Annie Lennox: I Put a Spell on You
Things start slowly. But so they should. After all, this could be a journey into erotic extremity. You don’t go from Sunday lunch to building a sexual torture dungeon in two minutes, do you? Well, not if you’ve got to load the dishwasher first. As Annie Lennox belts out the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins number, there’s no early sign of my wife being aroused beyond compare. Peeking over her shoulder, I see she’s looking at Instagram. Not at dirty pictures, at pictures of cats. But first steps and all. She notes that the refrain “Because you’re mine” made her feel possessed. I say! “But not in a good way,” she adds.
Laura Welsh - Undiscovered
Still no signs of any great desire to get kinky. She’s still on Instagram. Though she does ask who the song’s by. I tell her and ask if Undiscovered is making her feel racy. “I’m feeling hot,” she replies. Oooh, missus! “Because I’m sitting on the computer charger.” Oh.
The Weeknd – Earned It
I’ll be honest. I rather kill the momentum at this point. Tiring of the ads in the Spotify playback I decide to upgrade to premium. Sadly, getting the code working takes 10 minutes. I’m pretty sure we were on the brink of something. But those 10 minutes have been deadly: my wife’s evidently lost interest in the erotic journey and is more interested in whether she can now use Spotify on her mobile phone. Once we finally get the Weeknd going, she’s moved to Twitter. And not to tweet about how intoxicated she is by the sheer passion of listening to the 50 Shades soundtrack on a Sunday teatime. I’m going to have to leave the propositioning for a little bit, I fear. “This is the most sexy one so far,” she observes, when she finally puts down her phone. “This actually sounds a little bit sexy. When he says ‘You deserve it,’ what does he mean? A good whipping?” Well, I ask in what I hope is a saucy manner, do you fancy a good whipping? She laughs in my face. Loudly and contemptuously.
Jessie Ware – Meet Me in the Middle
“I’ve heard of Jessie Ware,” she notes. Then picks up the Sunday Times. She’s looking at the comment pages. I mean no disrespect to those who work on comment pages. But history does not teach us that long pieces by Dominic Lawson are guaranteed aphrodisiacs. “This is really boring,” she says of the song.
Ellie Goulding – Love Me Like You Do
“Was she a question in the pub quiz?” my wife asks of the all-conquering Goulding. “I think she might have been in the picture round.” We won the quiz, so at least we’re moving on to more exciting emotional territory, and she’s put down the Sunday Times. Let’s be bold. “Fancy being tied up?” No. Again she laughs in my face, this time adding that she’s got to get through the comment pages. On a one to 10 scale of eroticness, she’s only willing to give it a four. She doesn’t think power ballads are erotic.
Sia – Salted Wound
The Spotify version of the soundtrack leaves off the Beyoncé tracks, so we’re on to Sia, which apparently sounds a bit heroiny and a bit shivery. What? Like you’re coming down with the flu? “No, shivery in a good way.” Nevertheless, she appears to be checking our son isn’t doing anything unsuitable on his Xbox rather than concentrating fully on the erotic journey. I ask whether we should dig out a basement for a torture dungeon. “It might give us more storage space,” she observes. “But I don’t think we’d get planning permission.” Nevertheless, she says, this is the most erotic track so far - maybe six or seven out of 10. So, if that were playing and you had a choice between putting the washing out and getting spanked, what would it be. “Well, it didn’t evoke spanking, did it? And if the washing needed putting out, well, we’d have to put that out first, anyway.”
Awolnation – I’m on Fire
It’s me having problems now. It’s a Springsteen cover, and as a lover of Springsteen, I’m having difficulty squaring the man whose shows make me weep with BDSM. “Does it make you want to spank Bruce?” my wife asks. She’s laughing at me. God, woman, you don’t spank Bruce Springsteen! No one spanks Bruce Springsteen!
Frank Sinatra – Witchcraft
We listen to a lot of Sinatra in our household. Which means there’s nothing exotic about hearing pop’s greatest ever singer. Also, the boy had turned the sound on his Xbox up very loud; there’s nothing less likely to get anyone in the mood for nipple clamps than Alan Smith’s lugubrious tones offering pre-scripted expert analysis on Fifa 15. I’d challenge Casanova to get the most rampant strumpet in the mood for rumpy pumpy when in the background all you can hear is, “Oh, Diego Costa will be disappointed with that effort.” Damn it boy, you ruined everything!
Vaults – One Last Night
I’ve made the boy mute Fifa, but I fear we’ve lost momentum again. “This is crap,” my wife says. “I hate this. You’d never get me into bed with this.”
The Weeknd – Where You Belong
Maybe my mistake was playing the soundtrack through a MacBook in the kitchen. I should have installed a top-of-the-range soundsystem in the bedroom and had some sophisticated lighting installed (rather than the clip-on-your-bedframe reading lights we have). That might have worked better. Because there’s no way around it, my wife is still fully dressed. To be fair, so am I. The extreme ennui-ladenness of Where You Belong isn’t really doing it for her (or me). She doesn’t have a lot of time for ennui in a man.
Skylar Grey – I Know You
Time to face facts. We’re nearing the end of the album and so far spanking, torture dungeons and nipple clamps have all been rejected. There’s little chance of another dreary ballad, this time from Skylar Grey, changing that. The soundtrack isn’t generating conventional raciness, let alone transgressive raciness. I’ve seen my wife more excited at Sue Perkins’s puns on The Great British Bake-Off. My dreams of opening a door in our relationship have been shattered. I had the contract drawn up and everything (with some differences from the book: clearly, I wasn’t going to make her indulge in serious bondage on her book club or yoga nights. That would have been unreasonable. And we’d have had to have worked round the kids. And the cat. And the fact that our neighbours have asked us to be quiet between 7.30pm and 9.30pm in case we wake their baby, which would probably have ruled out some of the more outré practices).
Danny Elfman – Ana and Christian/Did That Hurt
Two instrumentals to end it all. “What’s the ‘that’ in the title?” she asks. “I dread to think.” And that’s the difference between my wife and Anastasia Steele. We are not, I suppose, destined to be consumed by dark passions.. Anyway, time to put some beans on for the boy. Now, that’s living dangerously.
