Нет Афродизиака: История Песни The Whitlams

1997 single by the Whitlams

"No Aphrodisiac" is a song by Australian band the Whitlams, released in December 1997 as the second single from their third album, Eternal Nightcap. The song peaked at No. (Number) 59 on the Australian Singles Chart. The lead track was written by the band's founding mainstay, Tim Freedman, together with Pinky Beecroft (Matt Ford) and Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab (Glen Dormand): both from the band, Machine Gun Fellatio. Former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, for whom the band was named, announced news of their win on air. One of its B sides is "Gough". Machine Gun Fellatio provided a re mix of "No Aphrodisiac" for the remixes version of the single.

"No Aphrodisiac" was written for Freedman's then girlfriend, who was living in Melbourne, while he was in Sydney. One of the lyric lines is "truth, beauty and a picture of you", Freedman later explained "their role in the song is just to be comedic. I'm saying 'I miss you but the universe will turn me on in your absence'. Truth of course doesn't exist, and beauty is all." The single mix version adds more electric guitar and is almost a minute shorter than the album version. This version does not appear on the band's 2008 compilation album, Truth, Beauty and a Picture of You – the title is a line from the lyrics – instead the album version was used, which was also the preferred radio version.

"No Aphrodisiac" won Song of the Year at the ARIA Music Awards of 1998 and was also nominated for Single of the Year but lost out to Natalie Imbruglia's cover version of "Torn". The track was performed by the band at a ceremony in Sydney before the Millennium. It was also performed live during the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. AllMusic's Jonathan Lewis felt it was "a melancholy, piano driven song about long distance relationships". According to Bernard Zuel of The Sydney Morning Herald, it was "A ballad about infidelity, or even masturbation – 'there's no aphrodisiac like loneliness' – it became a national love song request. The single was released independently by Freedman's own label, had no film clip, no commercial radio airplay and no marketing budget." The Guardian said, "No Aphrodisiac is a demarcation in the Whitlams’ sound: gone were the boyish songs about mates and girls, replaced by melancholic, clever songs about being lonely and drinking too much (and girls). In a neat encapsulation of the band’s shift, Lewis even swapped his double bass for an electric bass halfway through the track."