Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest hit isn’t about staying in with pizza … and she is far from being the first to write about ‘flying solo’

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Carly Rae Jepsen is incapable of putting out a bad song – from Call Me Maybe via Run Away With Me via Cut to the Feeling (seriously, all of them) to her new single, Party for One. Unexpectedly, her latest track isn’t a paean to staying in with Netflix and pizza, and dancing around to Robyn, but a celebration of masturbation. “Making love to myself / Back on my beat,” she sings, post-breakup.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of popular music will know that this is a pretty popular subject. The example that immediately springs to mind is one-time Missy Elliott prodigy Tweet’s Oops (Oh My), released in 2002. Tweet was never seen again, which is perhaps just as well given that her name became the No 1 medium for slinging insults. Cyndi Lauper referred to her solo sessions as a She-Bop. Then there’s Britney’s Touch of My Hand and Divinyls’ unsubtly titled I Touch Myself.

But it’s not all about the women: the Buzzcocks’ Orgasm Addict is excellent, even though it contains the very grim line: “Now your mother wants to know what all those stains on your jeans.” Dude.

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The title of Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up seems self-explanatory on reflection, but it took me a while to realise it wasn’t about turning up the volume. Prince, not known for being backwards in coming forward, once wrote a song, Darling Nikki, in which he “met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine”. Many questions to be asked, here. First among them: why was Nikki not arrested?

Violent Femmes denied that their early 80s hit Blister in the Sun was about masturbation, which I am happy to go along with (because it sounds painful). Even Tweet at one point years later said Oops (Oh My) was about “body-positivity”. Which maybe I could believe, if she hadn’t also announced that she has taken a vow of celibacy. Making love to herself, back on her beat, then.

What’s the reasoning behind this popular, pleasurable topic? For artists, I suppose it negates the risk of writing a conventional love song, breaking up with its subject and having to sing it for years afterwards. For the listener? Well, relatable songs are the best, aren’t they?