Dating Confessions by You "Callin' me baby when I'm trying to get over you doesn't help. I just don't have the heart to ask you to stop because my heart skips a little each time you say it to me."
DISPATCHES
posted 4/30/2009
35) Buddy Holly
One of the founding fathers of rock and roll, Buddy Holly revolutionized the music industry before his death at age twenty-two. In his short career, he learned to embrace his inner dork and make the ladies love it. After trying contact lenses (imagine the comfort of a 1950s pair), he decided to go with the bespectacled look — he had a bold, horn-rimmed pair made especially for him. And it worked. He made the ladies scream. He proposed to his wife at the end of their first date, and she accepted. And John Lennon once wrote, "He made it okay to wear glasses. I was Buddy Holly." Hipsters and Beatlemaniacs everywhere have this talented Texan to thank. — Nicole Ankowski
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34) Wayne Coyne
Once a filthy acid hippie, always a filthy acid hippie, and never shall a filthy acid-hippie frontman transcend his grimy roots to attain sexy immortality. It is an impossible wall to scale. Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, however, trades in the impossible. He built a spaceship in his Oklahoma backyard to make a movie about celebrating the yuletide on Mars. Because he could. There was also one day in the late '90s when he suddenly went from being a greasy freak singing about Vaseline to a white-suited, curly-haired love machine writing songs about the power of science and sex. One Wayne Coyne is the guy you hang out with at Burning Man. The other Wayne Coyne is a make-out machine from beyond the stars. — John Constantine
33) Nick Cave
There's an immortal passage of dialogue in Wayne's World that speaks directly to the sexual allure of the rocker. A grungy dude startles a rich blonde lady and asks, "Do I scare you?" She blurts out, "No." "Do you want me to?" The answer is yes, of course we do. Sometimes, we want those tingling feelings we get from some singer freaking us out with his grim poetry. Nick Cave writes scary songs about murder and God and trudging through blizzards to find your true love already dead, but they're not crazy-sexy of their own accord. It's his voice, his oil-black stare, and the way he pounds on those piano keys. His music crawls up inside you and makes you shiver in the best kind of way. — J.C.
32) Glenn Danzig
A quick reminder: "ludicrous" sometimes means "unsexy," but often it's quite the opposite. So, yes, Glenn Danzig is ludicrous (believes in werewolves, spends a lot of time getting jacked, closely associated with a questionable hairstyle, etc.). He is also the constant butt of jokes, but then, so is sex itself; indeed, if Danzig is a big target, it may be only because he's larger than life. Watch the classic video for "Mother" (we recommend the censored version, which omits the chicken sacrifice) and try to deny his predatory intensity. As far as rock and roll come-ons go, it doesn't get much better than, "Tell your children not to walk my way." — Peter Smith
31) Lou Reed
All due respect to Debbie Harry, but is there a finer embodiment of downtown cool than Mr. Velvet Underground? Discovered by Andy Warhol, Reed went on to make decades of inimitable, often proudly inaccessible rock. Reed's experimental leanings were in place from the start; early shows at seminal rock club Max's Kansas City included complimentary LSD. And Reed, who as a teen underwent electroshock therapy to "cure" his homosexual leanings, knew from mind-alteration. Despite songs about drag queens ("Candy Says") and junkies ("Heroin"), a (presumably fired) Vatican official scheduled a 2000 concert where Reed performed for Pope John Paul II. Sexy enough, but his demented love letters to New York ("On Avenue B, someone cruised him one night/he took him in an alley and then pulled a knife/And thought of his father, as he cut his windpipe/and finally danced to the rock minuet") had already conferred rock sainthood. — Billy Gray
