Oh! Prince is quite the sensitive guy.

Prince’s lyrics in his song “If I Was Your Girlfriend” reveal all the sexual frustrations a superstar could feel at the top of his “game”. The song goes on a very linear path that can be interpreted several ways. “If I was your girlfriend,” Prince sings, “would you remember to tell me all the things you forgot?” With these words, Prince establishes his relationship with this woman. To put it another way, the speaker wants to recreate an even more intimate connection with this woman other than being her boyfriend once again as well as something more than a mere physical presence in her life. It is clear in the beginning that the two have separated. Prince sings, “Would you remember to tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?” He wants to share in her secrets, to take a step outside of his common masculinity (Prince masculine?) and share in a deeper emotion with her (“Could we go to a move and cry together”), to be beyond a certain point of comfort with one another’s body (“Is it really necessary for me to go out of the room / Just because you wanna undress?). He wants to be let into her life just as one of her best friends would be. The man wants a commitment! However, he also desires to understand her physically and at a much higher level of intimacy than any of her girlfriends could ever provide, though with Prince everything is possible. It is as much a striving to deepen an emotional relationship as it is a sexual understanding of her. “Listen, for you naked I would dance a ballet,” Prince sings, “Would that get you off?” This imparts his trying to, again, deepen his understanding of her but also it goes a bit too far. The part comes off differently than the former lines, sounding quite desperate in fact. The sentences in the latter half of the song are jumpy, choppy, almost as if a conversation between two people. But I believe it is only a desperate stream of consciousness from this one man. It is a series of “would you, would you, would you” questions that entangle him in his own sexuality and perversity. And at the end the man is left with only “silence”.