Track of the Day: 'Don't Stop'

"Don't Stop," from Brazilian Girls' 2005 self-titled album, might be the sexiest song I've ever heard. It's not just the opening lines ("Don't stop, don't stop now; just keep on going, until I come"), or the throaty voicing frontwoman Sabina Sciubba gives them. In a sense, these lyrics are only making text out of subtext. "Don't Stop" rides a pulsing house beat and a sleepy, insistent bass line; it moves forward with the graceful, liquid step of a jungle cat. Sciubba's singing is a powerful part of the song, but the music would sound humid even with her vocals scrubbed from the mix.

The song's most memorable lyrics come about halfway through. "When and how did I become my mother?" Sciubba wonders. "Am I getting on your nerves? Let's just not talk about it." It's a jarring moment, a dash of anxiety and even mortality in a song that has, to that point, sounded like a fun, seductive celebration of life's pleasures. Yet death is, of course, the other side of sex--one marks the beginning of adulthood, while the other marks its end--and sooner or later most of us do turn into our parents, as little as people like to talk about it.

Most pop songs about sex (in other words, most pop songs) tend to give it a one-sided treatment. It's something fun and joyous and awesome; or else it's something melancholy, or scary, or painful. That it can be all these things at once, sometimes in the same moment, is a truth usually left to novelists to articulate. Brazilian Girls earn props, then, for being the rare band to address it in sound.

On iTunes: Brazilian Girls / "Don't Stop"