"I Want Your Sex" is a song by the English singer and songwriter George Michael. Released as a single on 18 May 1987 (U.S.) and 1 June 1987 (UK), it was the third hit from the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop II and the first single from Michael's debut solo album Faith. It peaked at number two in the U.S. and number three in the UK, and was a top five single in many other countries.
The single was certified platinum by the RIAA for sales in excess of two million in the United States. It was also the recipient for Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song. The song's radio airplay on the BBC was restricted to post-watershed hours due to concerns that it might promote promiscuity and could be counterproductive to contemporary campaigns about AIDS awareness.
Composition
The song has three separate parts dubbed "Rhythms". The first one, titled "Rhythm One: Lust", is the version released as a single and banned by the BBC. It appears by itself on the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack, and mixed with the second version, titled "Rhythm Two: Brass in Love", on Faith. The second Rhythm also appears by itself as the B-side of the single. A third part, "Rhythm Three: A Last Request", appears as a B-side to the "Hard Day" 7" and "Kissing a Fool" 12" singles, and on the CD version of Faith as a bonus track. All three versions were mixed together into one 13-minute song, dubbed the "Monogamy Mix", for the 12" and CD single releases.
Writing and production
Part 1 of "I Want Your Sex" was recorded in August 1986 at Sarm West Studio 2, London, roughly 2 months after the Wham! split that June. It was written entirely in the studio, with Michael playing all the instruments: a LinnDrum, a Roland Juno-106 and a Yamaha DX7. Michael explained why he wrote the track this way in International Musician and Recording World magazine:
Michael admitted that the track was "really easy to do", but it was difficult in the sense that he intended it to be a dance record, so he "had to do something new with it every 16 bars" for the song's arrangement to "hold up interest-wise".
The "squelching" bass sound heard in the song's introduction was caused entirely by accident, as engineer Chris Porter described:
Michael himself had a similar recollection:
Parts 2 & 3 were recorded the following year during sessions at PUK Studios in Denmark as extensions to Part 1 (which had been selected for the first single), with Part 2 being the one with a "more New York club sound" (having been recorded with a seven-piece brass section), while Part 3 was the "romantic" and "altogether smoother" counterpart. For the crossover points, the 56-channel SSL console (with 28 channels on either side) at the PUK facility would be used to bounce from the original multitrack on one side of the SSL onto the new multitrack slave on the other, and George would rehearse the musicians on a particular part before dropping them in on the new track.
Music video
The music video, directed by Andy Morahan, featured Michael and his then-girlfriend Kathy Jeung to emphasize that he was in a monogamous relationship; at one point, he is shown using lipstick to write the words "explore" and "monogamy" on her back, which is photographed and retouched at the end of the video to reveal the phrase "explore monogamy". A Spanish model was also used for naked scenes in a way that allowed the audience to assume they were the same woman; these shots are interspersed with intentionally blurred footage of George Michael dancing and singing the song.
In a 2004 interview with Adam Mattera for UK magazine Attitude, Michael reflected: "It was totally real. Kathy was in love with me but she knew that I was in love with a guy at that point in time. I was still saying I was bisexual...She was the only female that I ever brought into my professional life. I put her in a video. Of course she looked like a beard. It was all such a mess, really. My own confusion and then on top of that what I was prepared to let the public think."
The video generated controversy over its sexual themes. In 2002, MTV2's countdown of MTV's Most Controversial Videos Ever to Air on MTV included the video for "I Want Your Sex" at number 3. The original video cut appears on the Twenty Five compilation 2-DVD set.
Release
In the U.S., the song was first featured on the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack album, which was released to radio stations in early May 1987. The commercial release of the soundtrack followed on May 18. An immediate surge in airplay of "I Want Your Sex" as an album cut prompted CBS to release the single in the U.S. later that same month, ahead of schedule. The UK single debuted the first week of June.