Songs that sell thongs? In honor of the 20th anniversary of “Thong Song,” Sisqó told fans how the song came to be — and how he thinks it actually boosted Victoria’s Secret sales.
“Once I realized how big the song was. I was like, ‘We need to go and talk to Victoria’s Secret.’ But everything was moving so fast, it got away from us,” Sisqó, 41, said in an interview with Def Jam on Tuesday, November 26. “By the time the song had blown up, we went to go have a meeting with Victoria’s Secret. They were like, ‘As much as we love the song, and you seem like a great guy … but thong sales have already gone up 80 percent.’”
He added: “They had got their bag already. But, fast forward 20 years later and we laughed all the way to the bank too.”
The singer released “Thong Song” in November 1999 as a part of his debut record, Unleash the Dragon, and it went on to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts and won four Grammys.
“I was putting an album together, and almost all of it was done with the exception of two or three songs,” he said. Sisqó explained that he was sent a CD full of tracks and beats and the one that he was most excited about was a 30-second clip with a beat and a sample of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” At the time he asked to “stretch” the sample because “I think I’ve got an idea for it.”
“So, Tim and Bob sent me that track, and I pretty much freestyled everything up until the pre-chorus. I couldn’t really think of anything to go right there so I decided to blow off some steam and go on a date,” he said. “I meet this girl, and I wasn’t married or nothing back then, so we get back to the crib, and you know, I’m rounding second base and next thing you know she starts to come up out of her clothes and I see this, this … THING. I was like, ‘What is that?!’ She was like, ‘It’s a thong!’ I was like, ‘A THONG?!’”
Sisqó was instantly inspired and the next day he called his group of boys and told him about this date and about the thong this woman was wearing. Then, he started to work on the song, but was stopped when one of his friends wanted to tell him a similar tale.
“He’s like, ‘Yo turn off the music! I went out with this girl last night and guess what she gave me? When we got back to the crib, she gave me that thong-tha-thong-thong-thong.’ He literally said it just like that,” he recalled. “And I was rolling, I thought it was so funny. He was like, ‘Plus she had them dumps.’ I was like, ‘Dumps? Like a dump truck? Like she was backing it up on you?’ He said, ‘Exactamundo.’”
The rest is history.
