Dude, Prince again?

Yes again. Last week, I blogged about some of my favorite lyrics from Killers songs – and it made me feel guilty that I didn’t do it for Prince first.

It’s a lot harder with prince though, because the Killers have 3 albums and a collection of B-sides. Prince has at least, I dunno, 25 albums. In addition, Prince sometimes writes amazing lyrics and sometimes seems to not spend any time thinking about lyrics at all (My name is Prince! And I am funky!) – and even in songs with blah lyrics, the music can still make it amazing. So after much some thought, here are my top 10 favorite lines from Prince songs as of today.

Tomorrow, it could change. (As usual, scroll to the bottom for the imeem playlist.)

10. “Her favorite number was 20 every single day.” from Starfish & Coffee
This is a dark horse entry. There’s nothing remarkable about this line, except its context. In this song about Cynthia Rose, a little girl who has an active imagination, this detail about her personality grounds her in real life even though the song dwells almost exclusively in fantasy. More than anything, I just think it’s cute for a kid to have a favorite number of 20.

9. “I just want your extra time and your kiss.” from Kiss
The funk guitar on this jam makes it. But this refrain takes it over the top. The pause before the last word makes a simple kiss like the hottest thing in the world. Like the guitar says everything the lyrics don’t. Fire.

8. “I would die for you, darling, if you want me to.” from I Would Die 4 U
As with many Prince jams, this might be about God or love. It really doesn’t matter. It’s such an emotionally raw line to base a pop song around. There’s an extended version of this song that I caught wind of once – maybe it was released in Europe or something? – that takes the realness to another place with the entire band chanting “I would die for you” for several minutes before the song starts.

He balances the ultimate sacrifice – death – with the least weighty motivation – want, not need, desire, or even ask.

7. “They don’t care where they kick, just as long as they hurt you.” from Thieves in the Temple
Again with the imagery that is related to romantic relationships as much as religion. But the idea is so familiar and so sad. It is one of the first lines of the song and sets a mood – even when the beat drops in – of bare sadness and hurt.

6. “I just can’t stop writing songs about you; I love you so much.” from Call My Name
Prince is an anomaly in that he has consistently made good-ass music from the first song he recorded until now. There’s never really been a decline in quality – only motivation. So when his stuff has been less than stellar, you can’t help but notice how good it still is. Anyway, this song came off 3121, which was released in 2006 – almost 30 years after his first album dropped. And this line still caught me off-guard. There’s really no higher praise from a songwriter than what he says here.

5. “Money don’t matter tonight; it sure didn’t matter yesterday.” from Money Don’t Matter 2 Nite
I love when songwriters do this, make a straightforward point to begin with – then give it additional context afterward. I feel like talking about yesterday rather than, say, tomorrow, gives a history to the narrator of the stories of the song. Why didn’t it matter yesterday, and we can assume, the day before that and the day before that? He creates a frame to imagine backgrounds with just one sentence.

4. “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999.” from 1999
It’s been around so long that it’s almost played out. But come on, it was released in 1982. He was already talking about the millennium. Come on yo, who else did that?

3. “If I was your girlfriend would you remember to tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?” from If I Was Your Girlfriend
There’s this weird thing that some Prince-haters do where they call his gender and sexual orientation into question when they want to take him down a notch. But who cares? My love of his music is not based on my admiration of his heterosexuality. But one of the great qualities of Prince as an icon is that he really messed with the lines we artificially create between races, genders, and every other classification for our own convenience. (He addresses this on “Controversy.”) He does this to himself here, basically thinking how much more hot it would be if he was a woman and could have a different kind of relationship with the woman he’s singing to. Really just. Genius.

2. “All I ever wanted to do – I wanna be your lover.” from I Wanna Be Your Lover
I know, I know. The cleverness in this song is the brazen sexual come-ons (“I wanna be the only one who makes you come…running”), but I love this line because it turns the whole thing from just a sex song to a love song. There’s a switch in the middle of the line from “do” to “be” – signifying the difference between action and identity. The way he wails “dooooo” – then hesitates and gets all shy before he softly sings “lover” further underscores how of-the-moment the first part is, and how of-the-spirit the second part is. He shows us how easy it is to wanna get intimate…and how much more daunting it is to love someone intimately. Damn Prince. DAMN.

1. “I guess I shoulda known by the way you parked your car sideways: it wouldn’t last.” from Little Red Corvette
I’m pretty sure this is the greatest first line of any song I’ve ever heard. What could basically be another sex song (come on, you didn’t know what he meant by little red Corvette?) is set up by this first line to really be a song about heartache. One of the few times the narrative in a Prince song is about wanting to slow down.

Moreover, he doesn’t start by saying “I knew…” he says “I guess I shoulda known…” – it just reminds me so much of what it’s like to feel that uncertainty in retrospect. Oh dude you are tearing my heart out.

Top 10 Favorite Lines from Prince Songs

Tags: music

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 8:09 AM and is filed under lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.