"Sex Type Thing" is the debut single of American rock band Stone Temple Pilots, released from their debut studio album, Core, in March 1993. "Sex Type Thing" also appears on the greatest hits compilation album Thank You. The song spawned a music video which received moderate rotation on MTV (at the height of the early 1990s grunge music scene). The single peaked at number 23 on the US Album Rock Tracks chart.
Music video
During the grunge explosion of the 1990s, the music video for "Sex Type Thing" is usually denoted as the single factor that drove Stone Temple Pilots into the scene. The video was in medium-heavy rotation on MTV during the time, and helped make STP a contender in the grunge era. The video itself hosts a very dark motif, showing the band performing in a dungeon chamber, with singer Scott Weiland having bleached his hair blond, interspersed between clips of a dancer swinging on a chain and a woman in a prom dress surrounded by a ring of fire who then is being menaced before she rips her clothes off. Footage of a wild man dancing plays throughout. This video is rather distinctive because it is the first to showcase Scott Weiland's trademark "dance".[3]
The set was used again for Sunny Day Real Estate's "In Circles" music video in 1994.[4]
Controversy
Upon the success of "Sex Type Thing", controversies regarding the song's lyrics emerged while STP was on tour opening for Megadeth. Weiland found himself in the position of defending "Sex Type Thing" to individuals who took the first-person approach he used in the song literally. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, Weiland expressed his frustration with the song's reception by saying "It was, 'All right, the "Cop Killer" controversy's dead, let's try to find something else'...I never thought that people would ever seriously think that I was an advocate of date rape."[5]
Track listings
All live tracks were recorded at the Reading Festival 1993.
The song was released as downloadable content on June 1, 2010, as part of Stone Temple Pilots Track Pack with "Plush" and "Between the Lines" for Guitar Hero 5.[11]
