The Make-Out Sessions

The worst kind of make-out music is make-out music that announces: “Welcome to my lair. The petting will commence after the bridge.” When I had a make-out music kind of life, about a decade ago, if anyone had broken out Barry White or the Loofah – as in Vandross – I would have escaped out the bathroom window.

The key is to tap into the lascivious vibe of great musicians without being obvious: Yes, Marvin Gaye, but not Sexual Healing. Yes, Prince, but not Head. The other key is that there is no key. The best example of this is the legendary scene in Fast Times At Ridgemont High where Damone counsels Ratner: “When it comes to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.” (Rat plays Kashmir by mistake and doesn’t get laid, naturally.) Anyone with a hard and fast rule – “Mark my words, gentlemen: The ladies loooove the ODB” – is going to come up against the woman who has her own I Hate Robert Plant website.

My advice: pay attention to the other listener. What’s she all about, and how does that translate into music? But even if she’s a tree planter, don’t play any Gillian Welch-style, underfed-dustbowl-children folk music. That’s just wrong.

You’d think everyone would know that, when you’re trying to get a leg over, it’s best to avoid those songs that are explicitly about that. But if we all knew that, there would be no market for those cheese-tastic compilations they advertise during 2 a.m. reruns of The View. These albums inevitably have titles like Soul Devotion or Smooth Jamz. As the titles roll by the screen (Three Times a Lady, Let’s Get It On), you see a couple acting (poorly) like they’re sexually attracted to each other – dancing on a sheepskin throw in front of a fireplace, half-empty brandy snifters set aside on the coffee table just so. There’s something both sad and reassuring about the visual evidence that some archetypal signifiers of seduction never go out of style. You note this, of course, as you hear the chorus of Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).

Cheese-tastic! I love that word. Well, to pick up (no pun intended) on Tara’s cool new lingo, the whole idea of make-out music has acquired an overwhelmingly cheese-tastic reputation. There’s a tradition in film of hapless men being remarkably unsubtle about the whole thing: think of Dudley Moore in all of those comedies where he played the British horndog. And my favourite, Tim Meadows in The Ladies Man, with his bottle of Courvoisier and his “sexy” tunes in constant rotation: Parliament’s Up For The Down Stroke, Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, Teddy Pendergrass’s Turn Off The Lights.

So I don’t know if make-out music can recover from the beating it’s taken in the culture. But obviously, it can be quite the mood enhancer: I shall be eternally grateful to Roxy Music for Avalon and to Portishead for that slow, breathy trip-hop. Yes, those were the days.... Excuse me, I have to cry now.

Late-era Crowded House isn’t bad either; Together Alone is a great album, particularly Walking On The Spot (“Will we be in our minds when the dawn breaks? / Can we look the milkman in the eye? / The world is somehow different, you have all been changed / Before my very eyes”). But I didn’t notice until fairly recently that a lot of their earlier songs have a sexy subtext, too. Okay, blame the fact that I couldn’t crack the code presented by When You Come on the fact that I was 13 when it came out... I mean, was released... I mean, forget it. There’s no way to make that sentence sound less dirty.

Unfortunately, Crowded House is no more; fortunately, Neil Finn is still making very Crowded House-y sounding music as a solo artist. She Will Have Her Way would be a great song to make out to – and not an especially obvious choice, either.

Light pop is fine and dandy for the kids and the nostalgia freaks, Tara, but let’s get serious: After 30, don’t we have to pretend to like jazz? As in all mating rituals, there’s an element of strut-and-show in the seducer’s choice of music. So though you may really want to set the mood with Modern English’s I’ll Melt With You (It’s good! Leave me alone!), it’s probably better to go sophisto, and casually cue up the predictable groove of Miles Davis’s Flamenco Sketches off Kind of Blue or Cannonball Adderley’s Autumn Leaves. That’s sexy jazz. But really experimental jazz – jazz as math – please. Now you’re just showing off.

Doesn’t the retro remind you of high school? Although maybe that’s not so bad: I can remember riding the bus to my girlfriend’s house listening to Bon Scott-era AC/DC. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind hearing that again.

Jazz won’t work for me unless I buy into the dark side of the artist. Miles Davis’s Tribute to Jack Johnson is a guarantee, but the rest is just too nice.

Beat the cheese by going in another direction. Choose obscure songs by familiar voices; dig deep for album cuts by the Animals, Johnny Thunders, Roky Erickson. The Stones’ Memo From Turner is a good one. My Iron Lung, from Radiohead’s The Bends, can complicate your life as well. (Speaking of The Bends, play from 2:12 to 2:48 of the title track, the part when Thom Yorke murders the melody. It doesn’t matter who you are with when that comes on – you will love them in that moment.)

If the afternoon is the time, I think you go with found songs. Choose samples that match your headspace. Drop all that fake-ass R&B and up the ante with Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. (Granted, it takes a special person to tolerate I’m Only Out for One Thang. ) Get foreplay out of the way if you plan on getting involved with Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. From the second the first notes kick in, romance needs to be replaced with extreme intent. And by the time Teardrop starts, nobody should be smiling. :)

In the end, I’m with Damone. If the girl can’t get into Zeppelin’s untitled fourth, then perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

Seven messages in and no Canadian musicians have been mentioned. Are there any hoser acts that can provide a half-decent amorous soundtrack? I don’t think anyone would ever consider BTO, Stompin’ Tom or April Wine as legitimate romantic aids, but couples should embrace whatever works. (Wow, that sounded dangerously close to Dr. Ruth or Dr. Phil.) Of course, there’s Leonard Cohen, but romance can be depressing enough without having to listen to Suzanne. Hmmmm. Cowboy Junkies are certainly languid. I’m sure many Canadians have thrown Diana Krall and k.d. lang onto the CD player while fumbling in the dark, but I wouldn’t. Maybe Stars? I love that band and at least they deal with the pain and pleasure of romance in those amazing narratives. Leslie Feist’s Let It Die album is rather sultry. The first Ron Sexsmith album could also do in a pinch. And let’s not forget that Carole Pope and Rough Trade were sex-obsessed. All Touch is the best Canadian song about sex ever written. But I’m getting off track. Anyone? Who is the great Canadian musician to make out to?

Can you imagine sliding down the couch with the one you want while Rush’s 2112 Overture howls through the speakers? Girl repellent.

That said, if you’re looking for a little Can-Con there are a few good ways to go. New or long-standing love: Broken Social Scene or Feist. You mean it, though you’re distracted by the day and feeling alone: Simon Wilcox. It’s the last time you are going to make out with this person because you are angry: the most recent Foo Fighters. It has coldness running all through it. The band C’mon is good if you are friends who feel like soulmates. Of course Sarah Harmer, but that’s also because I have an unquenchable thirst for her....

Actually, if you really want to make the night dark and perfect, you HAVE to go with Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. If your partner can get lost in that... they can get lost in you. It’s also a really nice album for afterwards. I’m not sure anything beats holding someone in your arms when the guitars hit in the dead centre of Lookout Joe – unless it’s “C’mon baby, let’s go downtown,” the all-encompassing lyric that transfers you to another place. God, it’s like making out in the back of a rundown movie theatre in a small Texas town with someone you met that day.... Uh, perhaps I’ve said too much. :)

But please, remember you only need to makeout to Canadian music 35 per cent of the time. Meet the quota, then you can go back to kissing to NWA’s F--k Tha Police.

\m/(..)\m/

I think I would be afraid of my partner neglecting his duties for a burst of air-guitar during Tonight’s the Night, but I get your point. Ten years later, a Tonight’s the Night couple could curl up on their separate Barcaloungers, cue Harvest Moon and remember their raunchier Neil Young past. Back to what Greig said: Make-out music might be the biggest cliché in the dating world, but even though we’re supposedly in this strange era of dirty hook-ups and online sex chat, everyone’s susceptible to good old-fashioned “mood setting.” It means that someone is trying to get close to you, and that’s the whole, flattering point. The Aztecs exclusively made out to the sounds of wolves howling, and in Renaissance times, small children were made to stand outside the door of amorous aristocrats and hum. Okay, I made that up. But if it had happened, hopefully they hummed Elvis Costello’s I Want You, a song that will take you from make-out to the finish line, which is the real reason for this entire conversation.