2002Released
4:23

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Work It. By Songfacts®.

Part of the chorus is backwards. There was a lot of speculation that Missy was hiding a dirty message, but when reversed, the lyrics are simply the other part of the chorus: "Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it." Elliott revealed to Billboard in a 2018 interview that it was a happy accident caused by the finger slip of an engineer. "The reverse thing, that was a mistake," she said. "The engineer happened to hit something, and it just went backward, and I was like, 'Oh that's kind of crazy' because it went backward on the beat." Elliott added: "So, after that happened, I said, 'Yo, keep that in there and I'm going to write around it.'"

What's it mean to "work it"? The lyrics are loaded with innuendo, which can be summed up in the line: Sex me so good I say blah-blah-blah Work it, I need a glass of wa-tah Missy is working it so good, she's losing control of her speech function.

This samples Blondie's 1979 disco hit, "Heart Of Glass," and it also uses part of the 1984 Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three song "Request Line" at the beginning.

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Work It.
C♯Key
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
102BPM

Album

The album Work It is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Work It.
Atlantic Records/ATG
© 2002 Elektra Entertaiment for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States
℗ 2002 Elektra Entertainment for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States.

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