Did I get your attention with that? The song just won the awesome Sign O The Times contest and I'm messing with it. Do I just want to be trashed?

Actually, it's Friday afternoon and I am not wanting to start any new work projects so I decided I would expound upon a theory I have. I think IIWYG is a classic, like many of you, I just don't share the same passion for it that some of you have professed. As I said in my voting for Sign O The Times over Girlfriend, I appreciate the song's artistry and bravery but I do not feel it in my soul. But I believe releasing it as a single has to rank up there with one of the most misguided things Prince has ever done.

Consider this: Prince brilliantly releases Sign O The Times as the first single and the song hits Number 3. Under the Cherry Moon is forgiven and forgotten, the album is getting RAVE reviews in several periodicals. There is momentum for the project to be huge. Then the whole damn thing gets derailed. For the second single in this album deep with radio friendly product Prince releases Girlfriend. A song that only someone who truly understands Prince understands but every one else mistakes as some weird sort of gender-bending (or outright literally gay) song. The general response of the masses: What the @#%# is that?

Now hold on before you start sending the hate mail. Let me expound. First, homophobia sucks ass and people who had a problem with the song on that level are undeserving to hear Prince product anyway. But whole radio stations in my home town held this oppinion. I begged a station manager for C103 in Columbia to play the song because that was my thing...pester radio stations until they play the song because I had to hear them on the radio. (I called a radio station for three straight weeks to play Dinner with Delores and they played it once...and never again). The radio station manager said that his radio station was never going to play that "faggot shit" and that he couldn't believe Prince didn't release a better single because the title track had been huge. I tried to reason with him, explain the intricacies of the song, and he wasn't having it. They never played the song on C103. They did play it on WNOK for about two weeks and then...nothing. This experience was duplicated in many hometowns in the USA. After a tremendous first single which had moved the album to the upper part of the album chart, the second single halted at 67 on the chart and the album plummeted down the charts too.

That could have been the end of the Sign O the Times project. Would that have made it any less of an album? Hell no. But this was an album that had all the attributes of being a huge success and it was faltering because for whatever reason in God's green earth Prince releases one of his most eccentric and easily misunderstandible songs as a follow-up. You love it, I think its great, but does ANYONE think that this song should have been a single? Is this the kind of song that the masses embrace?

I hear you out there...f___k the masses, you're saying. F___k the teenage girls and the pop audience, etc. But Prince wanted this album to be a hit too! I am quite sure that 29 year old P was not thinking: "This is my big art project and if they come, they come...I am going to release art for art's sake." The man is, amongst many other things, a pop musician. He releases his product as art but also as commerce. No one makes videos and promotes singles and tours if they do not care a little bit (or a lot) about people buying the music that they are putting out. Music studios like Paisley Park are not cheap and I think the dude owns seven other houses too so someone has got to make the pennies. So Prince had to have known that he had a huge hit album on his hands and he had to have known that there were 5 or 6 singles on it that would reach the mass audience. This being the case why in the HELL did he release Girlfriend as the second single?!

Those of you who are going to throw revisionist history at me, I know the album ended up being successful. It sold around 2 million in the states, a few million worldwide. U Got the Look, the third single, hit number 2 and I could Never Take the Place reached the Top 10. The album was nominated for Best Album, all this is true. But how much BIGGER could the album have been if he had followed Sign with another commericial hit, keeping the album in the Top 20 or 30 longer than it was? It could have been the year of Prince but instead U2 grabbed a lot of the glory because they do know which singles to release from their albums. U2 has songs just as weird (and wonderful) as Girlfriend but they don't release them because they know they are not commercial. Why does Prince have such a major misconception of the marketplace?

I guess I should appreciate Prince for his bravery in releasing singles like Girlfriend becaus there certainly aren't a lot of other artists that would. But this has bothered me for years and years. I just would have been so disappointed if that album had not reached an audience and Girlfriend almost wrecked the whole damn thing. Great song, tremendous song but it's like the Debbie Downer of Prince singles. Prince has certainly released worse songs for singles, that is not my assertion. But I don't know if he has ever had worse time for a single or lost more momentum from one.

I have said my piece; I will take the slamming like a man now

F___k!!!

I cant read all that ,its too long .....but its an amazing song one of his best ,was it supposed to be about Susannah

i do realise what your trying to say ,.. but,....

i dont have a problem with iiwyg being the second single ! i remember clearly buying the cassette single and the 7in colour vinyl !! i love the song and think it was a good single "sorry my reply not as deep as your thread"

sorry there have been worse singles than girlfriend ,... glam slam and tieves in the temple to name 2.
[Edited 2/25/05 14:50pm]

Glam Slam would be another. While I love the combination of arabic stylings, strings, funk drum machine beat, and pure sugar pop lyrics...it was so out there

Just not a good idea for a commercial release...yet I liked it

The recording for Grilfriend is so unusual, its so dark and the vocal (camile voice) it all works. I would love to hear it remastered. That being said his live performance of that record from Sign of the Times film is simply absurd!! It is out of this world and perhaps that version would have been better received at least on RB radio
[Edited 2/25/05 14:52pm]

I remember Eric Leeds (or it may have been Alan, I don't have the book within reach so I can't be sure) speaking of how that song killed the album's momentum in the D.M.S.R.book. He said that it was just too much product for the public to absorb and that Housequake should have been the next single. The emergence of hip-hop would have acted as a catalyst for that song. I think it was'nt so much that the song was difficult to digest (although it is quite deep in its meaning and its intention), but its timing as the second single was poor. If it had been released later, maybe after U Got The Look, it would have given the public 3 previous singles to get the vibe of the album, displaying boyh the playful and intellectual aspects of the album and would have made it possibly easier to digest.

Annastesia22 said:

Sorry such a long piece...I have been saving a lot of that up for 18 years.

I feel cleansed!

GottaLetitgo said:

No,sorry im just too lazy to read it but i see what your saying
[Edited 2/25/05 15:25pm]

In retrospect it wasnt a terrible choice....today the second single is often an "off" track...for artist that straddle the pop/R&B/Hip-hop genres the 2nd single is usually a ballad "for the ladies"..but the market back then was not set up the way it is now

...the main problem with "Girlfriend" ultimately was the Camile voice...if he would have recorded it normally and with a decent video it wouldnt have killed the project the way it did...

Prince actually killed the project by deciding not to tour..."U got the look" followed up by "play in the Sunshine" or "Hot Thing" with expensive videos (not just the performances from SOTT Live) would have done wonders coupled with a tour...

Prince let is personal life mess with his career...he also seemed to be going through some racial identity crap at the time as well...its all a damn shame....you dont know you are at your peak untill you are well past it...

I agree... 'If I Was Your Girlfriend' is one of my favorite Prince songs, but
it really wasn't the right choice for a second single. Personally, I think
the single release schedule for Sign O' The Times should have looked something
like this...

1 - Sign O' The Times
2 - U Got The Look
3 - Housequake
4 - If I Was Your Girlfriend
5 - I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
6 - Adore

GottaLetitgo said:

A man with 2 much time on his hands

I love the song, but I remember being bummed-out that Prince released it as a single. I thought, "No one's going to understand this -- the music is weird and the title seems odd for a man to be singing." It's cool that it did so well on R&B radio, but everywhere else, Prince had disappeared for a bit. The song would've done much better after two or three really killer tracks had been released first (and there were so many to choose from!). Love the song, but yes, it was a bad choice for a second single.

A man with 2 much time on his hands[/quote]


Ain't that the truth...

The first bad choice was really Paisley Park in the UK. It was the first "devil may care" pick, and IIWYG was more confirmation of that stance. Both were great, but a big stretch for the masses.

Girlfriend is good, but like the whole of SOTT, it's overrated. It's a weird song that I enjoy listening to, but that's it. I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Just because it's different, I don't why it's now the best song on the CD.

Certainly in hindsight we can see what a bad choice for second single it was, but remember, Prince was notorious at the time for making risky, yet brilliant, single selections. Everyone said "When Doves Cry" would kill Purple Rain because of its lack of a bassline. "Little Red Corvette" was too rock sounding and wouldn't appeal to his funk/R&B fanbase. I think maybe he knew he was taking a risk, he just over-estimated the public's willingness and ability to understand what he was saying.

Other singles disasters: Almost the entire album. "Sexy MF" followed by "My Name Is Prince"? After all the commercial momentum from Diamonds & Pearls, and with all the (at the time) radio-friendly tracks on , that record should have been huge.

And of course, releasing "When You Were Mine" as a single from Dirty Mind might've made him a major success much earlier. It could've been for Dirty Mind, and his career, what "Little Red Corvette" was to 1999.

At the time I thought it was an odd choice for a single.
It wasn't helped by the fact that there was no video.

renfield said:[quote]Certainly in hindsight we can see what a bad choice for second single it was, but remember, Prince was notorious at the time for making risky, yet brilliant, single selections. Everyone said "When Doves Cry" would kill Purple Rain because of its lack of a bassline. "Little Red Corvette" was too rock sounding and wouldn't appeal to his funk/R&B fanbase. I think maybe he knew he was taking a risk, he just over-estimated the public's willingness and ability to understand what he was saying.

I am so glad someone brought up When Doves Cry because I think it represents a major fault in Prince's psyche. Prince was dead on right with WDC; it was risky but it was a brilliant single. I think that the sucess of that song doomed Prince in a way because he could always go back to that and say "I was right about that so I'm right about this too." With single selection, he has been wrong a whole lot more than he has been right.

I'm not trying to argue for perfection in every Princely decision. I just don't understand how it didn't register to him that a vast majority of America would not get Girlfriend and that it should not be released so early in the project if at all. Quite frankly, he overestimated the intelligence, maturity, and comprehension skills of the pop audience.

BorisFishpaw said:

I think you list is cool and all, but I think U Got the Look was good where he released it. That song spent 6 months in the Hot 100 from June to Dec 31 of 1987. I always felt that "Strange Relationship" should have been #2 off the album. It woould have been perfect for the spring. But hey I always felt that Le Grind, Cindy C, and Rock Hard... were three of the coolest songs in the history of Prince Musicdom. Hell I was right.

I was 16 a year old music fanatic with a solid grasp of what was going on when SOTT came out and i clearly remember having a "What the f?!K" reaction when If I Was Your Girlfriend was released as a single. It did kill the momentum of the record.
Without a doubt, Housequake" or I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" should have been the second single. Prince also shoud have let the album ride for another year before releasing any new material. Housequake, Starfish and Coffee, The Cross, Strange Relationship, and even Forever In My Life , all could have been huge hits.
[Edited 2/25/05 22:31pm]

I'd love to read everything what you've just written, but I just got a urgent need to rush to the stalls after the fourth paragraph. Sorray.

GottaLetitgo said:

yo, my last college thesis was shorter than this...

"If I Was Your Girlfriend" was a perfect choice for a single. This was released in the 1980s, not the 1990s. In the 1980s, gender bending was definately "in".

In the 1990s, gangsta rap took over and gender bending was the last thing that people did. It was the total opposite in the 1980s. If you weren't gay in the 1980s, you had better look gay if you wanted a hit. "If I Was Your Girlfriend" definately caught attention from the title alone, even before people heard the song. People expected and wanted something controversial from Prince in those days.
[Edited 2/26/05 6:31am]

vainandy said:

It got to no.20 in the UK, so quite a few folk liked it.

This was a song that should have never been released period.SOTT dominated the first part of 87.The summer of 87 was approaching and Prince had a non-release that was dominating R&B (Adore).Why release the song period ?

Housequake should have been released on it's own instead of the B-side to U Got The Look.

Those of you who don't get SOTT just remember that it was the greatest Prince release ever. Keep listening.

Novabreaker said:

That's understandible...I should have told people to use the potty before they started reading.

I think looking gay in '83/'84 was quite different than looking that way in '87. By that time, Rock Hudson was dead, and George Michael became hot with his tight jeans and rugged 5 o'clock shadow. The Maybelline new wave crowd was pretty much done by then. Only hard rockers got away with the makeup at the time, since the music was so heterosexually charged.

it was a bad singles choice, but the choice to not release a video was even worse. other candidate for worst singles choice: Betcha by golly wow !!

muleFunk said:

I was 11 that summer I remember well, begging my cousin's to play Prince all the time. They were 16 and 18 they laughed b/c I was such a Prince fanatic but we would all listen.

But Adore should of been released as a single. I never understood why it wasn't. i think it one of his best songs. Girlfriend I love, who wouldn't want a man to pick out your clothes. It's not just me right?