Talk Dirty to Me
by Poison
- 156
- BPM
- B major
- Key
- 1B
- Camelot
- 49
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
In 1985 Poison were auditioning guitarists when C.C. DeVille refused to learn the band's material. He insisted they play a song he claimed to have written with his previous band, the Screaming Mimis. It turned out to be a primitive early version of "Talk Dirty to Me", an ode to teenage love inspired by an Eddie Cochran riff. The band disliked his brash personality but saw tremendous potential in the song. They hired him largely to get it into their repertoire.
In 2011 a defunct Chicago band called Kid Rocker sued Poison, claiming they had written it in the early 1980s. Kid Rocker had signed with Atlantic Records in 1984, and the suit said DeVille had been asked to learn the song for an audition with them. Poison's lawyers called it baseless, noting that the plaintiffs had waited 25 years. On April 8, 2013, the judge ruled for Poison. The statute of limitations on copyright infringement had run out.
The single was released on February 18, 1987, the second from the debut album Look What the Cat Dragged In. It peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the band's first top 40 hit in the United States.
Talk Dirty to Me runs at 156 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in vivace territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.54 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 385 ms. It is in B major, Camelot 1B, which shares its notes with Ab minor and mixes cleanly with E major and F# major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.