Boys know a thing or two about strip shows, and boys who don’t know much aren’t really boys, although they most likely know a thing or two about the action on the other side of the strip (which, if we keep everything down to just the music - and please, let’s - drinks from the same sonic well). The quintessential striptease song is long on smolder and even longer on sleaze.  A striptease is, after all, about seduction slowed to a tarpit ooze and dangling carrots of hot sex after - languid, then. And steamy. Horny, too, as in horns, but these days just plain horny will do, although a sticky sax solo can still extend a hard-on into infinity. The filthier, friskier domestic a-go-go (not go-go) model throws in heaps of power ballad schmaltz to suit the clientele and for demographic nuance. Air Supply is big here, ditto anything by Jim Steinman, like Meat Loaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love; a stone classic of the sub-subgenre if only for the context it provides, coming, as these things do, with a drink tab that’s tantamount to doing anything for love - the way it burns through a couple of days’ wages for the cheap thrill of a fresh leg to fondle under the table.

then - five songs perfect for a woman/man to slowly take her/his clothes off to that are not Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart or that Wham song.

If hot sex does happen after, that’s a whole different playlist. Let me know if you get lucky. I take requests.

1. Can’t Find My Mind - The Cramps

I’m picturing a 50s horror B-movie slaughterhouse slash biker’s dive hallucinated by David Lynch with a stripper straight out of Russ Meyer by way of Salma Hayek’s Santanico Pandemonium and where these doyennes of shockabilly are the house band. I’m not too sure how much turn-on this packs for you and me and everyone else, but someone has to strip to the Cramps at some point. You could go with their cover of Fever, but this has a bit more of the scuzzy, sinister slither that feeds the aura.

2. Cruisin’ - D’Angelo



Leave it to D’Angelo, who after this would have his already manly carcass sculpted to resemble gladiator body armor then pose on the cover of his album with nothing on and show it off, to raise the temperature of a song that Smokey Robinson wrote and sung as lush swoon, and sex it up full of slow burn and come-on. His breathy falsetto, when he sings ’Let the music take your mind, just release and you will find..’ makes the love man of love men Babyface look like a socially-deficient dork. Inspirational, if anything. And the girls in the room probably wouldn’t mind if he took it off at some point.

3. Down Boy - Yeah Yeah Yeahs



There’s usually some visceral, acrobatic move that brings a set to a climax -  serpentine floor writhing, wild pole contortions, a mind-boggling split, all of the above. This is probably why they’re apparently programming a little Metallica in between the AM radio mawk. But I’m not quite sure Enter Sandman gives it the vigor and thump it needs. Better off with this sultry quiet-loud-quiet headbanger that starts off languid and trippy for the heat gain then spikes into a massive attack of powerchord. Split to that, sister. Karen O takes care of bringing the sexy, but of course. Oh, and isn’t that title just a champion pun?

4. Glory Box - Portishead



About time someone did a striptease to this smoky, humid electro-torch classic as no song has ever sounded more meant for just that.  And know that when Beth Gibbons croons that line ’Give me a reason to love you…,’  the girl on the floor is talking to you, boy. Call her to your table and cough up.

5. Wake Up The Nation! by Paul Weller

Dig that sumptuous, supple Gamble and Huff groove and the suave, seething lothario making his case: ’Please tell me yes, and don’t say no honey, not tonight...’ She, of course, doesn’t say no, not tonight. But you can tell that from the unsafe-for-work porno moaning that takes over after the Major stops singing.