Songs about ass have been an important part of American culture for decades. A more socially acceptable topic than songs about ass’s professional associate tits, but still horny. The sweet spot for pop, rock, rap, and country radio. Ass song canon features hits like “Fat Bottomed Girls”, “The Thong Song”, “Baby Got Back”, “Rump Shaker”, “Bootylicious”, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”, and early influence honoree KC & The Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty”. The rich tradition goes far beyond these songs, and there seems to be a track for every era, or genre. 

People like asses. It’s as simple as that.

But today I single out two Tushes, separated by around 30 years, one from the legendary Texas blues and boogie trio ZZ Top and another from two titans of East coast rap, Ghostface Killah and Missy Elliott.

The vast love of tush itself leaves us in a real apples and oranges comparison. Maybe one of the biggest since apple and oranges. But the thing is you can compare apples and oranges, most people are just too chicken shit to do it. Apples are crisp, sweet, and a little tart with a thin edible skin while oranges are juicy refreshing citrus with a thick peel. In my experience, oranges make a better juice, but I’ve never seen one sustain a fritter quite like an apple. They’ve got their pros and cons, neither the perfect fruit, but two of our all time greatest heavyweights.

So I guess ZZ Top is apples here. I was actually shocked when I looked up the lyrics to their “Tush”. Not because I was scandalized, but just that there are barely any lyrics. Half of the song, sung by bassist Dusty Hill, is the chorus (about looking for tush downtown) repeated twice and the other half is just saying shit like “I’ve been up, I’ve been down” or “take me back, way back home”. Add to that the fact the bassline is basically nothing and Dusty seems to have turned in a rough draft here.

So why is it still so good? Ultimately, it’s because ZZ Top can do whatever they want. They’re ZZ Top. The perfect balance of cool and goofy, trashy and stylish, they’re immune to normal criticisms like, “these lyrics suck” or “this bassline sucks”. If this is your problem, you’re actually the one that sucks. Sorry, dingus.

Now the oranges of Ghostface and Missy’s “Tush” on the other hand probably has too many lyrics. No one needs to hear Missy Elliott say “let me jump up on that ding-a-ling”, but we’re lucky she was so generous with us. The lyrics are all just sex rhymes, not even fully ass-specific, but they’re not lazy either. It’s not approaching the best work from either Ghost or Missy, and the beat is basically lifted wholesale from The Best of Both Worlds’ “Naked Truth” without much editing.

So it’s a horny sex duet, not quite a classic, but it got radio play (under the edited, and more mechanically graphic name “Push”). If you threw this on at a dance party no one would be mad, and if they were, it’s weird they’re at a dance party.

I’m sure our boys in ZZ Top didn’t even know what rap music was when they recorded their “Tush” just shy of the genre’s early 70s birth, but I want to believe if you played them Ghostface and Missy’s “Tush” they’d appreciate the sentiment.

There’s a lesson for us all here. No matter what decade you grew up in, whether you’re from Houston or Staten Island, Black or White, or if you listen to rock or rap, everyone can come together over how great tush (and “Tush”) is.

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