Starland Vocal Band, Afternoon Delight | After Dark

On the 30^th edition of After Dark, we explore the naughty, risqué & utterly sexual vibes behind, “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band. 

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nnuendo? More like full-on sexual vibes! Welcome to After Dark , a column featuring songs that are best suited for nighttime, specifically, the bedroom.  Like Controversial Tunes , the records featured here raise eyebrows.  The difference between the songs of CONTROVERSY and DARK? These songs specifically focus on the universal topic of S-E-X. The dark records gracing After Dark are old and new alike, with all genres of music welcome.  On the 30^th edition of After Dark, we explore the naughty, risqué & utterly sexual vibes behind, “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band.

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Theme & Lyrics  

“My motto’s always been, ‘when it’s right, it’s right’ / Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night.” Boy, oh boy! Starland Vocal Band are one of those one-hit wonder types.  The good news about one-hit wonders is that their one hit is usually timeless.  That’s certainly the case with “Afternoon Delight.” Besides being a timeless, adult contemporary 70s smash, well, the song is about smashing… sexing… that After Dark shh!  The thing is, what normally happens after dark can happen “When everything’s a little clearer in the light of day.”

Maybe you’re naïve and the sexual innuendo of the excerpted lyrics totally missed you (I don’t see how, but I’m not judging you).  Let me spell it out for you. grabbing “some afternoon delight” is having sex.  The eyebrow-raising lyric “Rubbing sticks and stones together, make the sparks ignite” is also about sex – think climax.

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Final Thoughts

Starland Vocal Band are never explicit on “Afternoon Delight.” By today’s standards, this song is innocent.  Imagine if they’d thrown in the frequent f-bombs that grace the music of the 2020s in the 1970s? Ooh-wee! Still, considering when “Afternoon Delight” was released, it’s also not surprising this Grammy-winning joint raised eyebrows.  Those “Skyrockets in flight / Afternoon delight.”

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Starland Vocal Band • Starland Vocal Band • Windstar • 1976
Starland Vocal Band, “Afternoon Delight”: After Dark No. 30 [: Brent Faulkner, cottonbro from Pexels, KoolShooters from Pexels, Luan Queiros from Pexels, The Musical Hype]

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