Spinner names top hooker songs of all time

As the world press is trying to learn everything about Spitzer's "Kristen," the editors of Spinner.com are reminding us that the world's oldest profession has had quite a few stand-outs in the form of song. From Roxanne and her red light to Lady Marmalade's famous "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?", the editors of Spinner.com are counting down the top 20 songs about hookers.
For half a century pop music has been as sex-obsessed as a teenage boy. Strangely, though, it becomes a little prudish when sex requires the transfer of cash. Still hustlers and ladies of the night have occasionally caused tunesmiths to take pen (and other things) in hand. Sometimes these sex professionals cause ruin of a doe-eyed client. Sometimes they’re the ones who are ruined, sad dreamers who made poor choices. Other times – many times in fact -- they’re the catalyst for an unhealthy bout of stalking. Call us traditionalists, but the more direct the song, the better. There’s no love making in this profession. Plus, there’s an easy rhyme for “buck.” Below, please find the complete list which includes the song name, the hook(er) line and sinker, as well as a brief description as to why the song made the list.

Now That's a Hook! - From Lady Marmalade to Roxanne- Top 20 Hooker Songs of All Time

20. Bad Girls (1979), Donna Summer
Hooker lines (and sinker):
See them out on the street at night
Walking, picking up on all kids of strangers
If the price is right you can score

As you’ll see on this list, the disco era embraced hookers and Donna Summer rode this streetwalking cheetah all the way to No. 1. It’s a peculiar ode, full of judgment at the outset, as Summer decides “bad girls” = “sad girls” because they really just want to be stars. But by the song’s final verse, Summer has found her inner bad girl, sidling up to a potential John offering some quality time.

19. He’s a Whore (1977), Cheap Trick
Hooker lines (and sinker):
I think I’ll take her for a ride
With this moneybag by my side
A gigolo is the only way to go

Few of our hooker songs are written from the POV of the paid rather than the payer. Robin Trower’s narrator here wants you to want him but only so he can score some coin. He reluctantly turns tricks with a green-toothed woman so ugly her face would “stop a clock.” It should be noted that this could be a big metaphor for a band selling out, though The Flame didn’t come until a decade later.

18. Hot Child in the City (1978), Nick Gilder
Hooker lines (and sinker):
So young to be loose and on her own
Young boys, they all want to take her home
And when she comes downtown
The boys all stop and stare

Ah, yet another simpleton who fancies himself as a love maker. Worse, he tells his love interest “we’ll talk about love.” Our hooker experience being limited, maybe they prefer the talkers to the stalkers, we, um, can’t really say. Canadian pop singer Gilder hit No. 1 with this song in 1978. It’s technically about runaways on the Sunset Strip. But we know where that ends up: Waiting tables if you’re lucky.

17. Tenderloin (1994), Rancid
Hooker lines (and sinker):
The tricks she gets them she's not a victim
She makes a list of them and reads them all alone
For money she's walking down on Larkin

At the risk of reading into this too much, does tenderloin mean this particular prostitute is underpracticed? (Could she be Firecrotch’s virginal sister?) Because next generation punk rockers Rancid clearly state that the hooker is NOT a victim, does that mean her John is the tenderloin? If so, that’s cold. Whoever sports the tender loin, there’s some threat of a fire glowing down below, which sounds like it burns. Could it all be about VD?

16. Family Man (1983), Hall & Oates
Hooker lines (and sinker):
She wore hurt surprise as she rechecked her make-up to protect herself
Dropped her price and pride she made it totally clear that she was his for a night

The search for the worst hooker to ever appear in a song ends here. Philly soul duo Hall and Oates – who both have, at times, dressed and been coiffed like pimps -- aren’t going to win any feminist brownie points with this insecure streetwalker who chases the titular family man. But such matters didn’t matter in 1983, when it reached No. 6 on the pop charts. This guy apparently melts the hooker’s heart with a half-hearted pledge to maybe kinda stick with his brood. She needs to find another job.

15. Sex Farm (1984), Spinal Tap
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
Poking your hay

It’s unclear exactly who’s the hooker here, but there’s talk of transactions and contracts and, well, the farm as a metaphor implies some sort of business institution. So whether it’s a rural gigolo eagerly trying to farm out his stud services or some delusional whackjob who thinks he can get away with charging the farm for a service it already provides is anybody’s guess. It’s too late to do anything about it anyway. His silo is already rising high. High. Hiiigh!

14. What Do You Do For Money (1980), Honey, AC/DC
Hooker lines (and sinker):
You're workin’ in bars, ridin’ in cars
Never gonna give it for free

There’s a lot of resentment in this growling rocker by sex-obsessed Aussie rockers AC/DC. There’s also some confusion, which is confounding in itself. Brawny screamer Brian Johnson screams the title line, but it’s pretty evident. More mysterious is what he means when he says she’s “always grabbin’, stabbin’.” As a band well versed in Spinal Tappy metaphor, we figured she was the one getting stabbed.

13. Mexican Blackbird (1975), ZZ Top
Hooker lines (and sinker):
So head for the border and put in an order or two.
The wings of the blackbird will spread like an eagle for you.

ZZ Top’s countryish shuffle gets the nod over La Grange because it focuses on the whore rather than the whorehouse. It’ is without a doubt the most socially insensitive (read: blatantly offensive) hooker song ever written. The Texas blues rock trio sounds like a pervy tourist board, claiming that if you find yourself in Acuna, “and you ain’t up to being alone,” you should procure the services of a dancer/prostitute who’s half black and half Mexican. Because nobody knows her real name, she goes by a tag we can’t bring ourselves to print.

12. Just a Gigolo (1994), Louis Prima
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Paid for every dance
selling each romance
every night some heart betraying

Easily the most existential of the hooker songs, Prima’s good-natured gigolo isn’t the brooding Richard Gere variety. He’s turning tricks and bringing home coin while he’s still able. This tune got turned into a medley in which he declares he’s sad and lonely, even though scat singing suggests otherwise. This gigolo is resigned to his niche, which he’ll ride out until the end when life goes on without him. Or until David Lee Roth picks up the song and gives it new life.

11. Fancy (1970), Bobbie Gentry
Hooker lines (and sinker):
It sounded like somebody else that was talkin
Askin mama what do I do
She said just be nice to the gentlemen fancy
And theyll be nice to you

Gentry’s version gets a nod over Reba McEntire’s since it crossed over onto the pop charts. And what a story! Father? He split. Mother? She’s sick. Baby sister? She’s starving. So Fancy’s mother did what any loving parent would do: Sent her teenage daughter uptown to service the townfolk. Turns out mama died and the baby got taken away anyway, so it was for naught. But Fancy did OK, finding her way to a “Georgia mansion”; her tale is among the most successful among our song hookers. Kind of like Pretty Woman, except with parental betrayal and starving babies.

10. 53rd & 3rd (1976), The Ramones
Hooker lines (and sinker):
53rd and 3rd
Standing on the street
53rd and 3rd
Im tryin to turn a trick

OK, sorry, THIS song features the worst prostitute of any song ever made. Dee Dee Ramone’s semi-biographical tune about hustling is from the POV of the poor, sad hustler who never gets work. He’s also a fruitloops loony, slashing up some guy, which he claims “proved that I’m no sissy.” Well, at least the knifeplay should get him off the street. And you don’t wanna be a sissy in the big house.

9. When the Sun Goes Down (2006), Arctic Monkeys
Hooker lines (and sinker):
I said who's that girl there?
I wonder what went wrong
So that she had to roam the streets

This tune by British buzz band Arctic Monkeys namechecks Roxanne, and there’s a similar Bickle-ish savior complex going on with its narrator. But like a monkey, the narrator doesn’t do much more than fling poop, verbally calling out a “scumbag” pimp for treating his girls poorly. Very poorly, in fact. For the love of Jodie do something! Arctic Wussies is more like it.

8. Money Talk (1994), The Pretenders
Hooker lines (and sinker):
You're so deluded,
You think that I'm real.
You pass your hormones off as love,
For five minutes you feel.

This is a refreshing account from the other side of the deal. Tough Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde offers the options with characteristic bluntness: “Twenty gets you straight, forty gets you other.” She’s gotta feed the kids, but she’s not so desperate as to be a doormat. Five minutes? She’s got brass in pocket, how about you?

7. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis (1978), Tom Waits
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Street I stopped taking dope and I quit drinking whiskey
and my old man plays the trombone and works out at the track.

Compared to some of Waits’ gruff street-informed beat poetry stuff from the ‘70s – say Pasties and a G-String -- this tune is teeming with sweet optimism. Our hooker’s off the sauce and the stuff, she’s found a stand-in baby daddy, and hopefully she’ll be out of jail soon. Strangely this one never charted. Happy holidays!

6. Roxeanne (1979), Police
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Roxanne, you don't have to wear that dress tonight
Walk the streets for money
You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

Sting knows a thing or two about stalker songs, which makes his ode to repetition and a particular street walker more than a little unsettling. He doesn’t quite get around to putting the lotion in the bucket, but his “mind is made up,” which creeps us out. He, too, is in a “bad way.” Can that be cured with a shot? It became an unavoidable FM staple, but this song barely eked into the Top 40 when it was released.

5. Roberta (1974), Billy Joel
Hooker lines (and sinker):
I'd ask you over but I can't afford you
Oh, I wish you'd take the time

Another tune in which a delusional narrator expresses a desire to “make love” to the object of his affection. Let’s hope he’s not a stand-in for New Yawk piano pop palooka Billy Joel, because Roberta’s boy toy is a desperate mewling cheapo. He’s also, apparently, “in a bad way.” We’d have to agree. From Streetlife Serenade, a clumsily titled album that found BJ walking on the wild side.

4. Candy's Room (1978), Bruce Springsteen
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Strangers from the city call my baby's number and they bring her toys
She has fancy clothes and diamond rings

If Billy Joel couldn’t afford Roberta, he’s got no chance with Candy. But the narrators have in common a certainty that they’re a dear John rather than some poor bloke with the cash for just one poke. Springsteen fans couldn’t say they weren’t warned since this tune appears on Darkness on the Edge of Town. He’d revisit hookerdom nearly two decades later in the pitch black Reno.

3. Walk on the Wild Side (1973), Lou Reed
Hooker lines (and sinker):
Candy came from out on the island
In the backroom she was everybodys darling
But she never lost her head
Even when she was given head

We’re not wont to call Billy Joel’s New Yorkness into question, but frankly Candy seems a more believable name for a ‘70s street walker in the Big Apple than Roberta, who seems a better fit to walk the streets of, say, Allentown. Among the gritter hooker tunes, there is no love making in this song, a Top 20 hit for Reed, who has likely never uttered the phrase “make love.”

2. House of the Rising Sun (1964), The Animals
Hooker lines (and sinker):
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

One of the most popular prostitution songs ever recorded House of the Rising Sun is sort of a cautionary tale flipside to Lady Marmalade. This chart-topping folk ballad has unconfirmed origins, but pretty much anybody who owned a guitar in the ‘60s recorded it. The Animals raspy, garage rocky version was the biggest hit. Given that a) it’s a song about a whorehouse and b) is a song about a whorehouse that ruins poor boys, it’s a curious choice for weddings and other celebrations.

1. Lady Marmalade (1975), LaBelle
Hooker lines (and sinker):
He met Marmalade down in old New Orleans
Struttin' her stuff on the street
She said 'Hello, hey Joe, you wanna give it a go?’

The short of it is Joe did want to give it a go and found himself wanting more more more. Patti LaBelle belted out the mother of all hooker songs with frank French panache and a little bit of orgasmic gobbledygook. A chart-topper, it’s a bit of a cautionary tale, as Joe gets back to his regular life and can’t quite sleep right again. But he’s hardly a ruined stalker sad sack like most of the 19 predecessors on this list. Marmalade must spread sweetly.

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