Rare, archaic, evocative, and great to get lips and tongue around, it means to satisfy or satiate a hungry person, usually in the context of food, but of course in song lyrics that can mean a whole lot more. It’s hard to satisfy all music tastes with a few song samples but here’s a small menu just to get the juices flowing.
Let’s set the pan sizzling with this tasty number, something of a pub rock classic with the wry lyrics of Ray Davies with The Kinks, and Hot Potatoes, from the 1972 LP Everybody's In Showbusiness, in a song where it is all about having your chips and eating them:
My baby woke me up this mornin'
She said get down that labour exchange,
And if you don't come home with a job son,
You'll get no dinner to-day.
You gotta secure me a weekly workin' wage.
You'll get no more fancy cookin',
You'll get no more apple pie,
You'll just get those plain hot potatoes
To satisfy your appetite.
La la la la la la Potatoes,
Boiled, French fried, any old way that you wanna decide.
Hot potatoes, yeah,
I want your lovin' every single day.
It takes a lot to satisy a monstrous appetite, In A LIttle Shop of Horrors, the 1986 horror comedy music, the loquacious, voracious plant comes out via the great Four Tops singer Levi Stubbs as the voice of Audrey II, the freaky fauna manipulating geek Rick Moranis into feeding him human victims. Something of a cult classic it was directed by Frank Oz and is a film adaptation of the off-Broadway musical comedy of the same name by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman.
Women need satisfaction too. Here’s 1950s star Lavern Baker shows it how it is with Love Me Right
Elvis Presley, a little bit like the Rolling Stones, couldn’t get no satisfaction, but did his best to get some filthy little fills in A Little Less Conversation:
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby
One of the classics of seeking satisfaction, though not being able to manage it for someone else, comes with The Impressions, and Can't Satisfy in 1966, written by Curtis Mayfield.
On the opposite perspective, sometimes it take a big man to rassasy. Or at least Barry White says he’s the one, in I'm Qualified To Satisfy You:
Perhaps though, there is more than mere carnal satisfaction. Here’s Bob Marley and the Wailers from the Kaya album in 1978. Bob wants a little bit more
And finally, here’s Meshell Ndegeocello, expressing a beautiful hunger in a song from 1999’s Bitter, showing there’s only one way to rassasy her:
Does that rassasy your musical needs? Probably not. Feel free to share any further examples in songs, instrumentals, on albums, film, art or other contexts in comments below.
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