In response to a recent thread about weird aspects in Prince music and after one person mentioning the presence of rape threats in songs from 1982, I thought it would be a good idea to summarise Prince's stages of love in music over the years. These are a generalisation and hopefully it will encourage some debate.

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Stage One: Naivety with sexual innuendo 1978/1979 Songs like soft and wet and In Love talk about Prince being struck by lust and confusing it as love. Songs describe having sex being childish and concealed metaphors - "I got a sugar cane", "I really wanna play in your river". Women are seen as sexually attractive, but have feelings too and only give sex willingly to Prince.

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Stage One/Two: Naive but more graphic 1979/1980 - Bambi (Sex with a lesbian, I'm will show what its like to be loved by a man is more proactive, but "I saw your lovers they look just like you is Naivety). I wanna be your lover "I wanna be the only one u come for" and When we are dancing close and slow "I want to come inside u" Feelings of domination beginning - I wanna be your Mother, your father and your sister 2.

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Stage Two: Sex as Love, Graphic - 1980/81 Dirty Mind is full of graphic sexual lyrics - In your car, underneath the stars, its u I really wanna drive, whose the lucky man? Prince sings about graphic sex and sexual intent, the women must be loyal to him and explain all their fantasises which he must dominate. - Gotta Stop messin about. Controversy has the same lyrics with songs like Do Me Baby and Jack u off, Private Joy is again dominating women and their orgasms. The songs off the Time are also full of graphic come ons "Work the stick in my ride, get it up, get it up I'll fuck you all night. Perversions like incest and coming on a virgin are also explored.

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Stage Three: Sexual Violence and Control - 1981/83 early - The album 1999 and various spin offs like the Time are full of songs, where the emphasis is on complete control of the women in addition to sexual nastiness, full use of profanities "I sincerely want to fxxk the taste out of your mouth" and graphic violence "I will rape u if I must", "I just want to whip your body until u start 2 bleed". Vanity 6 is about graphic sex and sleazy lines like "I need 7 inches or more". The music was great, but bordered on the psychotic, songs like Automatic and Lady Cab driver explored graphic sex and lusty thoughts. The music was borderline bannable and revealed some disgusting horrible and outdated ideas about women. However coming in later 1983, this ultra macho image was dropped for a more positive one, which we will discuss in part 2.

[Edited 7/16/15 18:44pm]

[Edited 7/16/15 22:27pm]

Stage Four - Through sex is love 1983 late/1985 - This period the music tones down all the sexual violence and some of the swearing and graphicness, but sex is still celebrated, but more as an act of love rather than power or a bragging rights challenge. Albums like Purple Rain talk about falling in love and discovering that women have feelings and want love as well as sex (Computer Blue, take me with you). Still sex is important and songs like Erotic City and Darling Nikki talk about sex in detail (We can fuck until the dawn, the things she did to me). Loneliness is a theme explored too in songs like 17 days and another lonely Christmas. When doves cry is also about despair. the period is a realisation, but sex is still shown as love and seen as a desirable commodity (Loneliness emerges from a lack of sex, rather than female company). Wendy n Lisa also bring a powerful and strong female dynamic to his mid 80s sound.

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Stage Five - Love is beautiful 1985/1987 - The richness of the music between ATWIAD and SOTT is full of lush love songs and the whole focus of UTCM and Parade is Christopher Tracy/Prince finding true love and settling down with a woman. Problem is that he can't, songs like Tempatation/Hot Thing and Wonderful ass prove that temptation is everywhere. Still the fact a footloose gigolo can find true love and stop his messing around for one woman is a step forward for a man singing about raping women just 3 years earlier. Songs like Mountains/ Adore/ 4ever in my life/ Do U lie are all about the realisation of love. These songs are based on his first real girlfriend whom he nearly married Susannah. In a way this period is a peak in musical quality and his respect for women. Still songs like Big Tall Wall and Empty room speak of how women need to be controlled and he needs to never be lonely or let down.

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Stage Five/Six - Heartbreak and Loneliness 1986/1988 - The Black Album/Crystal Ball/ Lovesexy - Prince wrote several great songs about his relationship with Susannah unveiling and many others celebrate partying, hanging out with the boys and dancing as a distraction. Losing her seems to have propelled him back to writing and singing about sex again. Some songs like Bob George, Empty Room and Wally speak of his heartbreak and anger towards deceitful do him wrong women.

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Stage Six - Sex and Partying 1987/1990 - All the music from Black through Lovesexy and into the Graffiti Bridge era mentioning more sex although sex is now spirituality along with God. Prince was dating scores of lower quality women again and songs like Lovesexy/Glam Slam/Scandalous and when 2 R in love, bring back all the graphic sexuality sans the violence and ultra graphic distractions. Basically the mid 80s nobleness which peaked with Parade and Sign had gone out the door for sex and partying. After lovesexy the new carefree approach affected his sales and music quality.

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Stage 7 - Sex and Love are hip 1990/92 - At this time Prince was trying to reclaim his cool factor with the whole rap and r and b sound. He was trying to prove he was some kind of Mack, now attracting younger and weaker willed women than the Sheila E's and Susannahs and more Vanities with smaller brains and lesser talents. Prince's music loses its conscious and spiritual feel for more dance party jams and some songs use sex as main themes and lyrics (Gett Off/Cream/Sexy MF/Love 2the 9s/The Continental). There is the leering buck factor with the game boys and a series of young and sexy dancers. Prince is starting to date bimbos like Carmen Electra, Troy Beyer.Robin Power, Taja Sevelle and others. Despite being over 30, Prince is still being a satyr like sex symbol.

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Stage 8 - The Sexual Mack with a hot girlfriend 1993/1995 - Prince is still seeking the cool factor and proving he is some sort of pimp with the ladies, now with a young girlfriend called Mayte who puts up with his philandering and bullying. The music gets an even harder sexual edge with songs like Come, Pheromone and I hate you. Prince is mixing love and sex and bragging about his conquests. He walks around with a cane and has his typhoon hairstyle. Music is great, but some is rubbish and he is desperately trying to sound like Snoop Doggy Dogg, he has almost no respect for women here and thinks that only he is capable of love. Songs about evil do wrong women like Dark/I hate u/ Dinner with Dolores and the like are all around. Unreleased explicit music like 18 and over and hide the bone portray the image that any woman is fair quarry for Prince.

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Stage 9 - In Love with Mayte 1996/98 - Starting in late 1995, the sexual excesses of the mid 90s are toned down, when he marries Mayte and dedicated the love opus of 36 songs called Emancipation to her, several of the songs are true, but very soppy love ballads to Mayte and Betcha by Golly wow, Friend, Mother Sister wife, One kiss at a time, Soul Sanctuary etc and the like are all dedicated to her. However some of the jams like Sex in the summer, get yo groove on and Jam of the year still prove how Prince loves to party and no doubt mess around with other women. Prince however falls out of love just as quick when his son is born brain dead and is turned off life support after 2 weeks. Still some of the songs on NewPowersoul are about Mayte like When u love someone and the one.

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Stage 10 - Heartbreak 1998/2000 - Songs from this period show his subsequent break up with Mayte, possibly as she only gave him a dead baby or outgrew his domineering ways. Songs like I love u but don't trust u anymore, wherever you go and Strange but true, show his transitioning ways. Also at this time he had embraced Jehovah's Witness faith and stopped swearing and singing graphic sexual intercourse lyrics. However he was still recording songs like "A dick and a good job", Super cute, Underneath the cream and 2045 Radical man. So the faith enmeshed itself in gradually.

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Stage 11 - Total repression and condemnation - 2001/2002 - A period where Prince became an intolerant moralistic grandstanding of love. He hid behind a conservative money cult church and repudiated his early music and any song that had swearing. Songs about love and sex focused mostly on roles of men and women and spoke of sex being a sin outside of marriage and procreation. They were also quite sexist like Muse to the Pharaoh and it was a bleak time for Love. Ironically at this time he met and married Manuela Testolini another beautiful young woman of Hispanic or some other type of Latin heritage. Whoops I meant Middle Eastern Italian heritage. And she had been in the picture since the 1997/1998 period when he went off Mayte in a big way.

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Adorecream said:

No. Manuela (Canadian born Italian/Egyptian) was in the Come On video (1998).

Stage 12 - Love and sex is for kids, let me be a man who appreciates beauty 2003 - 2012 - Many newer songs deal with love and sex in heavily disguised and more distinguished ways. The occasional dirty lyric pops up on albums like Planet Earth "I come like thunder, if you want to get creamy baby" and a few lines here and there. Prince is more struck by beauty and sensuality and uses more delicate and mature language to hunt girls boy. The positive tone also includes songs with uplifting lyrics for young women along with how beautiful and talented they are - Pussy Control from 1995 hinted at it, but songs like Love, Beautiful Loved and Blessed and Chelsea Rodgers speak to this empowered beauty he sings of. Religious dogma also limits the amount of detail and colourful language in many of the average but boring songs from this period.

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Stage 13 - Is he being a dirty old man now 2013 - now , newer songs off Third eye girl and new solo projects show a new sexual edge, sexual lyrics are prominent again "I'm your driver and your my screw", "Both two tired to get the gun" and songs like Breakfast can wait, this could be us are clearly signs that the religious cloud is lifting and Prince wants to have some joyful juicy sex with young females again. The 3rd eye girl thing and people like Lianne, Andy and Paloma Ayana hanging around are signs he is aware of his sexuality once more. AOA may be his most sexually charged album since NewPowerSoul back in 1998, but the sex on it is fun and positive rather than crude, dirty or violent.

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So there it is Prince's attitude to love and sex in 13 neat stages. Feel free to comment.

[Edited 7/17/15 3:29am]

iZsaZsa said:

Adorecream said:

2001/2002 - He met and married Manuela Testolini another beautiful young woman of Hispanic or some other type of Latin heritage.

No. Manuela (Canadian born Italian/Egyptian) was in the Come On video (1998).

Corrected, but do you have anything to say about my arguments more than correcting a few cosmetic errors like that. I live in New Zealand, we don't have many Hispanic or Middle Eastern people here, just whites, Polynesians and a group of Chinese hellbent on buying everything we own and turning it into a department of the Peoples Communist shithole of China.

Adorecream said:

Just the facts.

This tread reminds me of a song I wrote based on Prince song themes it's called nasty or nice it's about what girls are into vs what guys think there into like the person on the org that said Prince is into S&M but back on topic he sounds cruel sometimes other time he sounds sweet wonder what's next...

This is an awesome thread! Love this topic. It's cool to see how he's changed (well at least a little bit ig).

It's great hoe he's going back to his sexually charged lyrics! who knows, maybe he'll play "Head" soon! lol ahh or not..

In a way you could write a thesis about the themes in his lyrics and how his take on love changes from his teenage humpa humpa phase through to the distinguished elder statesman of funk helping out a pack of up and coming Alicia Keys wannabes.

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I have always been interested in it, as Prince seems to mature through his music and each album is like another step on his journey through life. Its harder with artists like MJ who had only a handful of similar sounding (But brilliant) albums in their30+ year career, but Prince has turned in every which way but loose since 1978 with each album and most years have seen1 or more albums (I even looked at satellite albums, as some of the things the Time, Jill Jones, Sheila, Vanity etc are singing are Prince's emotions on wax) and pretty much each album is a mirror of what was happening in Prince's love life and how much sex he was having.

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Per Nilsen and a few others also examine the changing theme of lyrics and songs in his earlier music too and I felt it natural to see how albums of late reflect his stance on love. It is easy to for Prince, who is an artist, now despite his JW's leaning truly obsessed with sex and love in the physical sense. He leaves us a body of stunning and thought provoking work. Plus also now he is leaving behind years of being a boring old fart and becoming a sexualised party animal again. Honestly the AOA and PLE albums have more sex jams and nasty old sex lyrics than anything since the Newpowersoul and High days.