The number 17 comes up in his music....a lot. Yet, I have never heard anything from anyone why he is attached to this number. Anyone have anything they've heard or anything to share? I am curious as my birthday is the 17th and I have always loved that he used that number so much

I think a lot of musicians use the word because it just fits well. If you think about it, the first 10 digits from 1-10 are single syllable, except 7 with two syllables. While 11 has three syllables, seventeen has a better ring to it. The S and V are harder sounds than starting with an E sound on "eleven".

Imagine Stevie Nick's singing "the edge of sixteen" or "the edge of eighteen". Not quite the punch. Even Winger dragged out the word on "she's only seventeeeenn".

As far as Prince's music, '17' really comes up more in the attempts to reboot the Madhouse project. There's the 1800NewFunk version, then the aborted 24 version. When it comes to lyrics in general, refer to my first paragraph.

As a side note: I think 7 comes up more often, because it's a number of completion. In numerology, it symbolizes the seeker of truth; and doesn't take anything at face value, rather seeking a deeper truth. I don't know how much he was truly into numerology, but I think his leaning to the number 7 was more biblical. World created in 7 days, many things in Revelations about end times come in 7s.

Another oldie but goodie passes through.




To the OP, ha, no clue, but now that songs going to be in my head the entire day.

TrivialPursuit said:

I think a lot of musicians use the word because it just fits well. If you think about it, the first 10 digits from 1-10 are single syllable, except 7 with two syllables. While 11 has three syllables, seventeen has a better ring to it. The S and V are harder sounds than starting with an E sound on "eleven".

Imagine Stevie Nick's singing "the edge of sixteen" or "the edge of eighteen". Not quite the punch. Even Winger dragged out the word on "she's only seventeeeenn".

As far as Prince's music, '17' really comes up more in the attempts to reboot the Madhouse project. There's the 1800NewFunk version, then the aborted 24 version. When it comes to lyrics in general, refer to my first paragraph.

As a side note: I think 7 comes up more often, because it's a number of completion. In numerology, it symbolizes the seeker of truth; and doesn't take anything at face value, rather seeking a deeper truth. I don't know how much he was truly into numerology, but I think his leaning to the number 7 was more biblical. World created in 7 days, many things in Revelations about end times come in 7s.

thank you for this. Lots of food for thought and I had never even thought of the 3 sylable angle

TrivialPursuit said:

As a side note: I think 7 comes up more often, because it's a number of completion. In numerology, it symbolizes the seeker of truth; and doesn't take anything at face value, rather seeking a deeper truth. I don't know how much he was truly into numerology, but I think his leaning to the number 7 was more biblical. World created in 7 days, many things in Revelations about end times come in 7s.

Agreed. I was just going to say the same.

TrivialPursuit said:

I think a lot of musicians use the word because it just fits well. If you think about it, the first 10 digits from 1-10 are single syllable, except 7 with two syllables. While 11 has three syllables, seventeen has a better ring to it. The S and V are harder sounds than starting with an E sound on "eleven".

Imagine Stevie Nick's singing "the edge of sixteen" or "the edge of eighteen". Not quite the punch. Even Winger dragged out the word on "she's only seventeeeenn".

As far as Prince's music, '17' really comes up more in the attempts to reboot the Madhouse project. There's the 1800NewFunk version, then the aborted 24 version. When it comes to lyrics in general, refer to my first paragraph.

As a side note: I think 7 comes up more often, because it's a number of completion. In numerology, it symbolizes the seeker of truth; and doesn't take anything at face value, rather seeking a deeper truth. I don't know how much he was truly into numerology, but I think his leaning to the number 7 was more biblical. World created in 7 days, many things in Revelations about end times come in 7s.

Interesting this topic came up today... Look how many tweets we just reached on the Twitter page: