Prince and Relationships

Prince’s song, as many bloggers have discussed, explores the relationship of close friends, who are girls, from the point of view of a very jealous and sexually frustrated ex-boyfriend. A quick Wikipedia search of the song will tell you that this song may have been written because Prince was jealous of the relationship his then fiancé had with her sister, who happened to be the guitarist in Prince’s band, The Revolution. One way of analyzing these lyrics would be to accept that the speaker wants to be just as close to his ex-girlfriend as his ex-girlfriend’s best friend. His solution involves substituting the role of boyfriend, for really close friend. So close, in fact, that they could see each other naked.
This is where the speaker’s separation of boyfriend and really-close-friend collapses. Really good friends may undress in front of each other, but I am pretty sure that a friendly situation in which someone says “we don’t have to make love to have an orgasm” has morphed or evolved into an entirely new kind of relationship. However, we are not entirely sure what kind of relationship this speaker wants. The line “we don’t have to make love to have an orgasm” makes me think that the speaker does not want to be romantically involved with his audience; instead he suggests they be strictly physical. The first half of the song is more or less a plea for romantic involvement. The speaker asks “if I were one and only friend If I was your one and only friend Would U run 2 me if somebody hurt U Even if that somebody was me?” this suggests that the speaker wants some kind of emotional connection with his audience. He actually acknowledges that he wants to be his audience’s “one and only friend”. We know that this is the speakers wish because the speaker ends the stanza or verse commenting on how great this new situation would be. He says “Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.”
Although in the second half of the song contains many lines that are quite suggestive if not explicit, the first half of the song describes a relationship that may or may not be a friendship like we think of it. I mean, the last person to wash my hair, pick out my clothes, and then make me breakfast was my mother, and that was probably ten or more years ago. To sum up, I don’t really know if the speaker in this poem knows what he wants as far as relationships go. It is clear, however, that sex is definitely at the top of his list. Unfortunately that is the most concrete assessment I can make when analyzing the intentions of the speaker in this song. But then again, quite a few songs from Prince are centered on the idea of needing sex.