Ruchir Joshi's Sexy Saturday Songs: Rough and Ready

My Sexy Saturday Songs Selection is based on the rough and ready principle that you want to start getting happy on a Saturday afternoon, giving yourself and your partner(s), (or potential partner[s]) enough time to recover on the Sunday (the day of rest) and be ready for work on Monday. Or get happy through Sunday and, whatever, miss work on Monday as well, if things are going really well. Depending on whether you’re going back to work on Monday or being greedy and lying to your boss, I’ve put in bonus tracks under each of my selections.

1 Jaane Kahan Mera Jigar Gaya Ji

Best to start slow, reminding oneself that one is rarely ever too far away from the work space…also this is a great starter song given that the irritation one of the parties shows is clearly, actually, an itch, a ‘oh, get on with it, then’ kind of irritation.

2 Aao Huzur Tumko Sitaron

Feigned reluctance and distaste for carnal contact, especially by Bengali men, who for some reason have been allowed out of Calcutta; Bengali men, furthermore, with cigarettes clamped in their mouths, is one of the banes of sexual exchange in India, or so I’m informed. There is only one way to deal with this and it is by wreaking Helen earth. I also love the line: ‘aarti kisi Kanhaiya ki, koi Radha nahi utaaregi…’, implying even in those primitive days that Kanhaiya may have to do some aarti-ing himself, but after Asha’s hypnotic voice I mostly love the incredible saxophone on this number.

3 Prince - If I was your girlfriend

Now that we’ve lost Prince just a few days ago the temptation was to do this whole Sexy Saturday Songs with songs just by the little master himself. But that would have been both too easy and too hard. Since the previous song is so much about hair, let me place this next in the queue, with two of the greatest underwear-divestment-inciting lines ever: ‘Would you let me wash your hair? Could I make you breakfast sometime?’ And in in terms of other continuity, it’s true, you’re right, same height, same build, similar moustache, Prince does look a bit like Johnny Walker, there is no getting away from it…

3a Prince - Gett Off

If songs must be connected to sex, and yes, we have no choice, they must, then this is another great anthem to ‘doing it’. ‘Let me show you baby. I’m a talented boy’, and ‘let a woman be a woman and a man be a man’ (by one of the most gender-bending acts ever) and, yes, my first memory of the word ‘slide’ being used in that context, never to be forgotten.

4 James Brown - I Feel Good

And so, on to the great American master himself, Mr. JB, ‘the hardest working man in show business’…from whose arrangements and dancing, people as diverse as Shammi Kapoor, OP Nayyar, RD Burman and Ornette Coleman draw direct inspiration, not to mention that he’s the godfather of funk, soul, and the idea of making love on a Saturday afternoon. Again, the saxophone rules.

4a James Brown - Sex Machine

5 Gainsbourg and Birkin - Je t'aime

As we well know, a session of love-making isn’t always a straight graph, you can have slow, then fast and furious and then langorous again. So here, tapping into a completely different mood are two French classics from the 1970s when sex was sex and the French were French…except, of course, since grass is always greener on the other side of the channel, the object of Serge Gainsbourg’s desire here is the then young, now legendary/iconic, Englishwoman, Jane Birkin. Connoisseurs please to note her very English pronunciation of French and Serge-kaka speaking some rudimentary English ('You’re crazy’ he says). Also, please to note (and enjoy) that this version has the orgasmic sounds which later iterations of the song have edited out.

5a Emmanuelle - Pierre Bachelet

This is the poor man’s Gainsbourg, this time the theme song from the soft-porn hit Emmanuelle which, of course, starred a Dutch woman Sylvia Kristel as the eponymous wife of a French Consular Officer in hot, hot. hot, 70s Thailand.

5a - b Fausto Papetti Saxophone theme

And, in case, you were missing the saxophone and a cheesier rendition, here is a third add-on.

6 Chet Faker - I'm Into You

Neither song below needs explanation, great words, great desire, and in the second one great eye candy for all those who like sexy men.

6a Lenny Kravitz - I Belong To You

7 Major Lazer - Watch Out For This

So, if you were to go back to the First track and then click on this next one, from my point of view you’d get the full mind-popping variety that even one love-making session can provide. Check out the clothes, the Indian-ish licks, the beat, the sheer, tropical wanna-do-it…doing-it-doing-it-ness of this song.