Marcy Playground - Sex And Candy Lyrics

"Sex and Candy" is a song by American alternative rock group Marcy Playground, a single from their 1997 self-titled debut album. It is a post-grunge song with psychedelic elements

"Sex and Candy" stemmed from a moment in the late 1980s when John Wozniak, who had not yet started Marcy Playground, was in his girlfriend's dormitory at Bryn Mawr College, where his father taught. While he and his girlfriend were having sex in her dorm room, another young woman walked in following coitus interruptus. She said the room smelled like "sex and candy," a phrase that struck Wozniak as "weird and cool."

Several years later, either in 1992 or 1993, Wozniak wrote the song in less than an hour in his bedroom at 4 a.m. In the song, he decided to combine the phrase "sex and candy" with "all these weird disco-era references that I was making up, 'platform double suede' and all that business".

He also cited early grunge as an influence. According to MTV News, writing "Sex and Candy" was Wozniak's "first stab at coolness" following a childhood where he was isolated and often bullied. Wozniak also said that "If you listen to that song, it's pretty clear it wasn't written to be a hit. It's just a quirky little weird song."

Wozniak's explanations of the song's meaning have changed. In a 1997 interview in Billboard, he said it was a love song. While he enjoyed "classic" love songs by Cole Porter and The Beatles, he found most love songs that were on the radio during the 1980s formulaic and boring. Wozniak described "Sex and Candy" as his attempt to compose a love song which "didn't follow the typical formula, especially with the lyrics."

When asked about the song's meaning in 2015, he said "It means so many different things, and so many different parts of it came from so many different places" before saying:
"... it's just about seeing some sexy girl and then falling in love, and then asking a dumb question to yourself ... well, it's not even asking a question ... I'm just gonna be straight up honest. I don't know....when I was writing these songs, I wasn't high. But it sounds like I was high."

Music critics mostly praised the song. Some found it sensual; many compared it to the music of Nirvana. Some critics interpreted the track as a love song, and others thought its lyrics were nonsensical. Commercially, "Sex and Candy" peaked at number 2 on the Canadian RPM 100 Hit Tracks chart, number 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, staying there for a then-record-setting 15 weeks. Worldwide, the single reached the top 20 in Australia, Iceland and Norway; it is the band's only hit song.

A music video was directed and conceptualized by Jamie Caliri, depicting Wozniak's head protruding from a hole inside of a mountain and a crawling spider; it has been interpreted in Freudian terms and compared to the work of Salvador Dalí. "Sex and Candy" remains popular on rock radio and has been covered by Maroon 5 and Slothrust.