The Divinyls
Songwriter Billy Steinberg pitched the concept of "I Touch Myself" to Chrissy Amphlett at a small cafe in Hollywood. "I knew she would like it," he said. The music video was shot at a nunnery in Pasadena after the production crew sent the nuns away for the weekend. The original video was banned in Australia, which did more for the song's notoriety than any promotion. The track has an unconventional structure, jumping from verse directly to bridge without a conventional chorus, yet it worked commercially in ways that surprised even the people who made it. After her breast cancer diagnosis in 2010, Amphlett reframed the song's meaning entirely, describing it as "so appropriate now more than ever." It became a clinical self-examination reminder after her death in 2013.
In our deep dive into I Touch Myself, we trace the song from a Hollywood cafe conversation to a banned video to the second meaning that arrived decades later, and what it reveals about how a song can outlast its own original intent.
