Singing about body parts

Of Montreal, an indie pop band that has nothing to do with Cananda, have come out with a song titled Brush, Brush, Brush. On my second listening I realized it did actually talk about dental hygiene. It does not shock me that Of Montreal would sing about keeping one's mouth clean. In fact, I expect them to come out with a series of songs on taking care of every other body part including one's privates sometime in the future.

The song made me think about all the parts of a human body that bands and artists have been singing about. If we exclude heart as a body part (it being an internal organ), apparently eyes are the most sung about body part according to Wired.com. That is not surprising.

Yet another non-surprising fact is that the number of different body parts refered to is highest for hip-hop songs with human butt leading the pack. 

In this picture (taken from the Fleshmap site) the size of the circle is directly proportional to the the frequency with which the body part is on average mentioned in a hip-hop song. Eyes, head and face actually have larger circles than say dick, cock or pussy while breasts and tits each are surprsingly mentioned in less that 1% of all hip-hop songs. Though one could argue about the context in which the word 'head' is being used and what exactly is happening to the 'face' in the song. 

Visit the fleshmap project site if you want to see the official results of the project that actually corelates body parts with music genres. And I thought we needed to increase research money to find a cure for AIDS or invest taxpayers money to make sure that music programs don't get cancelled in schools!@#$

One of the greatest contributions from the category of songs that refer to body parts, is the coining of the word bootylicious by Destiny's Child. Bootylicious is a word mentioned in all English dictionaries across the world, published on paper or online. Its meaning as given by the old & reliable OED is shapely, voluptuous, especially in refernce to the buttocks.

As a sub-category to this category, is songs with body parts in their title. The titles pan across a wide range of body parts. On one end we have songs titled Sleight of Hand (Pearl Jam) and Insane in the Bran (Cypress Hill). On the other end we have the outright explicit titles like It's about time you sucked on my Penis (Shat) and Gilded Cunt (Cradle of Filth). I hope no one even tries to correlate body parts in song titles with genres or see which body part is most mentioned in song titles. It is not gonna help any songwriter. 

Going back to Of Montreal's Brush, Brush, Brush, it has to be a pioneering song in the sub-category of maintianing a body part. I mean it does not just say what one would want to do to somebody's body part (for instance 'slap your booty', 'squeeze your tits', 'blow your brains' etc.), but advises the listener to take good care of it.