I remember this girl on another Prince site that actually thouhgt this song was about a Dolphin and she coulddn't understand why Prince was singing about a fish!

twistee said:

It's a good rock song. It's trippy in part, but a straight forward rock song in others. It's a plea, and it's heartfelt.

It always seems to me that people have totally missed the message of the song though.

Let's review: Prince was right smack dab in the middle of his war with WB. It wasn't heating up, it wasn't over. It was right in the middle of the fire. That whole album was full of angst, machismo, anger, and his hope of freedom to record what he wanted and release it when he wanted (the latter of which was his real battle, not the content).

"Dolphin" was a plea to be heard and appreciated. Not only had WB fell out of Prince's favor, but Prince had fallen out of the favor of the WB brass heads. He wanted their attention, not their vitriolic stagnation of his output. The 90's was also a huge time for the environmental movement to come to the forefront. People truly seemed more involved with saving the whales, or having dolphins safe tuna, or saving the seals, than they were worried about contracts in music. Prince simply said, "If I came back as a dolphin, would you listen to me then?"

His line about "How will U know if I'm even in the right key, If U make me stop before I start?" was a straight forward statement of "If you won't listen to the music, how will you know me?" The idea of cutting off the fins is a direct statement to the level of output Prince had compared to the once-a-year approach WB had with his music. (How many bootlegs do we have simply because it was a delayed release and Prince lost interest in certain songs and replaced them with something else?)

The line about his brother going hungry is a nod to the idea that people like Little Richard and others worked for years, yet when they left Motown or whatever label they were on, they had nothing. Their contracts put them in debt, despite making millions. (Berry Gordy was notorious for making contracts that always had the artist in debt to Motown, thereby always keeping them working...even when Diana Ross finally left Motown, she owed a huge amount, simply based on those contracts, not because she didn't sell millions of records.)

He also said that despite them limited his releases (cutting of fins), that he would NOT bend to what they wanted ("But to ur ways I will not bend"). "I'll die b4 I let you tell me how to swim" is really the same thing he's said for years about non-musicians running a record company. "How dare YOU tell ME how to play music, when you can barely play the radio!" The very opening line of "How beautiful do the words have to be, before they conquer every heart" is a straight out line saying "What do I have to do so you take care of me again? What do I have to say or do that will make you love me again, like you did years ago?)

Yes, the song is a big metaphor, but if you think about his struggle at the time, and the things he was talking about, the song is very clear.

ernestsewell said:

Very nice song and nice description

Very strange marketing: I remember seeing this video on MTV around october/ november 1994 - and there were no single or album to buy, and it was before the internet, I was desperate to get the song, but it wasn't released until THE GOLD EXPERIENCE album was released almost A YEAR later.... in september 1995.


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[Edited 5/5/09 2:05am]