Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?
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Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)? is a version of a French phrase that has become known in the English-speaking world through popular songs. It means "Do you want to sleep with me (tonight)?" and is perhaps best known from the song "Lady Marmalade," written by the songwriting team of Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan and first popularized in 1975 by the group Labelle featuring Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash. The song was rerecorded by Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, and Pink as a single for the Moulin Rouge! film soundtrack. This phrase also appears in Tennessee Williams's 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire. David Frizzell and Shelly West recorded a country music song in the 1980s called "Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi" that was unrelated to "Lady Marmalade."
The origins of the phrase in English, however, can be traced back to a poem by E. E. Cummings published in 1922 and known by its first line "little ladies more", which contains the phrase "voulez-vous coucher avec moi?" twice.
The phrase has sometimes been taken as awkward French because of its formality—Voulez-vous… uses the formal pronoun vous, indicating some kind of distance between the protagonists, which may not seem consistent with sexual activity nowadays. One would expect lovers to be using the informal pronoun tu, making the phrase Veux-tu coucher avec moi (ce soir)?". However, the usage of the polite form voulez-vous may be consistent with high-class prostitution. Both "Lady Marmalade" and the poem allude to prostitution. In addition, using "vous" implies that the participants have just (or not yet) met, and forms an interesting juxtaposition with the intimacy of sex.
Alternatively, vous can be simply a plural form, indicating multiple sex partners (French uses the same form for denoting both plurality and politeness; see T-V distinction).
Due to the more widespread usage of se coucher, a reflexive form of coucher, the phrase is frequently misinterpreted as grammatically incorrect. Se coucher refers only to the act of going to bed, whereas coucher means lovemaking explicitly. Thus, the "corrected" form of the phrase, "Voulez-vous vous coucher avec moi?" actually means "Do you want to go to bed with me?" and contains none of the sexual connotations of the original.
