Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Prince Week: Day Two
No embedding, so you’ll have to click to see this video of Prince covering Radiohead.
The point (for Jim & Jeri) is to note the guitar. And here is Eric’s addition to day two of Prince week.
However, while I’ve got this platform, I’m going to expound a bit.
First things first, I’m hard pressed to understand why someone would despise Prince. I can understand not liking an artist’s voice–I cannot stand Bob Dylan’s voice. nails on a blackboard–but I like many of his song when they have been recorded by other artists. I can get not liking an artists style of music, except that Prince has written songs in so many musical genres that seems a rather ridiculous statement as well.
So I’m going to take a shot in the dark about what I’m guessing bothers at least some people: sex.
Prince really likes to write and sing about sex. A lot. Hell, his 3rd and 4th albums were “Dirty Mind” and “Controversy” so it’s not like he’s hiding his themes.
But here’s the thing: Rock & Roll and R&B have a history of misogyny. But here’s the thing about Prince’s music: for the most part he doesn’t write about women, he writes to women. And to be honest, I often find it disconcerting, since I tend towards prudishness. But if you listen, what he’s pretty much saying is that he loves women, and let him tell you all about what he wants to do to you (assuming you are a woman).
But there’s something else to note as well.
Consider Little Red Corvette released in 1982. Did you ever notice that he blithely throws out the use of condoms as an expected occurrence? Or Sign O’ the Times from 1987, which implicitly mentions AIDS, and male to female transmission (via needle sharing, but still). And I love I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man: “Wouldn’t be satisfied, with a one night stand, and I could never take the place of your man.”
And he has had women in his bands–not just token females there to look good or female back-up singers or female lead singers with a male band but female musicians. It’s a more common occurrence, but still far more rare than one would expect.
So despite the sex–or perhaps because of it–Prince has always given off an attitude of respecting women, which is something that certainly wasn’t common when he was starting out.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Along with his loving women, there’s also a surprising frankness and honesty about men, too; “Little Red Corvette” came on the radio when I was driving in this morning, and I’d sorta forgotten about the lines in there where he’s doubting his own ability to perform and being intimidated by the song-subject’s prior sexual history. Thinking about it in light of my Prince Week choice today, “When You Were Mine” (a song about a schlub, and if you pay attention to the lyrics, a really funny and brutally honest song about a schlub), it struck me as interesting that a guy whose known for radiating sexual bravado actually writes a lot of songs that show a certain level of male vulnerability. (“When Doves Cry,” though not explicitly about sex, is also a song that oozes insecurity; these are just ones that come to mind.)
I guess what I’m saying is that Prince, unlike most songwriters who are explicitly dealing with sex, approaches the subject less as a conquistador and more like someone who’s trying to navigate the reefs and shoals. There’s bravado, sure, but underneath it there’s also a sense he’s properly intimidated and wondering if he can live up to how sexually powerful his fantasy women are (see also, “Darling Nikki”).
Which, if you’re a guy, I think, is either painfully close to home or awesomely just like you. Or maybe both. When I found myself laughing at the lyrics of “When You Were Mine” the other day, I was also laughing at a relationship I’d been in quite a long number of years ago–none of the other guys never got in bed with us, but there was that one time he was in the next room….
Thanks for the post!
Oh, and: PRINCE WEEK, WHOOOOOOOO!
April 13th, 2010 at 10:07 am
I’d just like to point out that love him or hate him, the man can play the HELL out of the guitar.
Carry on.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
So, back in early January, I suddenly got an urge to listen to the first Prince song I ever encountered. I love that song. Loved to dance to that song. Got lucky with that song. And it took me a long while to finally find it and eventually ended up buying it on iTunes as that was the only place I could find a copy, even though a friend had a rip of the whole album it was on, that track wasn’t there.
DMSR is just awesome. That after 20 some odd years of not hearing it, the song drove me crazy enough that I was finally able to remember enough of the lyrics (drawn from the murky end of the memory well, like pulling a guinea worm) to locate the thing.
I don’t think any other musician has done that to me. Yet.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I think DMSR is one of the albums I have on vinyl.
Which doesn’t do me a lot of good since I don’t have a record player.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Eric: That was my point precisely.
Yeah, the explicitness often bothers me, but he makes women the subject of his songs, not the object.