'I Didn't Want to Write an All-Out Sex Song': 'Afternoon Delight' by the Starland Vocal Band
- edgarstreetbooks
- Apr 24
- 1 min read
’100 Greatest 70s Pop Songs’ Book Excerpt
Frank Mastropolo
Bill Danoff and his then-wife Taffy were a struggling folk duo known as Bill and Taffy in 1974. The Danoffs recorded two albums for RCA Records that failed to sell. Bill thought their fortunes might change as a vocal group by adding vocalist Jon Carroll and Margot Chapman.
“I wasn’t really looking to put a group together,” Bill told Melody Maker, “but I just thought that if we were going to have a group, it would be a good idea to have the four of us.
“I was thinking about the vocal idea, how we all got along, and how it would work.”
Signed by John Denver’s Windsong Records, the Starland Vocal Band released “Afternoon Delight” in 1976. The song’s sly references to afternoon sex helped it top the Billboard chart.
Bill got the inspiration for the song in 1974 when he and Chapman stopped for lunch at Clyde’s, a Washington, DC bar.
“It was after lunch,” Bill told the Washington Post, “and from three to six they had these table tents out that said ‘Afternoon Delights.’ It was a little menu of like four items. I thought it would be a neat title for a song.”
“I didn’t want to write an all-out sex song,” Bill told the Los Angeles Times. ‘I just wanted to write something that was fun and hinted at sex.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest 70s Pop Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
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