Sometimes, a song is so steamy , the only logical next step is a super-sexy music video. For that, we can thank trailblazers like Prince and Madonna, who established the right to show a little skin in music videos like "Kiss" and "Express Yourself. It became a sort of guilty pleasure, listening to a great song while watching a hot person do hot-person things like make out with someone equally good-looking, move their hips like no one was watching, and wear an outfit so tight you wonder how they got it on in the first place. You could spend hours watching gorgeous celebrities pour suspiciously watery milk on their Spandex-bound bodies we still love you, Fergie! And, if we're being honest, we have spent hours watching that and we still love you, Fergie. If you love losing yourself and, you know, several hours of your day in a good sexy music video marathon on YouTube, then you have most definitely come to the right place.

It's not enough to make list after list. The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure. This year, Turning the Tables considers how women and non-binary artists are shaping music in our moment, from the pop mainstream to the sinecures of jazz and contemporary classical music. This series of essays takes on another task. The 25 arguments writers make in these pieces challenge the usual definitions of influence. Some rethink the building legacies of popular artists; others celebrate those who create within subcultures, their innovations rippling outward over time. As always, women forge new pathways in sound; today, they also make waves under the surface of culture by confronting, in their music, the increased fluidity of "woman" itself.

It's not big or clever to say that Rihanna and her music are sexy. One would only need to browse the sartorial tour-de-force of her music videos to understand her sex-symbol status, before even getting started on the musical content. Aside from her voice, which is as satisfying-yet-tantalizing as the smell of freshly ground coffee, there's the tang of the accent that makes you feel like you're rolling in warm sand on the shores of Barbados while a Teletubby sun beats down and you're fed rum on a drip. As if all of this wasn't enough, the deluxe edition of 's ANTI graced us with one of the best bonus tracks of all time: "Sex With Me. Sex is intrinsic to the very skeleton of the track.

But her previous relationship with Ross was enough for 50 to decide she must pay with her sexuality, her body and her privacy for the crimes of her former partner. Like the other trappings of fame, all the houses and the chains and the piles of cash, Leviston was thought of as something that belonged to Ross. She was a piece of property that was fair game in their attempts to discredit each other. The feud between Ross and Jackson was driven by money. Insults were exchanged to drive sales.