Christgau Word of the Day: Lubricious

This photo covers both definitions of
the word lubricious. And then some.

One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)

The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.

For this post I found the Christgau Word of the Day by somewhat happy accident. I was using Google as a spell check, as I often do out of laziness because the search engine rarely lets me down in the "Did you mean to use this word which you spelled incorrectly, dummy?" department. The word I was looking for, in order to pull up the definition for which I make a screenshot, was lugubrious, but the stew of letters I entered returned a different word, a word that sounded pretty cool and Christgau-like, so I went with that instead.

That word is lubricious.

Such a delicious word. If you click on the little audio button next to the word above (on the search result, not on the screenshot), you'll hear the word pronounced correctly by a vanilla radio-announcer guy and not, alas, Kathleen Turner. What a waste.

The Online Etymology Dictionary notes that, at least in English, as the two meanings can be traced to the middle of the 17th century. The "offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire" definition sounds rather subjective, though; it could mean anything from wearing too much Polo cologne before heading out to a club to wearing no pants to said club.

Anyway, I'd assumed that Christgau would use a word like lubricious, and I was correct.

A quick scan of the search results for lubricious on Christgau's site pulls up a few dozen pages (some are dupes), and one of the artists described as lubricious (and not in the oil-smooth way) is, unsurprsingly, Prince on his well-received Dirty Mind album:

After going gold in 1979 as an utterly uncrossedover falsetto love man, he takes care of the songwriting, transmutes the persona, revs up the guitar, muscles into the vocals, leans down hard on a rock-steady, funk-tinged four-four, and conceptualizes--about sex, mostly. Thus he becomes the first commercially viable artist in a decade to claim the visionary high ground of Lennon and Dylan and Hendrix (and Jim Morrison), whose rebel turf has been ceded to such marginal heroes-by-fiat as Patti Smith and John Rotten-Lydon. Brashly lubricious where the typical love man plays the lead in "He's So Shy," he specializes here in full-fledged fuckbook fantasies--the kid sleeps with his sister and digs it, sleeps with his girlfriend's boyfriend and doesn't, stops a wedding by gamahuching the bride on her way to church. Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. A

I wish the Dean of Rock Critics bumped this up to an A+ so I could further parse the review, but I'll at least highlight the delightful alliteration of "full-fledged fuckbook fantasies" and the wonderful image of Mr. Jagger folding up his penis. (How many folds? Lengthwise? Crosswise? Like a flag?) Jagger and our Word of the Day show up in an article about the Stones written for Newsday in 1972: "[Jagger] always sang with a curl of his lubricious upper lip."

(In case you're interested, gamahuching is, according to one source, "an obsolete word for cunnilingus." It sounds like a good way to describe an act that Nazi officers engaged in with Paris prostitutes during the occupation of France.)

Another lubricious recording artist is Esther Phillips. Here's an example of her "lubricious, naturally sardonic high vibrato," as noted on the 1970 live album Burnin'. This is actually a Beatles song. (Note: Christgau doesn't care for this song.)

And I'm sure you're probably thinking, "Lubricious? You must be talking about Mama Cass!" As revolting as that may sound, Christgau did describe the version of "Twist and Shout" as performed on Gold, the 2005 collection from The Mamas and the Papas, as a "lubricious slow jam." (The song originally appeared on the band's 1967 release Deliver.)

You're probably familiar with the Isley Brothers version, or a later remake by the Beatles, but TMATP put a trippy and, well, lubricious slow-jam twist (and shout) on this classic, one that I will soon add to my Android:

Someone was inspired by the song's lubricious nature to make a "Drum and Bass G Dub" version of it...

...but to be honest, I think the remix robs the tune of most of its lubricious-ness.

In addition to discovering this awesome version of "Twist and Shout" (not the G Dub version), my research led me to a Rhino-released compilation of now-dated rap hits (mostly by female rappers, I think?) called Fat Beats & Brastraps: Classics. The track that Christgau deems lubricious is "Wild Thang" (no relation to the actual "classic" by the Troggs or the quasi-classic by Tone Lōc), which became more famous as the foundation for the LL Cool J hit "Doin' It".

From what I can gather, the singer LeShaun released "Wild Thang" (which samples the Grace Jones song "My Jamaican Guy") as the performer Almond Joy in the group 2 Much or, as Christgau puts it:

LeShaun d/b/a 2 Much serves up the lovingly lubricious "Wild Thang" for the ineluctably lustful L.L. Cool J

...which is more than anyone needs to say about any of that. I do like the almost paradoxical phrase "lovingly lubricious," as if to say, "That's offensively sexually provocative, but hey, you've got the best intentions."

If you've never heard "Wild Thing" (likely) but have heard "Doin' It" (possibly), you'll recognize the latter in the former immediately:

I assume Ms. Jones has been adequately compensated by everyone involved. Would you want to be on the shit list of Grace Jones? Now there's someone who takes lubricious to a whole new level.