36D

36D is a song written by Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray and performed by The Beautiful South. The song was originally found on the album 0898 Beautiful South and later appeared on two greatest hits compilations, 1994's Carry on up the Charts and 2007's Soup. As a single it reached #46 in the UK Singles Chart, spending two weeks in the Top 75 in 1992. The album version ran for 5 minutes 15 seconds.

The song starts as a ballad and it appears singer Dave Hemingway is singing fondly to a woman, telling her she doesn't have to make an effort with her looks for him to appreciate her. However as the more upbeat chorus, sung by Hemmingway and Heaton, comes in it becomes clear that the woman is the object of Heaton's scorn. The main cause of their disgust is that she uses her 36D breasts to have lots of meaningless sex and turns herself into media sex object, and maybe even a prostitute. Heaton is clearly unimpressed by her ("36D, so what?") and "You cheapen and you nasty every woman in this land" along with "Your picture's hanging pretty on the squaddie's walls, You're Steven's, Andy's, you're Iain's, you're Paul's" shows his feelings perfectly.

The overtly sexual content of the song may be a reason it did not chart highly as a single as opposed to many of their other tongue in cheek, biting songs like Song For Whoever and Don't Marry Her. The song was one of the catalysts for Briana Corrigan leaving as she thought it painted glamour models, especially Page 3 girls in a bad light when the media who put them there should be blamed instead.