Was I what you wanted me to be?
By: James Caig
Tags: Lyrics, Prince, Music, Controversy

It sounds stilted at first, which is strange, considering. Stiff, staccato. Overly controlled. It’s all rhythm. Prince’s words one — at — a — time — on the beat.

A pause.

Controversy.

It’s like those tweets, driving a point home. Hand clap emojis separating each word, the space between each so it’s made clear — slow — and — sure — for us all.

Another pause.

Controversy.

In the song it goes like this.

I

just

can’t believe

all

the

things

people say

……

……

And here is Prince, and his syncopated incredulity, in total control, always, and his lines built around that impeccable, cavernous pause, a pause that always leaves you dangling, uncertain — you think there’s no time, he’s left it too late — will he make it? wait…. wait….. it’s coming…….

……..

Controversy.

Prince, of course, is always on time. He has such control over this song, such mastery of the rhythm in the lyrics, that you even sense it when he’s silent. It’s there in the space he chooses not to fill. As the listener you sing along, perhaps before losing your nerve: matching Prince’s timing is a fool’s errand. You end up looking stupid, getting it wrong. Fair enough, you’re only human.

Unlike Prince.

Am

I

black or white,

am

I

straight

or gay?

……

……

Controversy.

When we see Prince perform, or play, or dance and sing, all with that unmistakable intricacy, with such feeling, with such fun, we don’t really care who he is, but we can’t quite be sure that what he does is natural. Talent like his seems indistinguishable from magic. It’s superhuman. It doesn’t seem rational because it exceeds our expectations every — single — time. It’s impossible not to see him as impossible.

But while he may seem to us to exist on a higher plane, Controversy shows us a Prince refusing to be haughty. In fact, he’s more confused. Worried, actually. About us, and our obsessions with categories — Am I black or white, am I straight or gay? Erm, would a ‘yes’ cover it? — and with the trivialities of life. Prince doesn’t get what we don’t get. He wonders why we’re so weighed down by minutiae and the mundane. What else do we miss, you hear him think, when we so obviously miss the point?

Put it another way. He gives us all this magic and we want to explain it?

Do I believe in god?

Do I believe in me?

I remember when David Bowie died, I played his records. The kids listened too. We talked about him, his life, his ideas. We’d flip through the glossy books together, look at the album sleeves. I engaged all over again with his art and with his process. It was kind of empowering. Bowie opened up paths, his was an example to follow. With enough discipline and imagination you could become, if not him, then perhaps yourself. Or whoever it was you wanted to be.

But when Prince died, we just watched. We stood back and leaned in and watched. We made fun of how hard it was to work out how it was done. The prestige. We watched promos, TV appearances, clips of him performing live. There was no path to follow, nothing there to understand. We’d watch, and watch again, each time slack-jawed and disbelieving, no less awestruck when we knew what was coming. That celestial Superbowl where he made it rain. That George Harrison tribute where he plays the Greatest Solo Ever before making his guitar just… disappear. We’d play the records too, of course, but to be honest we mainly just looked, agog. Looked at the playing, the dancing, the knowing smile, we looked at him alive and at the idea of that person being dead, which seemed impossible, yet no less plausible than the notion he had ever walked among us at all. We looked at magic, lightning-rod magic, a talent that flowed in and out and through all music and streaked across the sky for our pleasure. We might not believe in God but you can’t not believe in Prince. We looked at ourselves and wondered what he might have seen.

I can’t understand human curiosity

Controversy

Was it good for you, was I what you wanted me to be?

Controversy

Do you get high, does your daddy cry?

Back in the early 80s, before he did everything that made us love him, before posterity and the too-late sense of what we’d lost, back when he was young and new on the scene, and he was just… weird, what he saw must have been people interested in all the wrong things, which suggested they weren’t interested at all. He saw jaded junket cynics making jibes and looking for cheap takes or backstory, mistaking new for wrong and thinking that’s what their readers wanted too. Later, you imagine, he saw people looking up from the foot of the pedestal and wondered when it had become his job to keep them all happy. He wondered what it was that would make them happy. Like any other megastar, he saw expectation curdle into entitlement, appreciation become appropriation, watched the joy of human individuality bracketed, labelled, funneled into a narrow, salacious narrative. All of it bogus. Prince’s art was not a challenge, it was an invitation. The only response it required from anyone was a simple ‘yes’.

I said life is just a game

We’re all just the same

Do you want to play?

We may think he’s weird. He’s wondering why we don’t just join in.