Your clues:
The artist and/or group had one or more bigger hits that caused some controversy (then and now) because of lyric content. While it was "acceptable" and understood by others, mainly in the '60's, if you sang about little forms of these, you were actually singing about something larger - but seldom was the phrase used outside recording studios. However, a recording artist managed to US Top 20 chart a song twice, in the '80's, going into greater detail what he was singing about. About the same time, The Knack was known to elaborate far more than most, going into explicit lyric detail including picture sleeves. Even The Raspberries are NOW penalized with Explicit Lyric content warnings.

Good luck!

Best,
John