The lyrics seem to me to be a fairly clear-cut description of sexual abuse and domination by an older sibling.

Let's take into consideration this line, "Incest is everything it's said to be."


Well, what is incest said to be? Vile, wrong, gross, sin, an aberration, a crime against nature. All very negative things. How could anyone possibly view this song as, as one rock critic put it, "an ode to incest"?


I was only 16 but I guess that's no excuse
My sister was 32, lovely, and loose
She don't wear no underwear
She says it only gets in her hair
And it's got a funny way of stoppin' the juice
My sister never made love to anyone else but me
She's the reason for my, uh, sexuality
She showed me where it's supposed to go
A blow job doesn't mean blow
Incest is everything it's said to be
Oh, sister
Don't put me on the street again
Oh, sister
I just want to be your friend
I was only 16 and only half a man
My sister didn't give a goddamn
She only wanted to turn me out
She [took a whip to] me until I shout
"Oh, [motherfuckersjustamotherfucker]
Can't you understand?"
Oh, sister
Don't put me on the street again
Oh, sister
I just want to be your friend
I know what you want me to do
Put me on the street
And make me blue
Oh, sister, oohoohoooow



Discuss.

so it's an ode to being molested?

PEJ said:

The word "ode" implies a positive tale. It's a story about sexual abuse alright, but I fail to see how anyone could treat this as an ode. Or worse yet, as just another story of Prince's sexual conquests*, like I've seen folk say on here before.



*Yes, I know. The song is most likely fiction. But all I'm talking about is the lyrics, not debating whether or not anything untoward happened with one of his real-life siblings.

oh i cant be bothered.....

Discuss.

i hate it when people do that.....no i will not fucking "discuss"

jonylawson said:

Then you're free to leave the thread alone. Why'd you waste your own time posting, just to say you hate being told to discuss? You weren't commanded, so you've got nothing to bitch about it.

meow85 said:

Because it's a huge taboo, it could also said to be exhilirating and exciting. Not to get into the morals of sibling incest, but the very fact it's taboo can be seen as a turn on or really 'kinky'.

I don't think it's clear cut at all. I mean you take from it what you want, but I always viewed it as a shock track primarily, the album is called Dirty Mind. It has a lot of humour to it ("blow job doesn't mean blow"), and if you listen to his vocal delivery on the line "My sister didn't give a goddamn!", I always imagine him pulling a Jamie Starr face when singing that - there is humour in this song, but also the stuff about being thrown out and how juvenile the lyrics give it a bitter edge too, I think it works on every level.

I already feel by discussing a short track like this at such length it's rubbing off the magic of such a perfect and brilliant song.

You have to take into account the time when he wrote the song. Porn movies like 'Taboo', which dealt heavily with incest, was practically part of main stream cinema.

The vocal delivery does not suggest a victim's position. It's a punk song written by someone who at the time was rather young, so the message is ambiguous anyway.

"Blow job doesn't mean blow", "She [took a whip to] me until I shout", are just too damn humorous indeed to be included in a song that would seriously condemn the subject matter. You will have to understand what type of pornographic themes they were utilizing during that era (if you'll read erotic stories from magazines from the late-70s and early-80s you'll get a good idea). It was, for example, quite common to place the female in a role where she was taken advantage of on some level (the whole "she says no but really means yes" -bollocks was rather typical still several decades ago). There was also a rape scene included in the movie "Emmanuelle", mind you.

From our perspective some of the pornographic themes that were utilized today would seem baffling - I remember when I was around 6 or 7 we found a plastic bag of pretty typical porno magazines from our grandfather's attic (they weren't his though and from the late-70s), and whilst they were just regular titles sold in stores there were even pictures of women having sex with dogs on them. The same magazines would also have gay pictorials, so they just had a more "varied" take on "erotica" I guess than what we have today. Later on as a teenager I checked out the mags again and they were pretty funny and clumsy despite the sometimes baffling subject matters - pornography just was "dirty" by definition back in the day, which contributed a lot to its bad reputation.

I think cultural researchers are sort of missing that aspect when they are suggesting that there has been a definitive change in attitude towards pornogrpahy during the last two decades and how commonplace it has became even in advertising and such. You still have lots of material that goes off limits today, but it's targeted for specialized audiences.

jonylawson said:

Hostile much?

I always assumed that the 'Incest' refered to in the track 'sister, was a play on words. Incest = fucking one of your own faimly. Considering his upbringing i just thought he was saying his family had fucked him over. I hope that makes sense.

novabrkr said:

Wow - great post!

You really did your homework on this topic, didnt you?!
[Edited 3/4/09 10:43am]

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:26am]

mzkqueen03 said:

Hey ... Your Right ....

I've always seen your posts and u looked like a nutter ...so i stayed away ...sorry ...

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:26am]

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:27am]

I tend to agree with NouveauDance on this one, although i tend to put more focus on the 'bleak' undercurrent of the lyrics.

Indeed, it is far from being pro-incest, but Princes uses the 'shock value' of the subject in a smart way, of course, like he does on the entire album.

But like a lot of (earlier) sexual lyrics from Prince its more ambigueous than it appears on 'face value'.
On another song on Dirty Mind, Uptown, he sort off 'glamourises' the 'free' inter-sexual, inter-racial thing that was happening in the early eighties, but also has to 'deal' with the girl who dares to doubt if he might be gay.
On Sister he keeps the lyrics rather straight and forward, but when you think about the context (that is how i have 'read' it, but its free for discussion of course): a 16 yo boy, far from being a man.. obsessed with music, living with his twice as old half-sister in the Big City (New York) for some months, working on getting a record-contract, and being tempted by that sister to go into things he might only have dreamed off OF COURSE feels ambigious for such a young fellow.
He might have felt proud off being with 'such a woman' for the first time, and might have felt dirty and used, because it was is half-sister and because its deemed inappropriate, at the same time.
Somehow Prince, underneath that easy-going rockabilly-punk, lets a part of the confusion and desperation of such an experience shine through, and makes it clear that how tempting a free sexual moral might be, it also can have its downsides and dark corners.
[Edited 3/4/09 11:23am]

Lordy, child! Doesn't he say
incest is everything it's said to be ?
I'm not an expert on these things
despite being from the South and
surrounded by inbred folks and such,
but it doesn't seem like he's using
a condemning or judgmental tone
in the song.
I tell you one thing: If he ever slept
in my bed, honey I'd have
a priest come and exorcise it the
next morning.

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:27am]

mzkqueen, are you really that naive and simple?

Or, are you simply roleplaying?

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:28am]

jonylawson said:

then then...

novabrkr said:

Oh, I never thought Sister was meant to be taken all that seriously. The piss-taking tone is why I'd lean away from it being anything remotely biographical, though some read it that way.(he did have a sister 16 years his senior) That said, I fail to see this as a glorifying song, or an ode, which from what I've seen looks like the popular interpretation.

mzkqueen03 said:

That's possible, but he does explicitly use the word incest which makes the "close friend", or "sister, as in black woman" interpretation less likely IMO.

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[Edited 12/16/09 10:27am]

usually when something is phrased as being "everything its said to be" its on a positive note--therefore one could reasonbly conclude that he views it as having been a positive experience

meow85 said:

couldn't the word 'sister' be about an african american woman? aren't they at times called 'sisters'??

XxAxX said:

Well, he shoots that one down by straight up uttering the word "incest"


I don't think the song is pro-incest. I think its just Prince being fucked up. He took something tragic and put in an up beat little poppy song.

Because sometimes a song about pizza really is just a song about pizza...

meow85 said:

Wasn't Prince rumored to get down this way at one point (I remember the story about P going to this room with ladies he could whip or something like that - a dungeon, in other words.) Isn't the older woman many a young teen boy's fantasy?