3/16
janine annett
on
poison, "talk dirty to me"
(march shredness)
For 2025’s March Second Chanceness, each day in march we are bringing back an essay that previously lost in the first round of previous March Xness tournaments for your consideration.
March Xness is a fun tournament, but also at times a cruel one! Each year 32 essays and essayists lose in the first round (and 63 of 64 will bow out before a winner is crowned). Because of the pace of the first round, many of our readers probably don’t get a chance to closely read all of the essays each year! So for 2025 we wanted to dig some of these out of the archive and give them another read, this time on their own, no competitor. Just a moment of attention and even of glory. The Official March Second Chanceness Selection Committee picked these based on reader nominations as particularly worthy of getting a second look. There are many brilliant essays that lose each year. Which are your favorites? This year we’re not voting: we’re only reading and celebrating and remembering. The tournament proper will come back in 2026 with March Sadness (lottery entry link in the menu above). We hope these great essays will again earn your love. Signed, the Official March Second Chanceness Selection Committee
Back in 2017, I sent an email to the March Shredness committee asking if I could please write about Poison. I think I even included a photo of me wearing a Poison t-shirt to show my enthusiasm for the band and the project.
Not only did I write about “Talk Dirty to Me,” I recorded an all-acoustic, all-female-vocal version of it (complete with violin!) with some pals of mine. I also wrote an essay on the hair in hair metal. Despite my enthusiasm, my essay/song (understandably) lost to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (that was a blockbuster song, and the essay by Katie Jean Shinkle was really good).
Inspired by writing about Poison, I later tried to pitch a 33 1/3 book on Look What the Cat Dragged In (when putting together a book proposal, I got in touch with Ric Browde, the album’s producer, and have some great emails from him. I had really hoped to write a chapter called “Look what the cat dragged into the courtroom”).
From my proposal:
Released in 1986, Look What the Cat Dragged In peaked at #3 on the US Billboard 200 and became one of the mainstays of the era and genre of glam metal (or “hair metal”). The cover (reminiscent of the New York Dolls, Kiss, and other glam acts of the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the Beatles’ Let It Be) featured all four members of the band at the time (Bret Michaels, C.C. DeVille, Bobby Dall, and Rikki Rockett) with heavy makeup, big hair, and serious pouts. With ten tracks coming in at a tight 33 minutes, the album went on to sell more than 3 million copies and was certified 3x Multi-Platinum.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince anyone to let me write a book about Poison. But I’ve convinced more than a few people that Poison were/are legit (my husband even bought me a copy of Look What the Cat Dragged In on vinyl!).
In other words, I still stand strong on my stance that I’ve held for many, many years: Poison rules. —Janine Annett
janine annett on poison's "talk dirty to me"
In 1987, Poison released the single “Talk Dirty to Me”. I’m sure I was not the original intended audience for this song or this band, but like many pre-teens of that era, I came to know the band and the song via MTV, which I’d spend countless hours watching (I often wonder if I could have become a much more accomplished person if I’d only spent approximately 9 million fewer hours watching MTV in my formative years, but I digress. It was a different time, and what’s done is done). “Talk Dirty to Me”, from Poison’s first album, Look What the Cat Dragged In, was the band’s second single and their first to crack the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, peaking at #9. The first single from the album, “Cry Tough” (an inferior track, in my opinion, so who knows why it was chosen as the first single; although hindsight is 20/20), didn’t chart at all. Imagine the near-miss that could have been if the record label didn’t decide to release another single from the band after “Cry Tough” had tanked.
The guys (who looked like gals) in Poison could actually play and sing. They weren’t Svengalied into existence, as slick as their choreographed stage moves and highly glossed looks were. They were originally called Paris and, as any true fan knows, hailed from Pennsylvania (where they all met each other, with the exception of guitar player C.C. DeVille). They moved out to L.A. (where they met C.C.) to make it big, and they did just that. Big hair, big dreams, big hits: Poison had them all, and everything started with the album Look What the Cat Dragged In and the single “Talk Dirty to Me.”
What strikes me now, listening to the song—all of Poison’s songs—as an adult is the sincerity. Say what you will about the band and their songs—they were overproduced, they were corny, they were too slick, too commercial, not pure enough “metal”—they were sincere. Poison songs were about having a good time, wanting to get it on with a girlfriend, being broken-hearted about a breakup, dreaming of making it big. Grunge came in and killed off “hair metal” with irony and detachment and anger. Poison had none of that. And if you strip away the way the band looked—if you just listen to the lyrics of the song—“Talk Dirty to Me” is really timeless. It could have been written in the 1950s, with its talk of drive-ins and Fords. In certain ways, “Talk Dirty to Me” reminds me of some of the Ramones’ tracks (like “Rock and Roll Radio”) that are nostalgic for an earlier era and recall 1950s and 1960s pop.
“Talk Dirty to Me” starts with a riff, then comes that pick-shredding (just ask anyone who ever learned to play the song) descending slide down the guitar neck, courtesy of Poison’s guitar player, C.C. DeVille. The lyrics are catchy. The structure is simple. Right before the big guitar solo, Bret shouts, “C.C., pick up that guitar and talk to me” and C.C. is kind enough to respond with a solo, then Bret starts whooping and C.C. really pours on the licks. In the video for the song, which I implore you to watch right now, C.C.’s lying on the floor playing the guitar.
About that music video: It starts with a silly bit about a boy calling a girl on the phone; her old, square parents initially pick up and then let the girl know the boy is calling. In the background, on a television, another Poison video plays. The parents hang up the phone and say, “That Bret sounds like such a nice boy” (as we would say today, but didn’t say back then, “LOL”). The home looks quite retro—not 1980s, but again, more 1950s. The video then cuts to a backstage area. Bret Michaels, Poison’s singer, is twirling a phone around on a cord (a cord!) and then he says “Hit it, C.C.” (he commands C.C. to do a lot of things, I guess, and C.C. is always ready to hit it or “talk” with his guitar) and the camera pans down a row of guitars. C.C. plays the riff, does the pick-slide-thing, and tosses the guitar aside. Bret appraises some ladies’ legs walking by during the opening lines, “You know I never/I never seen you look so good.” The rest of the video features the band members performing, presumably live, on stage. The video includes lots of goofing around and stage antics: leaps through the air, band members switching instruments, the drummer (Rikki Rockett) and C.C. lip syncing the singer’s words, tossing around a pirate flag, mugging for the camera, high kicks. The band members who are not behind a drum kit perform simultaneous somersaults. At one point, Bret rides on Bobby Dall’s acid-green bass guitar. C.C. and Bobby twirl around while playing their instruments. There is head-banging, and there are leather pants, and big, teased hair, and lots of makeup. On-stage explosions happen at the end of the video.
There were so many songs and videos of that era that were ridiculously, blatantly sexist. “Talk Dirty to Me” seems quite tame in that department by comparison. Aside from Bret objectifying some legs in the video, it’s not bad at all on the Sexism Meter. Also, the guys in Poison wore as much makeup and skimpy, tight clothes as any of the women in the videos of the day. As for the song lyrics, there’s a fair bit of give and take. The “you” in the song makes Bret feel good, but he makes her feel good, too. “You know that I can hardly wait/Just to see you/And I know you cannot wait/Wait to see me too”—the feelings there are mutual. Not all the songs on Look What the Cat Dragged In have aged as well as “Talk Dirty to Me”, which at least has a tinge of sweetness to the dirtiness. For example, the lyrics in the song “I Want Action” are horrifying—again, I didn’t understand the lyrics when this album first came out—but listening to the words now (“If I can’t have her/I’ll take her/and make her”), I cringe.
I can see why the “Talk Dirty to Me” video and the song appealed to me, despite the fact that I had only the vaguest notion of what “dirty talk” really was at the time the song was released. The guys in Poison looked like they were having a blast in the video, and you have to at least admire their athleticism. I was into gymnastics at the time, and they were doing all these crazy leaps, kicks, and rolls. The song was catchy, fun, uncomplicated. Even I could play it on guitar as a beginner (I haven’t played this song on the guitar in years and years, but I picked up a guitar while working on this, and was immediately able to play a reasonable facsimile of the opening riff off the top of my head, strumming my way through without needing to look up the chords). Oh, and thanks to Poison, back in 1987 I even learned a new vocabulary word (“inebriated”, used in reference to Bobby Dall) by reading an article in a magazine about the band.
I was able to actually see Poison live—my very first live concert experience! It must have been shortly after “Talk Dirty to Me” became a hit, because I don’t think I had any trouble getting tickets and I saw them in a fairly small venue. I somehow convinced my mom to take me and my best friend to see them (a fact she likes to remind me of to this day). The band played at the Westchester County Center in suburban New York. I was so excited, and I recall that the band did indeed live up to my expectations. I’m pretty sure I got a Poison t-shirt at the concert. I guess it was tame enough, though, because my mom let me go to concerts without parental guardianship from that time forward.
It’s not “cool” to like Poison, although it’s cool to like plenty of other glam rock bands. No one will sneer at you for liking, say, the New York Dolls. The Dolls wore lots of makeup and outlandish clothes; so did Poison. Sure, Poison were more commercial and had more success than many of their glam rock forebears; you could reasonably argue that they were the watered-down version of the real thing. Yet, Poison was a gateway to the “better” music for me—and probably many others. Within a few years of loving Poison, I was listening to bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and the Velvet Underground. At first glance, these bands might not seem to have a lot in common with Poison; but somehow, I started off with Poison and the trail led me down many different musical roads.
All these years later, I objectively know “Talk Dirty to Me” is not a great work of art, and yet… since I started working on this, I’ve had the song in my head for days on end. I listen to the track and somehow I still know every word, every note. And it actually is sweetly nostalgic to think of a time when you’d have to “lock the cellar door” and go “behind the bushes” or “in the old man’s Ford” to get some dirty talk and more. I know now what “screaming for more” really means, and in reality I’m not really one for dirty talk or guys with a full face of makeup or having anyone call me “baby”, but all I can say is: Baby, talk dirty to me, yeah.
And in fact, while writing this essay and revisiting my love for this song, I teamed up with the band Soft News to record an acoustic cover of "Talk Dirty to Me", with all-female vocals. I believe this version highlights the strong structure and beauty of the original song while reimagining it and updating it for modern times. It'll be released to iTunes and Spotify in a couple weeks, but for now it's all yours, March Shredness readers, and you know what to do:
Janine Annett is the author of the humor book I Am “Why Do I Need Venmo?” Years Old. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Real Simple, and many other places. She has taught creative writing for the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Gotham Writers, Thurber House, Writing Workshops (an official education partner of Electric Literature), and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. In 2024, she was a judge for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, one of the highest recognitions of the art of humor writing in the United States.