Woodwind instruments really bring out the sax appeal.
Chicks dig saxophone players. We're not sure why, but playing a saxophone apparently makes a man more manly and sexy than if he played all the other brass and woodwinds combined. Maybe it has something to do with the graceful, feminine curve of the saxophone, or the way his hands hold it in a similar way to the way a lady's back could be caressed if she happened to be in its place. Or the amount of lip controlnote required to play it. Whatever the cause, playing the saxophone is a surefire way to get girls... or get them hot and bothered.
See also Sexophone, where saxophone riffs are used as BGM for sexy scenes, and Girls Like Musicians for the broader topic of musicians being attractive to women. Compare and contrast Elegant Classical Musician. Subtrope of Artists Are Attractive.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Trigun has Midvalley the Hornfreak. He plays sax and he gets the babes. He also kills people with sound waves when he's in the mood.
- Cowboy Bebop has Gren, who would fit this perfectly if we could be sure he is a "he".
Fan Works
- In A.A. Pessimal's saga of interlinked family and friends on the Discworld, the Strandpiel series, young Witch Rebecka Smith-Rhodes is courted by a senior student at the Assassins' Guild School. Being a witch and therefore contrary, she is inclined to fight it all the way. But she realises he's reasonably good-looking, buys her chocolate in times of need, plays Crockett (therefore won't be hanging around her all the time), and, as she can't help but notice, plays saxophone. This last quite intrigues her.
Films — Live-Action
- A frequent theme in Some Like It Hot, in which Marilyn Monroe's character has a Fetish for saxophone players, but believes they're all jerks. The main character in the film is a saxophone player, and a jerk. Right at the end, Daphne attempts to deflect the attentions of Osgood by telling him "I have a terrible past. For three years now, I've been living with a saxophone player."
- The Lost Boys had a prominent scene of a shirtless, oiled-up Tim Cappello playing the saxophone at a concert. Fans of the film have even nicknamed him "sexy sax man".
- Lis the tall, handsome sax player in Ida. Wanda, who is obviously attracted to him, pronouces the saxophone to be a "sensuous", "male" instrument. Later, her niece Ida has sex with Lis.
Literature
- Bodies Are Where You Find Them: It turns out that murder victim Helen Stallings was secretly married to Whit Marlow, a sax player in a band. Shayne muses how the "sensual, melodic strains from that wailing instrument" might have made Whit more attractive, then thinks about people he knew in the past who used their ability to play saxophone to pick up women.
Live-Action TV
- On Parks and Recreation, straitlaced boss-man Ron Swanson leads a double life at night, moonlighting as smooth jazz saxophonist Duke Silver. Predictably, the Duke is a hit with the ladies.
- Diff'rent Strokes: Arnold pretends to play sax in order to get in some girl's pants. Problem is, he can't really play. He ends up getting Clarence Clemons to play Behind the Black while he lip-blew.
- On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will did something similar with another famous (at the time) sax player.
- Played with in one episode of Seinfeld, where Elaine's saxophone-playing boyfriend isn't as hot and heavy as she'd like him to be. He eventully does do what she wants him to do, which makes his mouth too tired to play the saxophone and he blows an audition.
- Parodied on a Saturday Night Live Digital Short which was inspired by Sexy Sax Man
Sergio Flores (See Web Original Below). Andy Samberg is, on account of a Gypsy curse, haunted by an incredibly-sexy saxophonist (played by a half-naked Jon Hamm) named Sergio who keeps barging in on his happiest life events and inevitably attracting the attention of whatever women happen to be nearby.
- In one of their musical finales, The Two Ronnies performed as saxophone-playing lounge lizards boasting of their conquests.
- The Daily Show invokes this trope in their June 8, 2011 episode. After finding out that Anthony Weiner texted a woman discussing having sex while watching the show, Jon Stewart just decides to go with it and a shirtless man starts playing saxophone.
- On American Horror Story: Coven, the Axeman is a darker take on this trope. A historical character, the Axman is a relatively handsome saxophonist who happens to be a serial killer.
- Night Man: When not in costume the titular hero is Johnny Domino, San Francisco's hottest jazz saxophonist. Johnny's more beefcake, though, than the usual sultry version of this trope.
- Cowboy Bebop (2021). In "Callisto Soul", there's a fanservice scene where a lingerie-clad dancer is trained by Gren with the assistance of a sax player.
Gren: Feel those notes nibble your neck...
Music
- Yep, even musicians think about this, at least. Steely Dan gives us 'Deacon Blues', with the refrain starting 'I'll learn to work the saxophone/ I'll play just what I feel ... ', and a later verse suggesting 'I crawl like a viper through the suburban streets/ Make love to these women, languid and bittersweet ... '
- Billy Joel's "Christie Lee" is a subversion: she's really into the saxophone, but apparently indifferent to the Sax Man himself.
She didn't need him as a man, all she wanted was the horn.
- Fleur East's "Sax" is about a woman interested in men who play saxophones.
But if you wanna hear me sing you better play that sax.
- A song from Casino de Paris: "Toi et ton sax''.
- Candy Dulfer is a Sexy Sax Woman, with the sexiness of playing the saxaphone being a prominent theme in her music, beginning with her debut album Saxuality.
Theater
- Some Like It Hot: Sugar has a thing for sexy saxophonists, who also tend to be the type of man to leave her high and dry.
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat 11: Jax's Friendship turns him into this in an obvious reference to the Epic Sax Guy (see the Real Life folder). The move is even called "Sexy Jax-A-Phone".
Visual Novels
- Hatoful Boyfriend's Yuuya Sakazaki can apparently play tenor sax, according to a drawing released by his creator. He has a reputation as an "infamous studmuffin".
- Uta No Prince Sama's Ren Jinguuji is a flirtatious young man that can make large groups of fans squee when they listen him play the sax.
Webcomics
- Lackadaisy's jazz musician Zib invokes this, being both a clarinetist and a saxophonist.
Q: "So I see that Zib plays the clarinet — why is he never depicted with one? (...)"A: "Vanity. He prefers being pictured with the sexyphone. (...)"
Web Original
- Saxophone "superstar" Sergio Flores tries to make the city sexier by playing a George Michael tune in public places, while wearing tight leather pants, no shirt, and making a general nuisance of himself.
Western Animation
- Gender flipped with Jetta from Jem. Her main instrument is the saxophone in the pop band The Misfits, though she rarely actually plays the sax in songs for whatever reason. Pizzazz sings a Les Yay filled song called "I Like Your Style" when they first meet about how fashionable Jetta is and about her saxophone skills.
- On Futurama, Leela mentioned that her ex-boyfriend Sean used to play the saxophone naked on her couch, though not sexy in terms of his appearance she did mention him being a loser who was pasty and hunched. He and his wife appear in an episode of the Comedy Central run at the same resort Leela and Fry go to where he's also seen to be a Jerkass.
Real Life
- Sergey Stepanov, already a good looking guy with sunglasses, performed with sax quite suggestively during a performance for the song "Run Away". And thus he became known as the Epic Sax Guy. His group, Sunstroke Project, performed "Run Away" as the Moldovan entry of the Eurovision Song Contest back in 2010. It placed 22nd of 25 in the Grand Final of that contest, but it wouldn't be the last we'd hear from the Epic Sax Guy. The same group performed in the 2017 edition with Hey Mamma, and just like the song from seven years prior, Stepanov gets his own dedicated sax solo. In the end, they placed third of 26 in the contest, the highest Moldova achieved to date.
- Bill Clinton's infamous saxophone jam — the result of a gift from the then-president of the Czech Republic — combined with the then-mayor of Brussels giving him another sax as a gift with his statement of "the instrument of sax" being a joke with newspapers at the time, Bill's reputation for being a ladies' man and the resulting sex scandals, resulted in many the butt of a joke even before the scandal with Monica Lewinsky, leading to headlines like "The Sax Life of Bill Clinton" and "Pucker Up and Blow" around the time of his first sex scandal with Paula Jones. The jokes only intensified when the Lewinsky affair occurred.
- Sexy sax woman Candy Dulfer flips the gender script, with sensual music videos and album covers. Her first album is even titled "Saxuality".
