Found this on Facebook. Am I a bad fan for not knowing this? She even has her own website, which explains how the song came to be. Check it out, it's a pretty cool story....

[Edited 6/18/16 4:42am]

According to Susannah she told Prince about a girl she remembered from school, Prince turned it into a song using a number of details from her story. She didn't actually write the lyrics.

paulludvig said:

MattyJam said:

paulludvig said:

According to Susannah she told Prince about a girl she remembered from school, Prince turned it into a song using a number of details from her story. She didn't actually write the lyrics.

Thats not what she said in the above quote from fDeluxes FB page. And if you look at her website, there's handwritten lyrics from Susannah.

She posted the full story a while ago.

paulludvig said:

MattyJam said:

paulludvig said:

Of course I knew! Does nobody read the liner notes? Susannah was always credited as co-author of Starfish and Coffee.

And if you actually read her FB page, and the story she told about the song, you will clearly see that she told Prince the story of Cynthia Rose. He was very fond of the story, so he then turned it into a song.

It was Susannah's story and it inspired Prince's song, hence she was rightly credited as co-author. She never claimed to be sole author.

The hand written lyrics on the t-shirt website list "Prince & Susannah, 1987" as the authors.

[Edited 6/18/16 12:19pm]

simm0061 said:

MattyJam said:

simm0061 said:

Of course I knew! Does nobody read the liner notes? Susannah was always credited as co-author of Starfish and Coffee.

And if you actually read her FB page, and the story she told about the song, you will clearly see that she told Prince the story of Cynthia Rose. He was very fond of the story, so he then turned it into a song.

It was Susannah's story and it inspired Prince's song, hence she was rightly credited as co-author. She never claimed to be sole author.

The hand written lyrics on the t-shirt website list "Prince & Susannah, 1987" as the authors.

[Edited 6/18/16 12:19pm]

Whose handwriting is that? Susannah's or Prince's?? There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether Susannah wrote a story that Prince turned into a song or whether Susannah wrote the actual lyrics.

That isn't the original handwritten lyrics.. The album was released March 1987. She says the song was written in Fall so that would have to have been 1986. I think Susannah wrote the lyrics down for the website.

Prince asked her to write the story she told him down. She did and he turned into into a song - picking and chosing what bits to include, and he changed bits where he saw fit.

Example in the story; Cynthia Rose said she had "Starfish and Pee pee" every day for breakfast. Prince changed the lyrics to "Starfish and Coffee, Maple syrup and Jam, Butterscotch clouds, tangerine and Side order of Ham"

simm0061 said:

i looks like susannah's writing. why is this a thing?

MattyJam said:

paulludvig said:

'Claims' is the operative word.

Susannah's a class act, I see no reason why she'd make it up. Why is it so important to some fans that Prince did absolutely everything? [Edited 6/18/16 11:59am]

I read Susannah's account on how the song was born, it was a pretty long story, I don't see why she would have made this up. She told Prince story, he wrote a song. That's what she said, very clearly.