ZZ Top's "Legs" must be one of the weirdest things ever to make it to top-40 radio. It's completely uncategorisable by genre, featuring typical ZZ Top 'boogie' guitar over a completely electronic 80s 'dance' groove Madonna could have appreciated. It has some of history's most banal lyrics, starting with "She's got legs; she knows how to use them", indicating the female in question is at least a toddler in age.
Most people know how to use their legs. A line I never understood until reading the lyrics online now is "She's kinda jet-set; try undo her panties", which is baffling to say the least, implying that people with a jet-set lifestyle have panties that are more difficult than average to undo. And, as I was well aware when I was a kid, this song for no reason I can understand sneaks one of George Carlin's seven dirty words onto the radio, onto MTV, onto any format that would have it. The s-bomb in this song is
never censored. When I as a kid, I couldn't understand it, and I still can't now.
The video is infamous. It features 'the car', the silly beards, the spinning, fuzzy guitars, and the hot-chicks. It features ZZ Top gleefully aware they've decided to become an elaborate parody and happy just to rake in the cash. It features a girl who gets harrassed by people in a restaurant and in a shoe store, who is saved by ZZ Top and crew in the form of a makeover, which somehow provides her salvation. It's silly, it's sexist, it's nonsense. Ah, those were the days. The 1980s... how strange.
