“Sugar Daddy” by Thompson Twins

"Sugar Daddy" opened the account for Big Trash, the Thompson Twins' seventh studio album, arriving as its lead single in 1989, written and produced by Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie. It's a bonbon with a razor inside: Bailey said on MuchMusic that year that the song sounds sugary but carries a disturbing message about sexual manipulation and affection bartered for power, with the sweetness as the coating such relationships always wear.

The video had its own misadventures. Currie wanted to play the angel of death with wings and a black guitar, but kept getting stuck up in the air and yelling to be let down, so those shots were lost, and a giant 12-foot skirt with men emerging from underneath got trimmed to something tamer. It became their final Top 40 hit in America, peaking at 28 on the Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.