Take a Good Look at It: Breaking Down the Meaning of “Red Light Special” by TLC

TLC’s story features triumph and tragedy, but mostly tragedy. Beginning their career in Atlanta, the group signed outrageously unfair contracts with their manager, Perri “Pebbles” Reid, and their record label, LaFace Records—a joint venture with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, and Arista Records. 

In 1995, TLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, even as they sold millions of albums. They eventually renegotiated their contract with LaFace, and Pebbles mercifully released them from the management agreement. The previous year, group member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes accidentally set her partner Andre Rison’s house on fire following a fight. She set his shoes on fire in a bathtub, and the flames engulfed the NFL wide receiver’s home. 

Amidst the chaos, TLC’s regular-girl personas soared to starry heights only a few have touched. However, like the rest of their career, devastating heartbreak surrounded their success. 

Lopes died, aged 30, on April 25, 2002, in a car crash in Honduras. The three TLC albums released during her lifetime are R&B classics. 

“Red Light Special” followed “Creep” as the second single from the 1994 album CrazySexyCool. “Creep” addresses the female experience with infidelity, while “Red Light Special” calls directly for hot action. The girls broke norms at the time for pop lyrical content. The next single, “Waterfalls,” addressed AIDS, becoming the first No. 1 song to do so.  

Red Light District

Babyface wrote and produced “Red Light Special” for TLC’s second studio album. He dialed up the steam for the girl group following the enormous success of “Creep.” 

Take a good look at it look at it now

Might be the last time you’ll have a go round

I’ll let you touch it if you like to go down

I’ll let you go further if you take this southern route

To be clear, as if the smooth R&B number isn’t explicit enough, routing toward the south isn’t the same thing as, for example, lowering oneself to a position nearer the floor. Just like pointing up doesn’t mean north. 

On paper, the words could be a sultry blues song. Don Nix’s blues standard “Going Down,” made famous by Freddie King, Jeff Beck, and others, isn’t sexual, and in this context, down really means south. Babyface’s metaphor of cardinal points and a cardinal sin—though he probably didn’t examine it this closely—is brilliant. 

Baby, it’s yours, all yours if you want it tonight

I’ll give you the red light special all through the night

Baby, it’s yours, all yours if you want it tonight

Come through my door, take off my clothes, and turn on the red light

Roxanne

Sting told Roxanne she didn’t have to put on the red light. He thought of the song when he saw prostitutes outside the band’s hotel in a seedy area of Paris. Where did the practice of using red lights to call attention to houses of prostitution come from?

According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of “red-light district” in this context happened in 1894. Folklorists share tales of railroad workers using their red lanterns outside a prostitute’s door so co-workers knew where to find them to resume work. 

In the Book of Joshua, “a prostitute woman” named Rahab ties a line of scarlet thread in her window to mark her house to protect her family when Joshua’s spies return to take Jericho. Some claim the scarlet cord relates to the red light tradition, though it’s not settled science. 

Crazy Sexy Cool

TLC’s follow-up to Ooooooohhh… on the TLC Tip came about in a tumultuous time for the group. Lopes’s struggle with alcoholism and her very public and volatile relationship with Rison delayed the recordings. 

They worked with a team of producers, including Babyface, Jermaine Dupri, and Dallas Austin. Sean “Puffy” Combs contributed to the album, bringing hip-hop to TLC’s R&B soul. Lopes and her group mates, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, survived the tumult to become the first girl group in history to reach RIAA Diamond status. Billboard ranked CrazySexyCool at No. 7 on its list of best Diamond-certified albums. 

Though some stiffs (pun NOT intended) clutched their pearls, “Red Light Special” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Sexy, Sexier, Sexiest

In the music video, TLC appears in a brothel with male prostitutes. T-Boz and Chilli are playing strip poker with the men, and Left Eye portrays a pimp. T-Boz handles most of the lead vocals while being caressed, and Chilli dances with a guitar player who looks straight out of Whitesnake. 

Three versions of the Matthew Rolston-directed video exist, titled “Sexy,” “Sexier,” and “Sexiest,” dialing up the heat—three explicit red light choices when you wanna go to funky town. 

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