I arrive at this next chart-topper, and a question immediately springs to mind: what’s worse – the name of the song, or the name of the group?
I Wanna Sex You Up, by Color Me Badd (their 1st and only #1)
3 weeks, from 2nd – 23rd June 1991
I mean, both could win the pop music equivalent of the Razzies. But for me it’s the song title that is a smidge more excruciating. And that’s because it lends its name to four minutes of cringe-inducing boyband R&B. Come inside take off your coat, I’ll make you feel at home… squeaks a Poundshop Prince. The lyrics start of icky – all lighting candles and pouring wine – and only get ickier…
For example: Disconnect the phone so nobody knows… Personally, I don’t see disconnecting the phone as a sexy move; more a creepy, ‘there’s no escape’ kind of move. And then there’s the piece de resistance: making love until we drown… dig… Drown in what, dare I ask? (Vomit, probably, given the way these lyrics are making me feel.)
There’s a spoken-word section, of course, though it’s more of a whispered-word section: Just lay back, Enjoy the ride… The only redeeming moments in the song are the two hooks – the ooh-ooh-eeh-ooh and the tick tock ya don’t stop – that run on a loop. In fact, if you can block out the lyrics, the song itself sounds very modern. If I hadn’t known, then I’d have placed it in the mid-to-late nineties, rather than 1991. The song featured on the soundtrack (another soundtrack #1!) to ‘New Jack City’, an action-crime movie featuring the likes of Chris Rock, Wesley Snipes and Ice-T.
Was this controversial at the time? Few #1s have been this upfront about sex, save for Serge and Jane, and Frankie saying ‘Relax’. (Off the top of my head, I believe this might be the first chart-topper to feature the word ‘sex’ in its title.) Or did people just write it off as simply too ridiculous to be a threat to young and impressionable minds? The video is nowhere near as saucy as it might have been, mainly featuring the four Badds sauntering along railway tracks, like NKOTB’s moody older brothers. And, of course, it seems very PG-13 compared to some of the songs that have made number one between then and now, from ‘Freak Me’ to Megan and Cardi B’s wet-ass you-know-whats…
Color Me Badd were four high school friends from Oklahoma, who were helped on their way to brief stardom by Robert Bell of Kool & The Gang, who found them a manager, and Bon Jovi, who let the boys open for them at a concert in New York. They were a racially diverse group, too: one white, one black, one Mexican, and one part Native-American.
They had two further #1s in the US (where ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ stalled at #2), including the actually pretty great ‘All 4 Love’, which was their only other UK Top 10. They split up in 1998. They’ve left behind a complicated legacy: some sources list this as one of the ‘50 Worst Songs Ever’, while others have it as one of the ‘100 Greatest Songs of the ‘90s’. Personally I’d lean towards the former, though it is so silly in places that it almost becomes quite fun.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Dude! I almost peed on myself, laughing at your comments! LOL! The lead singer sounds like a girl! I have heard of Color Me Badd but, I’ve never heard this, before. Instead of a manager, Robert Bell & Bon Jovi should have gotten them some testosterone supplements.
I was too old to get into the boy bands (though my graduating class chose “Is This The End?”, by the New Edition, as our class song…*eye-roll*). I grew up with rock, disco, punk and metal. I skipped right over the 1990s pop and headed for the alt-rock & grunge rock. REM was an odd case. They were alt-rock before alt-rock was a thing.
No. 2 on Billboard 100. No. 1 on Hot Dance & Hot R&B. I never heard it… New Zealand loved them, too, apparently.
*BARF*
The annoying thing is that one of their follow-up singles, ‘All For Love’, is pretty good, but this yucky, sappy drivel was their biggest hit (in the UK, anyway, as the US got it right and ‘All for Love’ was a #1)
I’m a sucker for a good, upbeat boyband single… but not this. And Boyz II Men did this sort of silly/sexy song much better a few years later with ‘I’ll Make Love to You’.
I can say that one NSYNC song, Bye, Bye, Bye, was good.
I remember playing this piece of trash when I worked at an urban station in Detroit. New Jack City and the soundtrack was all we seemed to talk about. Urgh – the requests that we got for this song were endless!
Good lord… And, I just barely remember the movie.
Oh no…! I have to admit that I’d never heard of the movie before writing this post..
And we thought The Stonk was well-nigh impossible to defend.
Would you rather Stonk, or be sexed up…? Neither probably…
Do you have ESP? Can you guess if I like it or not? LOL I think you know the answer to that! Damn…I was dead wrong and you called it. I thought the 90s were an improvement over the 80s…so far just as bad. I didn’t think about the upper charts. I was listening to alternative by this point. I only heard popular songs at clubs.
You know, I really thought you might have liked this one……… Rock does break through a bit more than it did in the late 80s – we’ve seen Queen, Iron Maiden, The Clash recently – but it will never again be the dominant force.
I know… don’t rub it in!
In the 90s I remember some more…but I wasn’t listening to the top 10.
This seems pretty much reviled these days, but I still like it, and not in an ironic amusing way 🙂 I like the tune – OK it’s Boyband soul manufactured to appeal to teen girls, but of it’s type it’s better than, say, New Kids On The Block records. The title is a weedy attempt to pretend they are ground-breaking (they aren’t) and the name to give 13-year-old’s the idea that they were a bit edgy (they weren’t), but as it’s never played on the radio anymore I can happily have this one playing along… 🙂
Hmmm, nah, not for me : ) I want justice for ‘All 4 Love’, which I only discovered through writing this post. It’s really good boyband pop, with a very effective sample
Vile, sick-bag necessitating. That 90s hip-hoppy-mainstream sound was tragic by 1991 and if you’re going to sing a ‘sultry’ song about sex, at least don’t be hideously ugly gargoyles whilst doing so.