Whatever Happened to Porn Soundtracks?

The news cycle has been by turns electrifying and depressing for months, and things aren’t exactly looking up. With so much turbulence happening in the world, though, it’s good to take some time away from news and social media feeds. To just relax. And YNOT has found the perfect way to unwind: with Joseph Earp of Junkee.com’s trip down memory lane—specifically memories of porn soundtracks from the sixties through today.

In “What Happened To The Music In Porn?” Earp treated his readers to a close look at how porn soundtracks evolved from the Porno Chic era of the early seventies to the by-and-large silent backdrops of today’s pared-down erotic fare. We invite you to enjoy this delightful traipse down the annals of tawdry soundtrack history, and to enjoy the (SFW) YouTube videos of historical porn scores scattered throughout for your listening pleasure!

“Everybody knows what stereotypical “porn music” sounds like: swaggering basslines, cheesy synths. It’s a genre in and of itself, a sound settled into the cultural foundations. Which is funny, given that most pornography today is almost totally silent,” Earp began. “But why?”

With a fondness that only those of us who have seen the classics—Blue Movie, Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, Alice in Wonderland—can understand, Earp recalled, “In the golden age of porn, composers scored erotic films with full-scale, full-band soundtracks…The aim was to titillate, obviously. But it was also to entertain generally—to tell a story, amid all the fucking. And music was a big part of how those stories got told.”

“Throughout the ’70s, erotic films continued in the vein set by those early masterpieces, and so did their soundtracks,” Earp continued, mentioning the creativity and lushness of the scores for The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Let My Puppets Come, L.A. Plays Itself, and Sextool. “But as the decade came to a close and the ’80s began, porn changed. It’s easy to stereotype the eighties as the decade where everything got a bit sleazier; slicker. But certainly in the world of porn, that was true,” he wrote.

“It’s not hard to figure out what changed—cinema was getting democratised,” he continued, citing the rise of video over film, the lower cost of filmmaking equipment, and then the advent of home video viewing with VHS. “With these changes in budget and scale, music changed too. Full band soundtracks became something of the past. The new normal became keyboard-oriented works, composed and performed by a single performer.” Earp cited Talk Dirty To Me Part III, the Debbie Does Dallas series, and Insatiable as examples of the new normal.

With the dawn of the new millennium, wrote Earp, celebrity sex tapes and amateur porn rose to power, and with them, “an “authentic” feel that began to typify a ruling share of porn.” Using Who’s Nailin’ Paylin as an example, he said, “Films of the era used very cheap music, if any at all.”

But that’s not to say that porn has lost its cinematic sparkle, declared Earp. “As the two thousands progressed, more female filmmakers entered the industry, and the further democratisation of the art proved to be only a good thing. Suddenly, porn was more diverse, inviting and ethical than ever before. Mainstream porn’s priorities changed, that’s all. And music had become less of it.”

Read the whole article — and enjoy the porn soundtracks —at Junkee.com.

Headphones photo by Garrett Morrow from Pexels