Kiss this

I am, and will always be, in favor of girls kissing. But like everything else it’s all about the context. Are these two drunk girls surrounded by cheering frat boys? Yeah, no thanks. Or are these two women who are genuinely interested in each other. Thank you, ma’am may I have another. With that I give you two songs about girls kissing. And not just two songs about girls kissing, but two songs about girls kissing called “I Kissed a Girl.” Seriously, are there no other ways to title songs about this subject?

The first you will recognize as Jill Sobule’s 1995 hit:


The second you might recognize as Katy Perry’s new single:

Now, I find it interesting that while both songs are called “I Kissed a Girl” there is no actual kissing of girls in either video. I can understand why Jill excluded the smoochage. It was 13 years ago, after all, and still two years before Ellen’s “Yep” heard around the world. Also Jill has since embraced her lesbian fanbase and, having met her in real life, is simply adorable.

But the Katy exclusion. That’s just…weird. I mean isn’t the drunken straight girl hook-up (with optional hot tub clause) now standard operating procedure on MTV these days? As undeniably infectious as her song is (seriously, I’ve been humming the damn thing all weekend), it’s stuff like this that helped make that idiotic Girls Gone Wild dude a bajillionaire. (For a thorough examination of exactly what’s wrong with this song, check out Malinda’s treatise on B.L.W.E.)

If only she had stopped at the chorus. I kissed a girl, and I liked it. Yeah, now that’s a song worth singing.