Unusual Euphemism / Music

• Roy Zimmerman's song "Firing the Surgeon General" established the title phrase as a euphemism for masturbation (by paralleling it to a number of other such euphemisms) to satirize the controversy that resulted in the 1994 dismissal of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.
• Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. "Chocolate starfish" here being a euphemism for asshole, while "hot dog flavoured water" comes from an in-joke about how Wes Borland saw flavoured water on sale at a truck stop while touring, and jokingly wondered if they also come in meat or hot dog flavour.
• Kelis: "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..."
• When Emilie Autumn performed her song "Misery Loves Company" on a morning news show, she replaced the line "pray for me you fucker, if you fucking dare" with "pray for me you muffin, if you muffin dare".
• Bloodhound Gang's "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" is just full of these.
  • That's all the song is. Try to find one line that doesn't have an Unusual Euphemism in it.
  • Almost EVERY one of BHG's songs are like this. The most obvious being "Uhn-Tiss Uhn-Tiss Uhn-Tiss" "Bad Touch" and The Aforementioned "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo"
• The Decemberists' "The Chimbley Sweep":
  "Oh lonely urchin," the widow cried
  "I've not been swept since the day my husband died."
• "Sugalumps" by Flight of the Conchords is filled with euphamisms for testicles, including the titular "sugalumps."
  • The song "Mutha'Uckas" and the term Muther'flippin from "Hiphophippotomous Vs. Rhymnocerous"
• Played with in the music video for "Laid" by the band James. One line originally goes "But she only comes when she's on top." The version used in the music video replaces "comes" with "sings" - but that part of the video has a close shot of the lead singer, who is obviously singing the original lyric.
• Originally composed for the alt.games.nintendo.pokemon.hentai newsgroup, the song "I Wanna Slowpoke Your Cloyster ('Till My Bulbasaur)" introduced the title phrase, as well as "jiggling the Jigglypuff".
• "The Fez" by Steely Dan isn't about a hat. It's a (made up?) euphemism for a condom.
  • But then "Steely Dan" is a euphemism for an erection, so that's hardly surprising.
    • Steely Dan actually took their name from the nickname for a large metal dildo in Naked Lunch.
• Viktor Vaughn's song "Mister Clean" has little to do with cleaning supplies; the title refers to Vik's insistance that his barber "Give me a Mister Clean", or shave his head completely, at the end.
  • Vik has a lot of strange or unique words or phrases. At one point he reminisces about something that happened "six degrees ago", etc.
  • The same artist does something similar in his Kind Geedorah persona; Geedorah is a space monster who doesn't truly understand humanity, and his alien perspective is partially represented by some seriously idiosyncratic speech quirks.
• In the Meat Loaf song I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), "that" is a reference to a previous line where the singer names a thing he would never do ("forget the way you feel", "stop dreaming of you", etc.) Due in no small part to the complexity of the lyrical construction, it's also assumed by many listeners to be a euphemism for something else, to the point where Meat Loaf says "What is that?" is the most frequent question he's asked by his fans.
• Spinal Tap: Big Bottom.
  • "Big Bottom" itself is pretty straightforward, but the song also references "mud flaps," meaning ... we're not quite sure what, but from context it has to do with a lady's backside. The title is also a musical pun, as Nigel and David trade their usual guitars for basses on this song.
• Lady Gaga gives us "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick!" in "Love Game" and "bluffin' with my muffin" in "Poker Face".
• Countless P-Funk songs use the word "funk" not only to refer to the music style, but also as a substitute for a similar-sounding word.
  • As do the Black-Eyed Peas in "Don't Phunk With My Heart".
    • As a result, some radio stations played "edited" versions replacing "phunk" with "mess", as in "Don't Mess With My Heart".
• Jack Ingram did this with "Love You", replacing "fuck" with "love" (e.g. "Love you, love this town / Love this mother-lovin' truck that keeps breakin' lovin' down").
• American Ride by Toby Keith has "The fit's gonna hit the shan"
• Subverted in "Big Dumb Sex" by Soundgarden, the verses are full of unusual euphemisms, but the chorus is "I know what to do. I'm gonna fuck (fuck) (fuck) (fuck) you!"
• "Elektronik Supersonik" by Zlad! includes the lines "I put my port plug in your socket" and "So onto my love rocket, climb."
• Rammstein does that kinda often as well. Most notably in Pussy. Blitzkrieg mit dem Fleischgewehr!
• A radio edit of Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" removed "balls" and spliced in the word "fun" from the previous verse, resulting in the strange expression "got him by the fun."
• Starflyer 59: While their lyrics never use any words worse than "hell", Jason Martin reportedly used (and possibly still uses) euphemisms like "what the eff" and "piece of shin".
• Steeleye Span's "Drink Down The Moon" uses "cuckoo's nest" to refer to female genitalia.
• Aerosmith songs are full of this. Most notably the famous "Walk This Way" has this line "You ain't seen nothin' 'till you're down on a muffin." Lady Gaga's line in "Poker Face" is probably a Shout-Out to this song.
  • "Muff" may be dated, but it's not an unusual expression, at least not in 1975.
• Insane Clown Posse use the terms "Neden" and "Cotton Candy" over "vagina" or "pussy"; other Psychopathic Records artists have used this term as well: Anybody Killa released a song called "Your Neden's Haunted", loosely about sexually-transmitted disease ala ICP's "Bugz On My Nugz".
• When Moral Guardians complained about Christian rapper Manafest using the phrase "you scare the hell out of me" (a religious pun previously used by Stryper and Impending Doom), he changed the line to "you scare the junk out of me." Unusual Dysphemism?
• Cab Calloway, in "Minnie the Moocher" tells how her boyfriend taught her 'how to kick the gong around', which meant 'how to smoke an opium pipe' in the 1920s.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's One More Minute mentions being "stranded all alone in the gas station of love", and having "to use the self-service pumps"
• Ludo: Whipped Cream
  • When asked why they chose to write a song about whipped cream, Andrew responded
  I wouldn't say that Whipped Cream is actually about... whipped cream
• In Grace Jeanette's version of Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na) by My Chemical Romance she substitues "hugs" for drugs. And then uses it for another word, winding up with "Hug like a Kennedy".
• "Precious" by Pretenders has "I had my eye on your imperial". It doesn't sound like she means a car. More like a scepter.
• A possibly once-common expression, used to give an old-fashioned feel to John Fogerty's "Centerfield": according to Word of God, "Brown-eyed handsome man" is an old-time expression for "African-American". Might also pop up in Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" and Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times".
• Frank Zappa is quite fond of using phrases such as "abused the sausage patty", from "St. Alphonso Pancake's Breakfast" on Apostrophe ('), "plooking one another" (Joe's Garage),... in his lyrics.
• A lyric from The Pharcyde's "On The DL": "Should I pursue to do you, or just stroke my knot?" The narrator is supposed to be a human, not a canine.
• Voltaire's song "The Sexy Data Tango" is just full of these. They include "Defiant" and "spangler wrench" for penis, "transwarp conduit" and "wormhole" for vagina, and "quantum singularity" for orgasm.
• Warren Zevon's "Model Citizen":
  In the cool of the evening
  When the sun goes down
  My wife's playing canasta
  With every guy in town
• "Mama's got a Squeeze Box, Daddy never sleeps at night."
• Lady Antebellum's "Downtown":
  I got a dress that'll show a little uh uh
  But you ain't gettin' uh uh if you don't come pick me up
• "Hey Bobby" by K.T. Oslin:
  Hey Bobby
  Would you like to go for a ride in the country with me
• "House of Fun" by Madness is about a teenage boy trying to buy condoms from the chemist, but is too embarrassed to actually say "condoms", so he uses euphemisms that the poor lady behind the counter doesn't understand. When he asks for "party favors, balloons" and "party poppers," she tells him to try the titular joke shop around the corner.
• The music of Devo is chock full of strange, obscure euphemisms, an extreme example being their demo song "Goo Goo Itch":
  Itchy, itchy goo, there's a pile next to you
  Itchy goo, itchy goo and it's turning blue
  Itchy goo, itchy goo, itchy goo, goo, goo
  It's all I want to do, whammo!
  • Nobody (apparently even Jerry Casale) is quite sure what "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin')" is about.
  I saw my baby yesterday
  She spent her money on a car
  It didn't get her very far
  So my baby said to me
  You know my baby she said sloppy
  I think I missed the hole
  • "Be Stiff", if you can discern the lyrics to begin with, has lines such as "Fruit ooze is wetly lewd, so stay dry in rubber boots," "Cucumbers ripe and rude," "Breathe hard in metal suits," and so forth.
• The opening line of "Combine Harvester" by The Wurzels: "I drove my tractor through your haystack last night."
• From Autumn to Ashes' "Take Her to the Music Store" was written about a friend who was raped, or "fucked against her own will." The title is based off of an euphemism, "taken to the music store," created among bandmates after a bad experience with a local music store that ripped them off (or rather, fucked the band against their own will).
• Eminem's song "Fack". (Warning: the song is very NSFW.) Guess what "fack" is a synonym for.
  "Oh God, I wanna facking fack"
  "No, not 'fuck', I said 'fack'"
  "F-A-C-K F-A-C-K fack, fack fack facking freak me!"
• Parodied by The Lonely Island with their song "I Don't Give A Honk".
• En Vogue's "Don't Let Go (Love)" seems to be a song about coercing a man to make his relationship with the singer official, curiously urging him to "lose control."
• Nicki Minaj's song "Anaconda" is a subversion, in that the verses are quite explicit in their subject matter. But the refrain consists of this line repeated over and over again: "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns!"
• Punk band Vagiant happens to also work for Harmonix, and as such got one of their songs into Guitar Hero II. The song in question is "Fuck the Kells", and had to be heavily edited for the T-rated game (such as replacing nearly all cases of "fuck" with "frack" and renaming the whole song to "FTK"). One memorable change was "You can take this bar, and shove it up your fuckin' ass!" becoming "You can take this car, and fill it up with tons o' gas!" Which... could be construed as wanting you to hit the road, Jack, and get as far away from them as a full tank will take ya.
• John Hiatt & Little Village have "Solar Sex Panel". Sort of ecologically correct version of the Bawdy Song.
• Sheena Easton, "Sugar Walls".
• Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" uses the term "bass" to describe a woman's behind, though it felt forced when she used it again in her follow-up song "Lips are Movin'" ("I gave you bass...").
• "Grope Need" by The Fugs from It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest.
  Slipping my horny candy cane into your existential hole.
• System of a Down's song "Bounce" on the surface is about a pogo stick. It's really about A Party, Also Known as an Orgy.
• The Ninja Sex Party song Peppermint Creams is about a knight who really enjoys the princess' "peppermint creams". The chorus reveals (loudly and at length) that he means her breasts and bottom, not that she makes really good York patties.
• Blue Man Group has "Shake Your Euphemism", which lists off different terms for "butt". Some of them are normal, like "hind-quarters", "booty", and "buttocks". Others are... very strange, like "your dinner with Andre", "your George Foreman grill", "Mothra", and "the place where all the burritos go".
• Ann Wilson's "My Thing Is My Own" contains several rather interesting 18th-century euphemisms for sexual matters.
  A cunning clockmaker did court me as well
  And promised me riches if I'd ring his bell
  So I looked at his clockwork, and said with a shock
  Your pendulum's far too small for my clock
• Bad Lip Reading: Shooting a Russian Unicorn, if the lyrics doesn't already make it clear what the term alludes to.
• Beck promises to "leave graffiti where you've never been kissed" in "Nicotine and Gravy". Also known as the alphabet trick.
• Frank Black, "Kicked In The Taco"
• Loretta Lynn, "Wings Upon Your Horns."
• It's easily mistaken for scatting, but the bridge to "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" by Caroline Polachek includes a background chant of "show me the banana"; she's probably not referring to fruit.
• Songdrops: "Sometimes My Butt Makes Noises" refers to farting as one's butt "saying hi" and "thunder".
• "Diaper Song" refers to the grunts the baby makes when he poops as a song.
• The radio version of The Beautiful South's "Don't Marry Her" has the line "She'll grab your Sandra Bullocks".
• Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" has a movement titled "Personnages à longues oreilles" ("Characters with long ears"), which is just two violins performing crude impressions of braying donkeys.
• In Roy Brown's "Butcher Pete", a butcher runs around with a knife, chopping up everyone's meat. However, many of the lyrics make no sense if you take this at face value and interpret it as him simply giving people sliced meat, or as him stabbing and cannibalizing people: the narrator warns listeners to watch their wives when Pete is around, and some verses specifically mention that women want to be "chopped up" by Pete. The other interpretation, of course, is that "chopping up meat" is an euphemism for sex, and Pete's "long sharp knife" is his penis, turning this from Murder Ballad to Intercourse with You. Pete even gets up to it in church, which (predictably) upsets the preacher when he starts chopping on the pulpit.
• One version of 'St. Louis Blues' performed by The Ink Spots contains the lines:
  Going back to St. Louis to get my ham bone boiled,
  'Cause the girls in Boston are gonna let my ham bone spoil.
• Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke's "Personality" doesn't seem to be about a girl's personality at all. It lists off many famously attractive women, including Madame Pompadour (a favoured courtisan of Louis XV), Madame duBarry (Louis the 15th's paramour), Salome (of The Bible fame; the dancing girl who got John the Baptist killed), and Juno (the Roman version of Hera), and attributes this attractiveness to a "well developed/faultless... 'personality.'" In fact, the singer's girl has the cutest... "personality." It sounds more like he's admiring her posterior than her personality.

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