What's Inside a Girl

This is the most propulsive thing in the Cramps catalog, a song that actually has momentum, driven by a guitar riff that's as close to a hook as Poison Ivy ever allowed herself to write. The tempo is up, the energy is confrontational, and there's almost something approaching swing in the rhythmic thrust — though "swing" here means something that has been dragged through gravel. Lux Interior sounds delighted, which is somehow the most unsettling register in his range — his voice cresting on the chorus with a leer you can practically see. The subject matter is bluntly transgressive, framed in the language of curiosity but landing somewhere closer to obsession, and the song never pretends to be anything other than what it is. What makes it interesting beyond its provocation is the sheer musical confidence — the band understood that a riff this direct needed a performance equally unambiguous, and every element serves that. By the mid-80s the Cramps had refined their formula enough that songs like this had a pop logic underneath the surface weirdness, which is why this track became one of their more recognizable pieces. It belongs to late nights in venues with sticky floors, to people who consider themselves fluent in the language of deliberately bad taste, to the specific pleasure of music that refuses to be improved.