In 1979 Rod the Mod went disco and a certain seventh grade girl was awestruck.
Because it’s February and this world needs more love right now, and because it’s absolutely freezing outside…I’m going to focus on some songs that are about hot lovin’- in all forms.
I have loved the particularly hot artist who sang this perfectly hot song since I was in sixth or seventh grade. Even though I was only twelve years old I knew hot when I saw it. And Rod Stewart and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? were hot.
The song from the album Blondes Have More Fun was released in November 1978. Back then, radio was king and this song was on repeat.I was instantly smitten. I mean come on, this song is so damn, well, sexy- forty eight years later it still gives me all the feels.
Rod Stewart in the 70s. YUMMMY! Was any rock star sexier than Rod the Mod? Not many, that’s for sure.
A lot of critics and people who were fans of Faces and the Jeff Beck
Group disdained this song as Stewart’s attempt to cash in on the disco craze. Thought that he had foregone his blues rock cred. But disco was really over by 1978 and who cares anyway if that was true. Disco was fucking amazing. And the song did go to #1 on the Billboard charts so there’s that.
Duane Hitchings, who co-wrote the song with Stewart and drummer Carmine Appice, claimed in an interview that the song was sort of a spoof on the lounge lizard disco era singer, a la Bill Murray’s character on Saturday Night Live.
The arrangement was controversial, supposedly cobbled together from a bunch of plagiarized parts from The Rolling Stones Miss You, which came out that same year, to the chorus from Jorge Ben Jor’s Taj Mahal, and the synth riff lifted from Bobby Womack’s song If You Want My Love, Put Something Down on It.
I had zero knowledge of any of this when I was twelve years old. I just knew that voice, the blonde shag, the leather and that the sex appeal of Rod Stewart was something I wanted a part of, even if I didn’t know what part that was yet. Funny fact- my mother was alarmed and concerned about my huge crush on Rod Stewart…..I think she secretly thought he was sexy as hell too but didn’t want to admit it.
The lyrics to this song were everything a pre-adolescent in 1978 thought was exciting. Seeing someone attractive at a bar. Feeling nervous but intrigued. Hearts pounding in anticipation. Rod Stewart singing Sugar, Sugar. That synth. THAT SYNTH. Catching a cab to a high rise apartment- visions of love and lust in New York City dancing in my seventh grade head.
Relax baby, now we’re all alone.
SAX SOLO!
Song break.
Then they wake at dawn. Oh, my goodness.
Rod’s whispering If you really need me, just reach out and touch me….
Damn whispering is sexy.
So….12 year old me and fifty-something me-different versions of the same soul, have something in common. We knew, we know, perfection when we felt, saw, and heard it and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, by Rod Stewart is THE perfect song.
Check out all the Valentines Day PERFECT song videos at
The SFB 
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