Last year, singer Demi Lovato flirted with a same-sex fling on her hit “Cool for the Summer.” This summer, she’s decided to turn up the heat.
“Body Say” doesn’t mince words. It doesn’t flirt with innuendo or double entendre winks. Instead, Lovato continues to step very deliberately—and explicitly—away from her teeny-bop roots into much more sensual, “adult” material.
Accordingly, “Body Say” is about one thing, and one thing only. And it’s no mystery what it is.
Lovato wastes no time before plunging into the song’s one and only subject: sex. Her desire is clear from the first line of “Body Say”: “If I had it my way, I would take you down,” she says. Two lines later, she’s talking graphically about what would happen next.
As for her partner, we don’t know much about that person. All we know as that he (or perhaps she?) is someone spied across a distance. “And our eyes are crossing paths across the room/There’s only one thing left for us to do.”
It’s not getting coffee together.
“You can touch me with slow hands,” Lovato instructs. Then she adds, “Dreamland, take me there, ’cause I want your sex.” There are more lines like that—and more explicit ones, too. But “I want your sex” effectively encapsulates Lovato’s desires in this song, enough that adding other, similar lyrics to this review just isn’t necessary.
Curiously, the song’s bridge begins, “My mind is getting in the way/Can’t feel what my body say.”
Lovato never tells us why some part of her mind isn’t as engaged as her body obviously is. But maybe—just maybe—some part of her brain is questioning the wisdom of fully surrendering to her body’s appetites.
If so, however, it’s a concern she quickly brushes aside. As the song comes to a close, she says she’s going to do “just what I want to.”
That lyric unintentionally sums up the worldview Demi Lovato is influencing her fans to embrace. Namely, that the only thing that matters in life is your desire, embraced on your own terms … even if some quietly pleading part of your heart suspects that maybe—just maybe—that quest for happiness won’t be fulfilled by a steamy sexual encounter with a stranger.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
