How Prince’s persistent lying led to one of his biggest hits
Some great artists are tragically misunderstood; others prefer it that way. Prince, whose greatness can be measured by the fact that everyone was fine for a while just calling him “The Artist”, was a great example of a man whose own personal myth-making often brought him the exact kind of attention he desperately wanted to avoid.
Even early in his career, before his face was carved into the Mount Rushmore of 1980s pop icons, the ‘Purple One’ found himself constantly bobbing and weaving under a barrage of probing questions from the press, many of whom were mesmerised by the singer’s uncategorizable nature. Sometimes, to wriggle out of these uncomfortable situations, Prince found that fabricating an answer did the job better than a reasoned bit of truth-telling. As the ’80s began, though, it was becoming clear that this strategy might not pay off long term.
This is the context underlying the release of the 1981 album Controversy, as well as its opening track of the same title. At just 23 years of age, Prince already had three prior albums under his belt, but as his fame was starting to grow, he found himself, for the first time, writing lyrics that reflected some of his struggles with celebrity. The song ‘Controversy’ was, in typical Prince fashion, an unsubtle dive into the subject.
Clocking in at more than seven minutes (a good portion of which is Prince spoken-wording the Lord’s Prayer—a sequence that was cut from the radio edit), ‘Controversy’ directly addresses the lingering questions that had hounded Prince in interviews for years—specifically, questions about his racial background and his sexual preference. While journalists at the time, and society as a whole, were a bit less progressive and understanding of the grey areas inherent in both of those supposed classifications, Prince also had little interest in putting the issues to bed, so to speak.
As an example, when asked about his race, Prince knew what the press was angling for—they wanted to know if they should identify him as a “Black artist”. In the 1970s and ‘80s, though, acknowledging that simple fact often meant being treated very differently in terms of which radio stations would play your music, which shops would promote your album, etc.
Even MTV, which launched just two months before Controversy was released in 1981, famously failed to play videos by even the most prominent Black musicians—with only a few exceptions—during the network’s early years. And so, even though both of his parents were African American, Prince told the LA Times a slightly different story in a 1980 interview: “My dad is Black and Italian. My mom is a mixture of a bunch of things. I don’t consider myself part of any race. I’m just a human being, I suppose.”
Similarly, Prince generally dodged direct questions about his sexuality in his early career, as his androgynous look and unique sex appeal were part of what made him an original. Eventually, after the release of Controversy, he did confirm to the LA Times that he was “not gay”, but these sorts of direct personal statements seemed to pain him. Prince much preferred to let his music do the talking, and on the song ‘Controversy’, his perspective is communicated in quite clear terms.
“Am I Black or white? Am I straight or gay?” the song begins, providing no answer in reply. Instead, the next verse gets the point across: “I can’t understand human curiosity / Controversy / Was it good for you? / Was I what you wanted me to be?”
This combative shot at the press and bold defence of his own indefinability not only helped establish Prince’s approach through the rest of the 1980s but also showed many other artists during that decade that they could pave their own way without having to pigeonhole themselves into a category to appease the music press. It turned out that controversy didn’t have to be bad.
