The Song That Brought Us Illicit Sex


Slate tells us: ‘In the spring of 1909, American popular song got sexy. Of course, love and courtship, and by extension sex, had been Topic A in pop music for decades. But while songwriters had long trafficked in euphemisms and innuendo—coy talk of “sighing” and “spooning” beneath the old oak tree and by the light of the silvery moon—it was a 1909 hit by Harry Von Tilzer and Jimmy Lucas, “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife—But Oh! You Kid!,” which opened Tin Pan Alley to brasher, bawdier, more raucously comic songs of lust.’

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