Anyone else think these songs are connected?

"Annie Christian" has the repeated line "I'll live my life in taxi cabs." Obviously, Annie Christian = Anti-Christ, a demonic figure. It's a very dark song, perhaps subject-wise Prince's darkest.

"Lady Cab Driver" is, at first listen, not quite as spooky, but definitely haunted and angry. The 'this is for' part is especially intense (if a bit tedious), and of course there's the sex part at the end.

However, last night I listened to both songs, and I though to myself, what if they're directly connected? Apocalyptic imagery and evil are quite present on 1999, so the Anti-Christ making a re-appearance isn't out of concept. Could "Lady Cab Driver" be a typical night in the life of Annie Christian? I know the gender of the narrator in "LCD" is kind of jarring with this theory, but A) I don't think the name Annie is meant to be taken literally and B) the Anti-Christ could be possessing the narrator, which makes the sex scene at the end rather terrifying.

Thoughts?

67Cadillac said:

Anyone else think these songs are connected?

"Annie Christian" has the repeated line "I'll live my life in taxi cabs." Obviously, Annie Christian = Anti-Christ, a demonic figure. It's a very dark song, perhaps subject-wise Prince's darkest.

"Lady Cab Driver" is, at first listen, not quite as spooky, but definitely haunted and angry. The 'this is for' part is especially intense (if a bit tedious), and of course there's the sex part at the end.

However, last night I listened to both songs, and I though to myself, what if they're directly connected? Apocalyptic imagery and evil are quite present on 1999, so the Anti-Christ making a re-appearance isn't out of concept. Could "Lady Cab Driver" be a typical night in the life of Annie Christian? I know the gender of the narrator in "LCD" is kind of jarring with this theory, but A) I don't think the name Annie is meant to be taken literally and B) the Anti-Christ could be possessing the narrator, which makes the sex scene at the end rather terrifying.

Thoughts?

*

What you say could be plausible, but I think the songs are only connected in the manner that Prince often used the female persona/image as a way to symbolize various ideas about sex, sexuality, sexism, oppression, and liberation. That being said, that fact that these two songs are at opposite ends of the spectrum, Annie Christian being a destroyer and the Lady Cab Driver being a healer, or at least being willing to allow her body to be used for healing, shows that manner in which Prince presented the realms, reach, and diversity of womanhood. For a Prince song, the female is both predator and prey, harlot and angel, oppressor and liberator. As such, I would be difficult for me to accept that the Anti-Christ is possessing the narrator of "Lady Cab Driver" only because the first half of the song is built/constructed so well that the narrator is vulnerable to or suffering the pains of an existential world, and, as such, this escapade with the Lady Cab Driver is his only way to heal and liberate himself from his pain. Thus, this is also another example of how Prince used sex as a symbol or metaphor for various notions, such as escapism, control, merely physical pleasure, and spiritual salvation. Yet, any way we interpret it, it shows that Prince's creativity always had various levels.

I never really thought there was a connection except for the "taxi" part.

I also think of Big Yellow Taxi!

Both brilliant songs. I felt the 'i'll live my life in taxi cabs." was living with a foreboding sense of dread. He will keep moving, so he will not be caught by the evil forces, seen in avatars or emissaries such as Beatle killer Mark David Chapman. It is a negative image as living in a taxi cab is living on borrowed time. He will eventually have to pay the piper and face a reckoning. The Devil or God's judgement for his rock n roll love affair is the fare he will pay. For this reason I do not link the two songs. LCD is a lust song that ends in sex/spirituality/psvchoanalysis. LCD feels more playful despite this.

I think the connection doesn't go beyond the idea that the world is scary and the speaker's disconnected from it. In Annie Christian he's trying to put it in a "the world is mad"/apocalyptic context, but this provides no solution to his situation, and he's kind of avoiding the possibility that it's a personal issue at all (I mean, yes, terrible things are happening, but most have no clear connection to Prince or any one particular person--I know he might feel scared of a fan/stalker like Chapman, and maybe he has some connection in his mind with the victims in Atlanta, but ABSCAM?). Lady Cab Driver he tries to fix his isolation through sex (and maybe violence) but there's no connection with his partner, certainly, and he's still trying to blame the world for his own disconnection (the whole tourist thing, his brother, etc.--he starts moving toward a sense of the cosmic, but then he backs off of it). He's still isolated, he's still moving (in the cabs, in a way that even turns over the whole process of where he's going to others since he explicitly is not going anywhere, he's just hiding) rather than finding a stable connection with someone else and finding his actual place in the world. BUT THEN....


The Holy River. Remember how in the segue from Joint 2 Joint he gets in a vehicle (let's assume a cab, though random riding around in a chauffeured private vehicle would be about the same symbolically), his response to the driver's question about their destination is "I don't know, anywhere. Just drive." He makes a phone call to someone--we hear him saying he wants to get with this someone "for good," and assures her that some other situation is "all over." He then breaks off with a promise that he'll call back. And then The Holy River begins, a song about a disconnected man finally forming some connections, some to God, but also, explicitly to "his girl," who we're told he calls (and coming after the segue it feels like it's probably the call back that he promised) to meet because he "has something to give her" (a ring, we assume), he proposes, and things proceed from there through the rest of the disc.

I've always (well, since 1996) heard the three as a sequence, a trilogy of sorts. It feels like the same guy, finally getting some hope going. It still affects me in a cathartic way, at least in part from that intersong connection--even without it, The Holy River (and that whole second disc of Emancipation) has emotional pull, both as a work of art and as an artifact of a time in Prince's and Mayte's life together and the death of their child (which retroactively changes the songs, whether it should or not).

EddieC said:

I think the connection doesn't go beyond the idea that the world is scary and the speaker's disconnected from it. In Annie Christian he's trying to put it in a "the world is mad"/apocalyptic context, but this provides no solution to his situation, and he's kind of avoiding the possibility that it's a personal issue at all (I mean, yes, terrible things are happening, but most have no clear connection to Prince or any one particular person--I know he might feel scared of a fan/stalker like Chapman, and maybe he has some connection in his mind with the victims in Atlanta, but ABSCAM?). Lady Cab Driver he tries to fix his isolation through sex (and maybe violence) but there's no connection with his partner, certainly, and he's still trying to blame the world for his own disconnection (the whole tourist thing, his brother, etc.--he starts moving toward a sense of the cosmic, but then he backs off of it). He's still isolated, he's still moving (in the cabs, in a way that even turns over the whole process of where he's going to others since he explicitly is not going anywhere, he's just hiding) rather than finding a stable connection with someone else and finding his actual place in the world. BUT THEN....


The Holy River. Remember how in the segue from Joint 2 Joint he gets in a vehicle (let's assume a cab, though random riding around in a chauffeured private vehicle would be about the same symbolically), his response to the driver's question about their destination is "I don't know, anywhere. Just drive." He makes a phone call to someone--we hear him saying he wants to get with this someone "for good," and assures her that some other situation is "all over." He then breaks off with a promise that he'll call back. And then The Holy River begins, a song about a disconnected man finally forming some connections, some to God, but also, explicitly to "his girl," who we're told he calls (and coming after the segue it feels like it's probably the call back that he promised) to meet because he "has something to give her" (a ring, we assume), he proposes, and things proceed from there through the rest of the disc.

I've always (well, since 1996) heard the three as a sequence, a trilogy of sorts. It feels like the same guy, finally getting some hope going. It still affects me in a cathartic way, at least in part from that intersong connection--even without it, The Holy River (and that whole second disc of Emancipation) has emotional pull, both as a work of art and as an artifact of a time in Prince's and Mayte's life together and the death of their child (which retroactively changes the songs, whether it should or not).

Bravo, a wonderful point of view. Point of view that i agree with.