"Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" is a funk song recorded by James Brown with Bobby Byrd on backing vocals. Released as a two-part single in 1970, it was a no. 2 R&B hit and reached no. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2004, "Sex Machine" was ranked number 326 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. In the 2021 update of the list it had risen to 196. In 2014, the original 1970 recording of "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" on the King Records label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Analysis

"Sex Machine" was one of the first songs Brown recorded with his new band, The J.B.'s. In comparison with Brown's 1960s solo funk hits such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", the band's inexperienced horn section plays a relatively minor part. Instead, the song centers on the insistent riff played by brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins on bass and guitar and Jabo Starks on drums, along with the call and response interplay between Brown and Byrd's vocals, which consist mostly of exhortations to "get up / stay on the scene / like a sex machine". During the song's final vocal passages Brown and Byrd started to sing the main hook of Elmore James' blues classic "Shake Your Moneymaker." The original single version of "Sex Machine"—recorded, like many of Brown's hits, in just two takes —begins with a spoken dialogue between Brown and his band which was recreated with minor variations in live performances: "Fellas, I'm ready to get up and do my thing! (Yeah! That's right! Do it!) I want to get into it, man, you know? (Go ahead! Yeah!) Like a, like a sex machine, man, (Yeah!) movin', groovin', doin' it, y'know? (Yeah!) Can I count it off? (Okay! Alright!) One, two, three, four!"

Personnel

with The J.B.'s:

Chart positions

Other recordings

Brown would go on to re-record "Sex Machine" several times in addition to the original single version: "Sex Machine" remained a staple of Brown's concert repertoire until the end of his career. Live performances of the song appear on the albums Revolution of the Mind: Live at the Apollo, Volume III (1971), Hot on the One (1980), Live in New York (1981), Love, Power, Peace: Live at the Olympia, Paris, 1971 (1992), and Live at the Apollo 1995.