Browsing Tag

Prince

Prince Lyrics for Paisley Park Employees

June 7, 2018

Paisley Park, the estate and production studio of the late Prince, recently had an opening for an archives supervisor. When I thought about the work environment, I imagined everyone communicating solely through Prince’s words. The result is this handy list of Prince lyrics for Paisley Park employees. 

Turning in a report on a Monday morning:

“I was dreaming when I wrote this. Forgive me if it goes astray.”

Late for work the third day in a row:

“I never meant to cause you any sorrow. I never meant to cause you any pain.”

When you can’t decide if you should take the stairs or …

“Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?”

Drunk at the company holiday party:

“We’re all excited, but we don’t know why. Maybe it’s ‘cause we’re all gonna die.”

Annual performance evaluation self-assessment:

“I’m not a human, I am a dove. I’m your conscience, I am love. All I really need is to know that you believe.”

When Brad from accounting forgets to pick you up on his carpool day:

“How can you just leave me standing, alone in a world that’s so cold?”

Hitting on Brad during the company retreat:

“I want to be your fantasy. Maybe you could be mine? You just leave it all up to me, and we could have a good time.”

Brad is into it:

“Your face is jammin’, your body’s heck a-slammin’.”

Seriously into it:

“Now move your big ass ‘round this way so I can work on that zipper, baby. Tonight you’re a star, and I’m the Big Dipper.”

OK, Brad is getting a little freaky deaky:

“Something about a little box with a mirror and a tongue inside.”

When Brad cooks breakfast the next day:

“Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam, butterscotch clouds, a tangerine, and a side order of ham.”

Monday morning work email from Brad:

“I can’t disguise the pounding of my heart, it beats so strong. It’s in your eyes, what can I say? They turn me on. I don’t care where we go, I don’t care what we do, I don’t care, pretty baby. Just take me with you.”

Ugh, another email?

“Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world? It’s plain to see you’re the reason that God made a girl.”

Goddamn it, Brad:

“I’ll give you head ’til you’re burning, head ’til you get enough, head ’til your love is red, head love ’til you’re dead.”

Your breakup note to Brad:

“I guess I should have known by the way you parked your car sideways that it wouldn’t last.”

Before the awkward spring potluck:

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called lunch.”

An ode to the purple one

April 21, 2016

I’ve said before that when Prince dies, it’ll be the celebrity death that destroys me. But as I sit here tonight, listening to the livestream of Prince music from a Minneapolis public radio station, I don’t feel wrecked. Not yet.

I think a part of me refuses to believe that I exist in a world without Prince. Or that a world can exist without Prince. Because as long as I can remember, my world has been infused with a tiny pixie funk sex god yelping about raspberry berets and “Trojans, some of them used,” and it was extraordinary. Prince is as seamlessly woven into my childhood as grape popsicles and roller skates. He just always was.

Over the coming weeks, a lot of people will write a lot of remembrances about Prince, and they will have more authority than I do. They will be involved in the music industry, or they will have attended more Prince concerts, or they will have something really unique to contribute. I don’t have that.

What I can say is that I grew up in a squat brick home in a tiny Ohio neighborhood, and Prince was an essential part of my life. Even there. His purple reign extended that far and deep.

First grade, my mother’s vanity. I see Prince on TV, and before school one day, I use my mom’s eyebrow pencil to draw a thin mustache over my lip. “Because it’s pretty, that’s why,” I argue as she wipes it away with a cotton ball.

Third grade, bathroom floor. It’s the quietest room in the house, so that’s where I go to record songs from the radio onto a blank Sanyo cassette. After I record “When Doves Cry,” I will play it so fiercely, so ceaselessly, that the tape itself will run thin and become knotted inside the player. I will untangle it and rewind the tape back into the case with a pencil, and that will happen over and over, until it’s finally rendered unlistenable.

Fifth grade, Desiree’s house. It’s my first time seeing the video for “Kiss.” While the song is pure sugary pop, the video is the most confusing, frisky, lusty thing I’ve ever seen. Prince is pure, uncorked sex, gleefully wiggling around in leather pants and a half shirt, while Wendy, clad in twice as much fabric, plays guitar. Meanwhile, a veiled woman in lingerie and aviator glasses slinks and writhes. I don’t understand their relationship, the three of them, only that it’s visually exciting. And though I know something sexy is happening, it’s also the first time I’ve encountered something simultaneously hot and playful.

Sixth grade, the community swimming pool. My friends invent this pointless game called “Song Cannon,” which involves doing cannonballs off the high dive into the pool. The kicker? In that space between jumping and plunging into the water, you have to shout a line from your favorite song. The first time I yell, “U got the look!” The next time, “Your body’s heck a sl— … (glub-glub)”

Eighth grade, the dank, wood-paneled downstairs of my parents’ house. Spontaneous dance party with “Batdance” at full volume.

High school, Kim’s house. My friend Kim is secretly dating a guy in our class who already has a girlfriend. He gives Kim a mixtape that opens with the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and ends with “Purple Rain.” It doesn’t even matter what songs are sandwiched in between. Kim plays the whole tape in her bedroom twice, and as the music careens through hunger and longing and sorrow, the air is charged, electric.

I could go on and on. The time a man on a Greyhound bus mistook me for Apollonia. Sneaking out of work early from the Cincinnati Enquirer to see Prince play a 26-song set. Standing front and center for Prince’s Coachella set, when he trotted out Morris Day and The Time. All the years I made a Prince lyric my mantra: “I don’t wanna die, I’d rather dance my life away.

And of course, all the nights made seriously funky with purple and ruffles, sparkles and a wink.