Fan poll: Top 5 hard songs about sex

5. Type O Negative – “I love you to death”

The beast inside Peter Steele compelled him to write “Love You to Death,” a Type O classic that left the goth-metal icon begging for sweet relief. Despite the singer’s sex symbol status at this point in the ’90s, and although this slow-rolling doom ballad appears to be coated in an obscene layer of chest sweat, “Love You to Death” is apparently more about unfulfilled desires.

Although he hints at the beginning of the song that his “beast” will get you, by the end of the song he himself sabotages that lascivious boast with howling insecurity (“Am I good enough for you?”). Navigating sex and love can be complicated, to say the least.

4. Gdansk – “She Rides”

“She Rides,” the sleaze-heavy roadhouse metal highlight from Danzig’s solo debut of the same name, is about many things. Most notably, coitus.

Danzig’s own guitarist John Christ called the slow, plaintive song the band’s “first sex song,” but the melody is also heavily influenced by the myth of Lilith, personified here as “death in a cool black dress.” While Danzig’s vocals about a creature of the night that binds us forever to an unknown darkness have a sublime poetry, his lines about the sin running down her spine elevate this song toward XXX territory.

3. Deftones – “You’ve seen the butcher”

Deftones’ entire catalog sounds damn good, thanks in no small part to the late-night moans frontman Chino Moreno has relied on for the past 30 years. In fact, according to a recent study, the Sacramento titans are the most-listened-to metal band on people’s “sex playlists.”

“You’ve Seen the Butcher” is particularly erotic, gliding along at a bluesy, gnarly alt-groove tempo as Moreno – who appears to set up a video camera mid-verse – prepares to show the world what’s exploding in his bedroom.

A fine balance between intimacy and exhibitionism, “You’ve Seen the Butcher” features brilliant excess at Deftones’ finest.

2. Nine Inch Nails – “Closer”

“Closer” is a true masterpiece and strip club classic, a hot funk-industrial anthem like no other – a dangerous-sounding, uniquely reverent pervert that has already caused a sensation on a million gothic nights.

A grinding digital snare sounds like a dominatrix’s high heel; staccato synths sound tense and steamy. Trent Reznor, meanwhile, simmers with sensual intensity through this animalistic, BDSM-esque breathlessness, somehow presenting himself as both dom and sub as he ponders pain, pleasure, and existence itself.

1. Grain – “ADIDAS”

There is something strangely tragic and hauntingly credible about Korn’s second Life is peachy singles.

Just hidden behind the athleisure acronym (All Day I Dream About Sex) and the childishly fun sing-along chorus is a story of obsession and escape, in which Jonathan Davis plays an isolated nobody with a quavering voice who stirs up an immersive fantasy world in which, for once, he is on top (“Sex may be the only way I can truly escape from my shitty reality.”)

Like “Closer” before it, this sex classic is a lot darker than it seems at first listen. All the more reason to listen to it on repeat.