Sex (I'm A...)

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this song might have something to do with sex. What do you think?

Actually I saw an interview with the lead singer and she said it was about her sex life and how she liked to role play and do all these different things, and the guy just wanted to do kinda the same thing over and over so basically she's playing up all these different roles and he's just... himself.

I'm a MAN! Berlin, her voice is so sexy!

I'm surprised this song hasn't generated more comments and controversy. Truthfully, of all of Berlins' songs, I got tired of this one fastest (talk about "overplayed"), but it is an interesting and thought provoking song. The objectification of the woman, contrasted to the man, is an interesting line of thought, and one has to carefully consider who is truly the object here. The role of the man is so much less defined in this song, so much more ambiguous.

This is about Terri Nunn's relationship with famous DJ Richard Blade. The woman in the relationship wants to spice things up by playing various roles and assuming various personas, but the man.... well, he's just a man and he's not into it. I think a lot of people missed the humor in the song, at its heart it has a sex positive, even feminist message.

I think it's a statement about human sexuality. The male voice keeps saying "I'm a man" and the female voice says she is different things. It's saying that a man is a man and not defined by his sexuality, and a woman is defined by how a man perceives her during sex. She can be his "babe", a hooker, etc., but he is just a man.

I absolutely love the synth in this track. So hypnotic. So 80s.

I had to laugh at the comments here that this is about objectification of women. Terri Nunn, the lead singer, was and is very, very sexual. Today we'd say she's very, very "sex positive" but that term wasn't in use yet back then.

This song is mostly about getting attention for the band with what was at the time a deliberately shocking, controversial song. But aside from that, the meaning of the lyrics is about her having a lot of fun with role-playing in sex while a bit frustrated that her man doesn't want to role-play too.

BTW the man she was frustrated with that way wasn't John Crawford, the man in the band who sings with her and co-wrote the song and acts with her in the video. She was never lovers with any of the band members.

Just to give one example of how sex positive Terri Nunn was and how comfortable she was with her sexuality, when she was just 16 years old she lied about her age and posed nude for Penthouse magazine.

I've been a big fan of Berlin since "No More Words" and its album "Love Live" were released in '84, but "Sex (I'm A...)" was always my least favorite of Berlin's songs. If you're not familiar with them, go to youtube and listen their song "Now It's My Turn".