Ooooh Oooh This Sex Is On Fiyiyerrr

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but I play in a covers band, the drums you know.

It's quite a kick arse rock band, playing songs like The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary, The Foo's Learn to Fly, The Jam's A Town Called Malice and The Killers' When You Were Young. We also do some songs by bands whose first name isn't "The", but we keep them to a minimum. We don't do any songs by The The and, much to my dismay, there are often a couple of Snow Patrol songs in the set.

Since I joined we've done Kings of Leon's Molly's Chambers, one of their best songs I reckon, and it's always gone down well with people. And some months ago we decided to add in Sex On Fire to the set. I say "we decided" but it was more a case that if we didn't bung it in the set we'd be in severe danger of getting attacked by irate drunken revellers after each gig, well more attacked than is usual.

We had so many gigs in which people would be asking if we did Sex on Fire that it became a necessity, of course it was nothing to do with the fact that's it's dead easy and dead popular. Each time we play it we witness a crowd singing along to the chorus, waving arms, pointing fingers and generally at a point of euphoria that makes me understand how fellows like Hitler and the like could get so many people to follow them and hang onto their every word.

It's the epitome of great songwriting skill in a pure pop/rock genre, perhaps not up there with songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, Paranoid Android and Lunu Dehi as all time greats but I'll guarantee you that, in years to come, it will be as popular as songs like Hi Ho Silver Lining and Summer of '69.

It's a short song with sexy verses and an anthemic chorus. The phrase "sex is on fire" is a memorable and catchy one too. I've never heard it used before as a way of describing sex, yet it's blatantly obvious that it means good things about the copulation concerned. Mr Leon could easily have used another phrase like "this sex is fantastic" or "this sex is outrageous" but they just wouldn't have had that same sense of edginess and kickarsity.

And the real beauty of the song is that, when we get to the chorus, every single fucker ( a word I choose most deliberately) in the house is standing up, singing along and doing that pointing with one arm thing in time with the s in sex, the i in is, the o in on, the f in fire and then the y in fire.

As I drum along I sometimes look at their faces and I can see and sense what's going on in their minds. Us drummers are renowned for our sensitivity to other people's feelings and thoughts you know. Yes, what I can pick up is that each punter, whether with a partner or not, thinks that the description is about what's it's like to have sex with them. They're fooled into believing that the song was written for them and that all the other people in the room are bad at sex.

How cool is that?

I would love, absolutely love, to write one song in my life that could be as memorable and impactful as that.