I wrote a song called Sugar Daddy and it gave men the wrong idea
A number of years ago, when I was just starting to learn music production, I went out of London with a couple of friends to explore the Peak district with an organised hiking group. Over the course of the weekend, I met a married man who took a shine to me.
I don’t believe that Daniel was the cheating type. However, he did ask me to join him in his room one night after dinner. I didn’t.
Nat Ya, Sugar Daddy, 2014
First and foremost, extra-marital frolics were not my bag. But I thought we could still be friends. Plus, there was something I wanted from this man.
A well-connected lover of the arts, Daniel was on the board of several cultural organisations. He ran a super successful marketing business and lived in a fabulous house in Holland Park. He’d been married to the mother of his two teenage kids for twenty years. His wonderful wife was writing a novel; he showed me pictures of his children and told me all about them. Daniel was a CEO kind of family guy.
For some reason, he was very interested in who I was and in the music I was writing. He told me I was talented and he was very encouraging; he wasn’t shy about telling me that he fancied me, either.
We only saw each other once after that weekend; the friendship hit a dead-end.
However, the relationship troubled me for some time because it brought up lots of mixed feelings. I thought Daniel could open all the windows of my world. I wanted his support and I craved his approval. I felt both hopeful and compromised.
These feelings were a telltale sign of my own insecurities. Surely, I wasn’t the only woman who felt disempowered and scared of life. I was just another full-grown girl with daddy issues.
I tried to make sense of why the Lover-as-Father figure had such appeal, and wrote a song called Sugar Daddy
Sugar Daddy
Oh Daddy! Daddy…. Save me! Won’t you save me? Won’t you be my Sugar Daddy? Ohh Daddy… Won’t you be my Sugar Daddy?
You make me feel like you know me better than I know myself
Sugar Daddy… Daddy… Sugar, Sugar, Sugar Daddy
You look at me like you raised me and actually cared
Sugar Daddy… Daddy… Sugar, Sugar, Sugar Daddy
I’ll bring a messy sort of sexiness to that domestic emptiness
Won’t you be my Sugar Daddy? Won’t you be my Sugar Daddy?
Honeysuckle cuddles, I’ll give you what you want Daddy
Daddy! What you want… Sugar Daddy! What you want… Sugar, Sugar, Sugar Daddy
Won’t you be my Sugar Daddy?
Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
Honeysuckle cuddles, I’ll give you what you want Daddy!
The song is funny, right?
Sugar Daddy was meant to be a dark feminist statement. But I found that music industry guys who listened to it somehow got really turned on by it and took it as an indication I might be keen to sleep with them.
The Hitchcock Psycho murder-in-the-shower reference was lost on these men, along with my dramatisation of female angst, desperation and sexual confusion.
Nat Ya, London 2014
Anyway — here I am several years wiser. My boyfriend is only a few years younger than my dad, but I don’t really see him as my Sugar Daddy. Still, I wish he were.
