In 2000, when Peaches released her debut single, ‘Fuck The Pain Away’, she became an instant alt queer icon, but its exuberant two-ingers to heteronormative, patriarchal songs about sex is rooted in a truth she didn’t want to give away.

Words by Conor Behan.

Brash sexuality has always had a place in popular music, but every so often an act ups the ante in a way nobody might predict. At the turn of millennium, DIY electro-punk artist Peaches delivered her now classic single ‘Fuck the Pain Away’, and did just that.

Taken from her debut album as Peaches, The Teaches of Peaches (she’d previously released an album under her real name Merril Nisker), the song sparked the career of an alternative music icon. A minimal but insistent electro-track, it was a key part of the emerging electro-clash trend of the early noughties, and a frank, sexually explicit anthem in the making.

Originally released in 2000, The Teaches of Peaches began a word-of-mouth climb to indie music fame thanks largely to the power of the ‘Fuck The Pain Away’. The song was equal part a come-on and a cry for help, its gleeful mix of come-hither, clubready sexuality and nihilism proving an excellent introduction to Peaches.