Babylon number 'My Girl's P---y' is, in fact, a real song from 1931
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Damien Chazelle's Babylon is a Hollywood narrative of excess and debauchery, but if you think he didn't do his research, well, he's got you licked.
The film, which hits theaters Dec. 23, is full of nods to the era of Hollywood's transition from silents to talkies, some more surprising than others. Babylon opens on a massive party, full of champagne, drugs, sex, and of course, entertainment.
As part of that entertainment, Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) takes the stage, clad in a top hat and tails à la Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, and offers up a sultry song. The lyrics are suggestive in the utmost as she warbles an ode to "My Girl's P---y."
Scott Garfield/Paramount Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu and Jovan Adepo (back right) as Sidney Palmer in 'Babylon.'
But perhaps even more shocking than the lyrics is the fact that this is a real song from 1931 (a smidge after the events of the Babylon party, but who's counting?). British bandleader and clarinetist Harry Roy recorded the track with his band Harry Roy and His Bat Club Boys. And it's really the cat's meow.
It revels in its use of double entendre, opening on a series of "meows," offering Roy and his band some barely plausible deniability.
"There's one pet I like to pet, and every evening we get set," the song opens. "I stroke it every chance I get. It's my girl's p---y."
Clearly, this song is not about a cat. Take a listen.
Etymologists trace use of the slang word for the female anatomy to the late 19th-century, but they estimate it was in use even before that.
So if the idea of this language in use in the 1920s and '30s has you snatching at your pearls, well, we don't know what to tell you.
One thing we do know — we need a "WAP" and "My Girl's P---y" mash-up stat.
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