‘I Just Died in Your Arms’ (Tonight): A Song about Sex?

By Oliver Tearle

When writing these columns I have three essential truths which I try to keep always at the forefront of my mind, namely: songs which people believe to be about sex usually aren’t, songs which people believe to be about drugs usually aren’t, and we probably deserve to be wiped out as a species because we allowed Maroon 5 to release songs.

In reality, I’m flexible about these core tenets (well, the first two, anyway). The one which I find myself questioning the most frequently is actually the first, since there are actually a fair few songs which turn out to be downright dirty when you dig into their origins and examine the meaning of their lyrics.

The 1983 song ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood may be the filthiest of all 1980s songs, and the BBC was right to ban it on those grounds, if only because it gave the band huge publicity and brought that dance classic to many more people. But ‘(I Just) Died in Your Arms’ by Cutting Crew from three years later, sometimes known (erroneously) as ‘I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight’, is often assumed to be about all things orgasmic, too. But is it?

There are two somewhat surprising things to know about Cutting Crew. The first is that their name isn’t a nod to any previous career in the hairdressing industry, but to a Queen interview in which Mercury and co., upon being asked why they weren’t touring, replied that they were a ‘cutting crew’, ‘cutting’ records in a studio. The second is that, despite possessing a musical sound which makes you think they must surely be American, they’re actually British, or more specifically English, hailing from London.

The title ‘(I Just) Died in Your Arms’ came to Nick Van Eede, the band’s lead singer, when he was having sex with his girlfriend. He was in the habit of scrawling ideas for song titles on a sheet of wallpaper, and noted that one down (presumably he finished the sex first).

I’ll resist the urge to make an obvious ‘writing on the wall’ joke here (too late), and instead mention that Eede had actually split up with his girlfriend, and reportedly got back together with her for one night of passion. He regretted this (was the real girlfriend ‘no give and all take’, as the lyrics have it?), and the song expresses his guilt at being weak and going back to her.

So we have a break-up song, or a kind-of-break-up song, but it’s not that element which attracts the most speculation and commentary. Is the singer ‘dying’ in his lover’s arms because he’s dying of shame for having gone against his better judgment and spent the night with her again?

The word ‘died’ has, since at least the year 1600, been a sexual double entendre, meaning ‘to experience sexual orgasm’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The OED’s first citation is from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (1600), in which Claudio states, ‘Nay but I know who loves him … and in despite of all, dies for him’ (nudge nudge, wink wink). To which innuendo Don Pedro, the Prince, replies: ‘She shall be buried with her face upwards.’

The French, as in all matters sexual, seem to have got there before the English, and for centuries the phrase ‘le petit mort’ or ‘little death’ has been used as a euphemism for the magic spasm. The idea, one supposes, is that in releasing his life-generating fluid, the man is experiencing a little death, a moment of vulnerability, a reminder that through such an act he would make the next generation, whom he in turn would have to make way for by (literally) dying.

Once we’re aware of this double meaning in the song’s title, we quickly find other clues seeded throughout the rest of its lyrics: the fact that a boy could ‘come’ to this, for instance, or his reference to ‘blow[ing] it again’ (a double entendre that American Pie would put to good use again thirteen years later), and following one’s ‘hands’ rather than one’s ‘head’. And yet, Van Eede has never confirmed that he intended all of these double meanings.

There is such a thing as a coincidence; although there’s also what T. S. Eliot called ‘cumulative plausibility’, whereby there are enough little scraps of evidence to persuade us that something is probable, even though we can’t literally prove it.

We must make of all that what we will. Either way, the video for the song doesn’t, blessedly, show this petit mort taking place, and instead has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Humorous videos don’t always work for ‘straight’ power ballads, in my view: if you’re supposed to be dragged along on an emotional journey by the big voices, big instruments, and bigger hair, breaking the fourth wall and offering a knowing wink to the audience weakens if not downright destroys the desired impact.

But the video for ‘(I Just) Died in Your Arms’ succeeds because it doesn’t allow the song itself to be sidelined, and the high jinks surrounding the performance are very much a sideshow. Literally, in this case: the centrepiece of the video is the band performing the song in a warehouse (filmed on the Old Kent Road), with frontman Nick Van Eede dressed in a long raincoat which makes him look as if he’s just come straight from taking part in a police line-up for a suspected flashing in East Croydon, an impression only reinforced by his creepy beckoning gestures to us as the camera pulls in closer towards him during the chorus.

We’re also treated to a woman playing an invisible double bass (her actual instrument having just been half-inched right from under her nose) and a man with an earring relentlessly pursuing poor Nick around the warehouse, presumably working on the assumption that all of that lecherous beckoning was intended for him. Everyone looks surprised that the camera crew have been let in to film the Cutting Crew.

Van Eede is on record as saying: ‘I’ve got 99 songs published and nobody’s interested in the other 98, but that’s OK.’ But it shouldn’t be the case: the band’s follow-up single, ‘I’ve Been in Love Before’, was only mildly successful (‘(I Just) Died in Your Arms’ had topped the US charts), but it’s still a cracker, even if, by comparison, it’s rather light on sexual puns.