Prince seems practically apolitical until he addresses a specific concern. For instance, the arms race in the Cold War (Ronnie Talk 2 Russia); Reagan's "Star Wars" Defence System (Sign O' The Times); African-American Reparations (Dear Mr. Man, When Will We B Paid); the Gulf War (Money Don't Matter 2night, Live 4 Love) etcetera...

From a few of his songs, it's evident that he isn't apolitical as such (which would suggest apathy) but considers the current political system as simply being pointless. If he was completely apathetic towards politics, he'd disregard the subject altogether.

In 'Pope' he suggests that it would be preferable to be a religious leader rather than a president and in 'Dear Mr. Man' he blatantly states that he can see no point in voting.

Which brings us to one of his most lyrically ambiguous songs - 'America'...



In addition to analysing the lyrics, it's also important to note:

The album which contained the track;
The sleeve-art of the single's front cover;
The parody-like nature of the music.

Firstly, the lyrics:

Yeah
Peace!

Aristocrats on a mountain climb
Making money, losing time
Communism is just a word
But if the government turn over
It'll be the only word that's heard

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
America, America
Keep the children free

Little sister making minimum wage
Living in a one-room jungle - monkey cage
Can't get over, she's almost dead
She may not be in the black
But she's happy she ain't in the red

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
America, America
Keep the children free

Freedom
Love
Joy
Peace

Jimmy Nothing never went 2 school
They made him pledge allegiance
He said it wasn't cool
Nothing made Jimmy proud
Now Jimmy lives on a mushroom cloud

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
America, America
Keep the children free

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
America, America
Keep the children free

Freedom
Love
Joy
Peace

Boom, boom, boom, boom
The bomb go
Boom, boom, boom, boom
The bomb go boom.
Teacher, why won't Jimmy pledge allegiance?

The first verse appears to be decrying communism, but whereas communism passes without much comment ("just a word") it's capitalism which is viewed unfavourably:

"Aristocrats on a mountain climb
Making money, losing time
Communism is just a word
But if the government turn over
It'll be the only word that's heard"

Most people read the verse as "communism is an invisible threat, which the populace can't comprehend as anything other than a word"... Is he actually saying that communism is a negative ideology though - or just that the word has negative connotations? He's pointing out that communism is viewed as the flip-side of capitalism, but it's the materialistic aristocrats whom appear to face his scorn: "Making money, losing time"...

"Little sister making minimum wage
Living in a one-room jungle - monkey cage
Can't get over, she's almost dead
She may not be in the black
But she's happy she ain't in the red"

So, the lady in question is at the lower-echelons of a capitalist state - so poverty-stricken that "she's almost dead". Her undying belief that she's better off poor and American rather than healthy and communist is farcical. Michael Moore has recently pointed out much the same conceit in his current movie, 'Sicko' (by comparing healthcare in the U.S. to healthcare in Cuba and beyond). It isn't unpatriotic to question your government's unflinching belief in a failing system - but it's hardly the blind jingoism which many interpret this song as being.

The use of the term "sister" has connotations of African-American slang, implying that the lady is black. Which brings us to the sleeve-art of the single's cover...

The African American child is unclothed and looks barely old enough to stand on his own. However, without support, he is waving the Stars & Stripes... Is this a patriotic image? A child without the basic necessities for survival but already indoctrinated into a belief-system of unflinching patriotism. We see similar images on the news many times (although the children may be of Middle-Eastern descent) and we are repulsed by the dogma. Is Prince ashamed of being American? Well, no...

"America, America
God shed his grace on thee
America, America
Keep the children free"

Musically, the song mimics 'America The Beautiful' to an extent which suggests a mocking parody. However, whereas the lyrics of 'America The Beautiful' appear to be a paen to nothing more than "America" as a geo-political concept to be protected at all costs, Prince specifically acknowledges its people should be "free"... 'America The Beautiful' joyfully extols that its people should be prepared to die:

"O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!"

Death also looms over the next verse of 'America':

"Jimmy Nothing never went 2 school
They made him pledge allegiance
He said it wasn't cool
Nothing made Jimmy proud
Now Jimmy lives on a mushroom cloud"

Is Prince expressing schadenfreude at Jimmy's demise? Did Jimmy "get what was coming" due to his apparent lack of patriotism? Is this simply karma biting Jimmy in the ass? Is that what we're meant to believe? Isn't that too easy?... Perhaps Jimmy (with his lack of education and job-opportunities) simply enlisted - as many disaffected young men have done since history began. Jimmy had to have been in a foreign conflict of some sort, because aside from the nuclear tests in the middle of the 20th Century, there's been no mushroom clouds on U.S. soil. Did "nothing make Jimmy proud" simply because he was offered nothing else than an ideology he didn't ascribe to?

This theme of disaffected youth continues in the same era's B-Side, 'Hello':

"We're against hungry children
Our record stands tall
There's just as much hunger here at home
We'll do what we can
If y'all try and understand
A flower that has water will grow
And the child misunderstood will go"

The album's title track, 'Around The World In A Day' appears to reject politics for an idealised state of being nearer to Heaven:

"The former is red, white, and blue
The ladder is purple, come on and climb"

The play on the words "latter" and "ladder" is completely intentional on Prince's part. Politics (or at least the politics of the U.S.A.) are in the past in Prince's mind as his ideology latterly relates solely to the sacred. It's not so much "All You Need Is Love" as "All You Need Is God".

'America' isn't a love song to a nation - in fact, it's quite scathing. It's a song of hope for the people of the U.S.A. - a hope that they won't blindly follow their leaders without question and embrace loftier non-partisan ideals.

Sweet Jesus. You need a good shag.

studal said:

studal said:

That essay took me an hour!

p.s. Are you offering?

Justin1972UK said:

Depends. Will it last as long as it took you to write it?

studal said:

.
[Edited 7/29/07 7:51am]

Sorry It's Sunday. I'm just being silly.

studal said:

So, do you think I'm correct? Or is 'America' really just a love-letter to Uncle Sam?

Very intelligent and thought provoking post!

I would love to see more threads like this on here.

Justin1972UK, if you keep making posts like this, I'll be readin' every one of 'em.

Accujack said:

Thank you!

Accujack said:

Me too!

Accujack said:

I'll OrgNote you the next time I do some in-depth analysis.

I think Justin that in the song Prince is just venting his apathy and how disillutioned he was at the time with America. America is supposed to be the land of the free but in reality it is not. The Cold war was still going on. Eventhough the massive communist block was frayed and begining to unravel. But the alternative is equally depressing and dismally flawed. America like the world at the time was in the grips of a financial depression. In the modern day people were living in squalor and to add insult to injury a massive amount of America are on minium wage. How oppressive is that?

Prince is just pissed off and is saying so.

And in 2007 has it changed? No. So it is a song that is still relevant today.

studal said:

That is absolutely false. In 1985, the United States was in the early stages of the longest peacetime economic expansion in our history.

studal said:

Let's keep with the subject of Prince's meaning of the song America, and not offer our opinion of America (the country) when we live in Scotland.

I was asked what I thought. It is what I think and I am not offering a collective oppinion. It is what I get from the song and where i live is irrelivant.
[Edited 7/29/07 8:14am]

studal said:

I agree. He's questioning capitalism, jingoism and what it means to be an American, but his alternative isn't communism or any other political ideology - it's the rejection of all politics... When he asks the teacher "Why won't Jimmy pledge allegiance?" he's not necessarily implying that Jimmy should - in light of the other lyrics, he's honestly questioning "why should he?". Whether or not Jimmy pledged allegiance or not he'd end up dead via a foreign war or poverty at home.

And now I'm off to watch the 'America' video on D.M.

p.s. The Wikipedia entry on the song's lyrics is brainless crap!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...ce_song%29

Justin1972UK said:

Hey, be careful, now! We don't want "Prince" to crack that code, now do we? So, you know where all the goods are too, huh? Cool! Just be careful, because, we don't want it to get out there.
[Edited 7/29/07 8:21am]

Justin1972UK said:

god you are right. A load of codswallop. Who writes the wiki entries?

Genesia said:

Well, if Reaganomics was anything like Thatcherism, all it meant to the average man on the street is that the rich got richer, whilst the poor did increase their wealth - but were given more options to spend it on things which they previously never needed.

Microwave ovens; Game consoles; VCRs; CD players - those items cost hundreds of pounds when first sold to the average blue collar worker.

FarrahMoan said:

Oh yeah!

Vive la France!

Justin1972UK said:

Man, I have seen "The Beautiful Experience", "A Video Recording of The 1999 Tour in France", "Some One Nite Alone....Live Clips", and other things that I may have never, ever gotten the chance of seeing any other way. Life is grand, ain't it? Well....sometimes, anyway.

I think Pope was in part about an ex that let him hit on occasion. IMO Black people have alot of mixed feelings re: America. Chris Rock said its like the uncle who paid your way through college, but molested you. If we straight state the deal we end up like Martin and Malcolm. In the 80s, right wing republican ideology ruled the day and that was a real sentiment. So was racism, and classism. P managed to cover alot of points re: isms, most of which come under the umbrella of white supremacy for me anyway. I agree w/ your bottom line that America is about hope.
[Edited 7/29/07 9:28am]

DELETE
[Edited 7/29/07 9:28am]

JonnyApplesauce said:

Wha.....

America is Prince's completely straight up patriotic and naive song, it's wishful thinking that he was being sarcastic. He even played the song live and released the video when he was feeling homesick while in France during filming of Under the Cherry Moon.

In this song, Prince is saying he would rather live in America then anywhere else or under any other government.

all the negative points about America are overshadowed by the fact that (in his opinion) it is still better to live in America. It's very naive, but still more clever than the the actual lyrics of Resolution, and a far cry from his politics on Rainbow Children which are critical and dissatisfied.

ufoclub said:

I think even Prince himself used exactly those same words that you used above to describe that song during that infamous MTV interview in 1985 where he looked and spoke a bit ..ehh..funny, for lack of better words.

Still, I think Justin came up with some great and deep thoughts and gives an interesting analysis.
Prince´s ambivalent patriotism is really a fascinating journey.I think it ended in the late 1990´s , around 1997 or 1998, coincidentally during the "Larry Graham" era. ( Hey don´t get me wrong, I´m not blaming Larry ! ) .

Remember, he used to have a golden star spangled banner on stage during the Beautiful Experience/Gold Experience days and was kind of upset when some rock group did something "unamerican" at some awards show.
Later , on TRC, he mentioned changing the colors of the flag in the song "Everlasting Now", though I didn´t really get a 100 % what he was trying to say. Maybe he felt scapegoated or blacklisted for speaking up against certain things in the music industry and society in general.

I think he is somewhat of a patriotic/paranoid/critical/conspiracy theorist with some halfbaked ideas that are at their best fascinating and contemporary ( i.e. The War, Cinnamon Girl) or totally naive and clichee ( Dear Mr.Man, Resolution )

to Justin and this thread.

Next thread: Prince and the Arab connection ? ( I think we´ve already had that)

KoolEaze said:

no, that's true and much appreciated.

ufoclub said:

But what Prince says and what Prince thinks & does are very commonly two separate things. He has a tendency to make grandiose statements with nothing to back up his words. I really don't need to Google to find examples, as we're all aware of this.

The lyrics are far too ambiguous to be read literally. Why mention the "sister" close to death (due to poverty) or "Jimmy Nothing" actually dying if America is so great? It's the ambiguity which interests me. It's by no means a jingoistic song - not at all... Proud to be "an American"? Yes. Proud "of America"? No - absolutely not.

ufoclub said:

But are these lyrics naive or simply disingenuous? The ambiguity of many of the lyrics in his purple period is so much more satisfying than his later irrefutable ramblings. The very fact that the majority of his post-nineties lyrics are so unambiguous is what leads many fans to interpret his words as preaching.

JonnyApplesauce said:

Well, I didn't want to go too far down that road - but yeah - I think that when he's singing "Keep the children free", he's talking about non-whites primarily. In later years he compared an inhibition of personal liberties to literal enslavement - most notably by writing "slave" on his face - but that metaphor appeared even as late as the Musicology album in the lyrics of 'Call My Name':

"What's the matter with the world 2day?
Land of the free? Somebody lied!"

It's a common theme.

Obviously, 'Avalanche' and 'Dear Mr. Man' approach the subject much more directly but I'm adamant that 'America' is the start of his discussion on institutionalised racism in the U.S. The sleeve-art of the 'America' single is what made my mind up more than anything else. And yes, Prince may not have sat down and painted that album cover himself, but he was very specific as to what (and how) should appear... I don't think it's any accident that a white-faced clown is stood, juggling the world, behind the flag-waving African-American child.

Even on Parade a year later, the jaunty 'Mountains' expresses concern for Africa being "divided", at a time when segregation was in full-effect in South Africa.

After the success of Purple Rain, there's a transition in which he speaks about his ethnicity more directly than Controversy's "Am I black or white?"... Even though he looks as pale as a ghost in the Under The Cherry Moon movie, his Christopher Tracy character is undeniably African-American in a way that The Kid never was... "Wrecka Stow"... "Then you get black - Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Chriiiiistopher"... "Butterscotch / Chocolate"...

It's playful, heavy-handed and unsubtle - but it's there.

ufoclub said:

The lyrics are:

"He changed the funk, put it in a bag
Then he changed the colors of the flag
But U can't teach a dog new tricks if his tail don't wag
Don't no matter how much money U made
All the cars U got and all the women U laid
Mess with the flag and 2 them U're still a spade"

He's not talking about literally changing the colours of the flag here... Again, he's talking about his notion of what it is to be an American - and how his musical melting-pot of styles broke down barriers of race in music. It's one of the few times in which he praises himself in song and isn't bragging. He's absolutely correct. No matter how much guitar rock he plays, he's still seen first and foremost as "a black artist" in some quarters of his home country (the dog whose tail doesn't wag). He's always been willing to be colour-blind, but others around him never have been. Even now you can browse the web and see the same mind-set inversely - with some people stating that Amy Winehouse, Robin Thicke or Josh Stone are too white to be performing "black music". It's very sad. America has learned nothing. Prince must have felt absolutely defeated when he wrote those words.

I don't want to say any more on the subject of race, because I'm white and English - and I'm not in any position whatsoever to assume the collective thoughts of a whole nation of people.

.
[Edited 7/29/07 13:53pm]

"America" rejects what he considers "communism", but what I would call totalitarian stalinism ("the only word that's heard").

On the other hand he has an ambiguous attitude towards American free market society, but still considers it the best system. Even if you're lying in the gutter, "almost dead - but happy she ain't in the red". Which, for a millionnaire, is a rather cheap statement. I don't think he's being sarcastic, I think he means it.

The only "hope" which is in the song, is the naive illusion that American capitalism can reform itself and "let the children be free". With a developing housing and consumer crisis, an immense polarisation of wealth, not to mention the quagmire in Iraq, I personally think a lot of working people in the US - and outside of it - will start to question these ideas.