - "Entity":
  While you're enjoying the might
  The bonds are gettin' tighter
  In coming lives you'll pay the price
  You'll pay the price
  I love your hate
  Your hate makes me grow
  I'm your tool
  And you're my toy
• Salt Ashes' "Save It", in addition to describing BDSM in its lyrics, also has an Obligatory Bondage Video.
• Natalia Kills' "Mirrors" is one of these for sure.
  Turning the lights out, burning the candles
  And the mirrors gonna fog tonight,
  Turning the lights out, tighten the handcuffs,
  And the mirrors gonna fog tonight.

• "Sucker for Pain" from the film Suicide Squad
  I torture you-u-u-u
  (Put my hand through the flames)
  I torture you-u-u-u
  (I'm just a slave to your games)
  I'm just a sucker for pain
  I wanna chain you up
  I wanna tie you down
  I'm just a sucker for pain
  
• “Mondo Bondage” by "The Tubes" is a song from their eponymous 1975 album. Many YouTube videos exist of the band performing it with extremely graphic, campy, theatrical staging including nudity, leather outfits, outrageous play acting, and ropes suspending performers above the stage. The ironically tongue-in-cheek lyrics seem to be about someone caught up in a BDSM lifestyle who gets in over their head and has very ambiguous feelings about it. At the time it was quite shocking and transgressive.
• "Under Pressure" by ZZ Top details the relationship of a man with a woman who clearly doesn't put much stock in Safe, Sane, and Consensual, and mentions her love of "whips and chains" as a prominent aspect of why he's not happy. Other reasons include her taste for cocaine, a controlling and manipulative personality and even implied bestiality. The title can be taken both metaphorically, as his distress and lack of enjoyment clearly don't matter to her, and literally, with all the pain that entails. Bondage Is Bad is in full force, since the singer believes she's going to beat him within an inch of his life when he tells her he wants out.
• A sort of subversion is Rammstein's "Mein Teil". The song itself is about that time a cannibal politely put out a classified add, and got a volunteer whose only condition was that the cannibal eat his penis first. But, since the German word "Teil" literally means "part", the video is about bondage which is ironically less dark than the song's actual subject. The video is mostly Fanservice, referencing running jokes about the band members, though interviews with the band imply that some of the scenes were based on Lindemann's (the singer and lyricist) fantasies. The band played this trope relatively straight in "Ich Will", although bondage is only one possible interpretation of the lyrics.
• Parliament's "Handcuffs" was officially a Parody of hyper-macho R&B.
• "Wings Of Heaven" by Tiamat mixes Love Is Like Religion and Intercourse with You with a bit of this:
  I'll be your master and I'll be your slave
• Spiritual Front has a number of songs about sadomasochistic sex. Examples include:
  • "Cold Love (In A Cold Coffin)" prominently features sounds of whip cracking and the lyrics:
    Let the thought of my submission be stronger
    Than the law that rules your world
  • "Tenderness through Violence."
    Punish me now punish me here
    tenderness through violence
    [...]
    forgive me but make me bleed
  • "Pain is Love."
    Nothing’s pure when you grasp my throat
    Pain is love, pain is love
    A cry that sound like the beat of your heart
• "My Obsession" by Cinema Bizarre has a bit of this:
  You can kiss me with your torture
  Tie me up to golden chains
  Leave me beggin' undercover
  Wrong or right
  It's all a role play
• "I Wanna Be Your Slave" by Italian band Måneskin. Interestingly enough, it's also an Obligatory English Song.
• Jhené Aiko's "Maniac" is about an insatiable nymphomaniac that got stuck in an asylum due to her sexual prowess. The restraints used in the asylum all resemble bondage fetish gear.
• The Weeknd's "Take My Breath" is a not-even-thinly-veiled metaphor for S&M breath play. The video shows Abel being strangled by a dominatrix type's long braids.
• "Gomenasai" by Kelela is explicitly about teasing and dominating a submissive partner.
• Thirty Seconds to Mars has the song "Hurricane," but the lyrics barely suggest what the video shows pretty explicitly.
  No matter how many breaths that you took you still couldn't breathe...
  Do you really want me dead or alive to torture for my sins?
• The little-known "Hey Blue Eyes" by Bruce Springsteen is a subversion. It uses a BDSM relationship as a metaphor for abuses of power during the Bush administration at facilities like Guantanamo Bay.

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