The latest in an ongoing series on TheVine, we analyse the latest Number One single in Australia so you don't have to.

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Rihanna
'S&M'
(Island/Def Jam)


Rihanna - 'S&M'

This week, Rihanna swaps Eminem for 'S&M', and gets to #1 in Australia. It's her fourth Australian #1 single in the last twelve months, after 'Rude Boy', 'Only Girl (In The World)' (review) and her Eminem collaboration, 'Love The Way You Lie', (review), and her seventh #1 single overall (the others being 'Umbrella', 'SOS', and 'Don't Stop The Music'). As such, she's probably the biggest pop star in Australia right now. 'S&M' was produced by Norwegian production team StarGate, who also produced 'Rude Boy', 'Only Girl (In The World)', and 'Firework' by Katy Perry. Wynter Gordon's 'Dirty Talk' (review), which was at #1 for three weeks, has this week fallen to #2, as former number ones tend to do.

So yes. The current #1 single, the one that is quite likely to be stuck in the impressionable heads of your oh-so-innocent teenage daughters, is called 'S&M'. And 'S&M' isn't a cute double entendre acronym for something else (e.g., 'Symphony & Metallica'); Rihanna really does means sadomasochism. After all, one of the more prominent hooks in the song really does go “sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me”. She's not really pulling any punches here, but she may well be pulling nipple clamps.

It's the second #1 single in a row to reference S&M; one line in 'Dirty Talk' mentions “hot wax, S&M on the floor”. It's also the second #1 single in a row to only really get big in Australia; 'S&M' has apparently also been a #1 single in (possibly quite also filthy-minded) Belgium, but hasn't troubled the charts too much elsewhere. Between 'S&M', 'Dirty Talk', and Enrique Iglesias' learned academic discourse about power dynamics in human sexual encounters ('Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You)', the current #3 single), the Australian charts right now are obsessed with the darker side of sex - more so than usual. And it's not just the top 3 singles: the current #5 single, 'E.T.' by Katy Perry, has the creepy lyric “take me, ta-ta-ta-take me, wanna be a victim, ready for abduction”, and the current #6 single is by Chris Brown, a man who I'm surprised still has a career after abusing Rihanna (should I be disturbed that it is a woman with a history of being abused singing about S&M? I'm not sure.)

As far as psychiatrists are concerned, being into S&M is a psychiatric disorder, at least if it affects your relationships and makes you unhappy. According to the DSM-IV-R, the current psychiatric manual used in Australia, sexual sadism is defined as “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviours involving acts (real, not simulated) in which the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim is sexually exciting to the person”. Sexual masochism is defined as “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviours involving the act (real, not simulated) of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer”.

Now, the DSM psychiatry manual also included homosexuality (and consensual sadomasochism) until the 1970s, and it's pretty obvious that the attitudes of society determine the contents of the DSM as much as things "going wrong" in the brain. So it's not a foregone conclusion, by any stretch, to think that you have mental problems if you happen to like S&M. But psychologists and psychiatrists obviously do find S&M interesting in a professional way, and have long theorised about it. The term 'sadomasochism' (which 'S&M' is short for) was coined in 1886 by a German psychiatrist after reading the works of the Marquis de Sade and Count Masoch (who wrote the masochistic Venus In Furs, a novel best known now for inspiring a Velvet Underground song). Sigmund Freud believed that sadomasochism was “the most common and important of all perversions”, and argued that a desire for S&M is derived from being made to feel excessively guilty about one's sexual desires as a child. (Freud thought that most problems derived from too much or not enough childhood guilt.) However, according to a more modern source (Laws & Donohue's 2008 textbook Sexual Deviance) sadomasochists are no more guilty than anyone else; instead, it argues, masochism is an escape from self, where you are not responsible for your behaviour, and so can explore parts of yourself you might not otherwise be able to explore.

If this is the case, being a very successful pop singer like Rihanna must be a fair bit like being into S&M. For a pop star like Rihanna, living in the strange, rarefied world of celebrity means they can act out - or be presented with - fantasies they might not have otherwise explored. They can also blame - or succumb to - the pressures of fame for their actions, rather than innermost desires. The nature of the job is to do things that most people would be quite uncomfortable with most days. To do things because the managers and record labels and security people and the minders who control your life have told you to. It is (probably unfortunately) pretty much de rigueur right now for a female chart pop star to be hypersexual, just like Rihanna or Britney Spears. Rihanna could presumably say that the hypersexuality is an act, that she's not really like that, that it's a job; but instead you do get the impression that a part of her gets off on prancing around in sexual ways in video clips and on stages (and to do it convincingly, you'd have to like it at some level, otherwise your heart wouldn't be into it, or so I imagine).

The controversial video for 'S&M' portrays the S&M in 'S&M' as a metaphor for what it is like to be a celebrity – many celebrities still crave the attention of the press, despite the humiliation associated with cellulite articles, sex scandals and unpleasant paparazzi shots; Rihanna is presumably suggesting that many celebrities actually want to be humiliated, that they want to be part of sex scandals and so forth. In one part of the video, Rihanna leads morally dubious celebrity blogger Perez Hilton around on a leash like he were a dog. In another brief scene Hilton feigns pissing on a letterbox, an apt metaphor for his entire career. Elsewhere in the video, Rihanna brandishes a whip as she pours food over bound members of the press, wears a black boob tube with 'censored' written across it, and is wrapped in plastic during a press conference. Yet, while making a play at criticising the media, Rihanna scans as if she's having a ball, writhing around on the floor tied up in rope bondage, singing "I like it like it”. She's clearly comfortable with titillating the audience when she more or less fellates a banana.

So why might it be that Aussies buying chart pop are so obsessed with not-quite-vanilla sex right now? It seems like hardcore S&M isn't so very common. According to a 2003 Australian study, about 1-2% of adults reported having S&M-flavoured sex in the last 12 months, and this figure is not likely to have changed that dramatically in the last 8 years. According to US studies, 9-17% of women report having regular fantasies about being forced to have sex, while 11.7% of men report having had fantasies about being sexually humiliated. Perhaps listening to 'S&M' might be a socially acceptable way of ruminating on these kind of secret fantasies. But in any case, while there may be some handcuffs on many adults' bedside tables, actually finding pleasure in pain and humiliation is rare enough that you wouldn't expect it's depiction to have mass appeal on the charts.

Perhaps the hypersexuality of the charts right now is a response to all the floods, bushfires, and cyclones that seem to be continually assaulting Australia in recent weeks – maybe if made aware of a chance of dying suddenly, and due to unalterable natural events, one reaction is a letting go of inhibitions. Then again, listening to gangsta rap with misogynistic violent lyrics doesn't actually mean you are personally misogynistic and violent, or that you even fantasise about being misogynistic and violent. Instead, listening to that kind of thing is often a sort of rebellion, perhaps a way of trying to shock parents or impress friends. Perhaps a lot of the teenage girls buying the song on iTunes aren't personally interested in S&M, but are personally interested in seeing the horrified look on their parents' faces.

It is interesting that it is now women who are singing songs like 'S&M' and 'Dirty Talk'; in the past, the musicians that have explored BDSM themes on the pop charts have largely been male artists; take Nine Inch Nails' 'Happiness In Slavery' (totally and utterly NSFW link), Depeche Mode's 'Master & Servant', or, say, Marilyn Manson's version of 'Sweet Dreams'. Some of this vaguely industrial synth pop isn't a million miles away from modern chart pop; compare Marilyn Manson's version of 'Tainted Love' to Rihanna's first #1 single, 'S.O.S.', for example. Manson's singing style is obviously not quite as sweet as Rihanna's, but the backing music (even outside of Rihanna's 'Tainted Love' sample) is pretty similar - the main difference is that Manson has more distorted guitars. The fact that it's now very mainstream pop singers, rather than "edgy" alternative guys, who are singing about this stuff suggests a more recent sexual liberation or oversexualisation of women, depending on your viewpoint.

So maybe people are fascinated at the moment by S&M. Or maybe 'S&M' is about what it's about, but the song is a hit because it just happens to be a song that's expertly designed to get stuck in your head by seasoned chart pop professionals? There are at least five strong, prominent hooks in the song:

1.The “na na na come on” section at the front of the song.
2. The “oh-oh, oh-oh oh” that ends every line of the verse.
3. The interesting way the melody sits on the off-beats when she sings “sticks and stones may break my bones...”
4. The “come on come on, I like it like it” chorus section.
5. The section towards the outro when she sings “S-S-S and M-M-M”.

Chances are that one of these hooks are gonna get you. 'S&M' apes Lady Gaga's style without ripping off a particular song, lending the track a familiarity which might be a hook in itself. There's the tone of Rihanna's voice in the “na na na come on” intro, reminiscent of Lady Gaga's tone in that odd “ro-ro-roma-roma” section near the start of 'Bad Romance'. There's also the beat underlying 'S&M', which sounds a lot like the one in 'Just Dance'. The synth sounds are pretty similar too. And, of course, celebrity and sexual deviance are Lady Gaga's stock themes.

There's something poetic about a song about 'S&M' having all those hooks. After all, the relationship between pop producer and audience is a sort of master-slave relationship, because the audience sometimes can't help but get the song stuck in their heads. Quite a lot of people are, in a way, being forced to submit to their pop-producer masters as a result of listening to this song. They're not into 'S&M', they're not really interested in the metaphorical stuff about what it's like to be a celebrity, but nonetheless they cannot help but have the line “but whips and chains excite me” stuck in their heads.

The sadomasochism of pop.

Tim Byron