Prince – ‘Controversy’
The thing about Controversy isn’t just that it lived up to its name. It also arrived at a time when things were especially complicated for Prince and for anyone who saw themselves as a societal disruptor. Not long before its release, there was the infamous incident where he opened for The Rolling Stones, standing before 90,000 people, only to be pelted with physical and verbal abuse in a situation that was being misread almost in real time.
Prince didn’t have what it takes, is what Keith Richards later said, albeit with a hell of a lot more colourful language and other questionable implications, in true form. To others, though, it’s clear what, exactly, happened that night, in the haze of the endless rows of Stones fans who felt, for whatever reason, the space belonged to one type of person in particular. But Controversy, as well or poorly timed as it was, wasn’t Prince’s way of saying he was shocked at the world. He already knew the industry’s tricks and all the racist threads that ran through it.
Controversy was Prince’s way of making sense of it all, even through thick, frustrated outbursts that wanted nothing more than to shove anyone who crossed him. And somewhere along the way, it became about pride, too. Pride in your own existence, in whatever shape or form you may take, and however much you may stray from others’ expectations or what others deem “normal”. And in whatever way you may seem a target of injustice. Perhaps especially then.
This is where we start on the opening track. “I just can’t believe all the things people say,” Prince scolds, “Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?” They are big questions to ask, ones that obviously seek to make a statement about the state of the world, but ones that also find solidarity and strength in it, too, and in the obvious sexual imagery he includes, joining the fight for freedom in a world that wants conformity. One of Prince’s bolder statements here is that the fight also comes in different waves, in being the one to ask others where we’re going wrong, but also knowing that inner peace comes from embracing your own reality and sexual liberation.
“Let your body be free,” he sings on ‘Sexuality’, a theme that continues into ‘Do Me, Baby’, and ‘Let’s Work’, blending both sides of desire and frustration in a mix that ultimately beckons celebration, the kind that exists in the flames of a good party, where people are intoxicated on the fumes of feeling themself in crowd of people who are going through the exact same thing. It’s a place where, as Prince says on ‘Sexuality’, segregation and race don’t exist: we all blend into one, in a space that leaves no room for ugliness.
All of this could just as well be seen as a staple of early Prince’s cynicism, and while there’s certainly an argument to be made there, it’s also about something he carried into his next albums: an energetic fervour that existed not to forget troubles but to dance into them, like the defiant flamboyance of ‘Jack U Off’, almost like an unsettling grin and a lift of the shoulder in the face of adversity. We’re with Prince in this oddly charming realm of surrealism, but also because it exists in spite of itself, using innuendo and self-confidence as ammunition not just against prejudice but against vapidity, too.
As he puts it on ‘Controversy’: “People call me rude / I wish we all were nude / I wish there was no black and white / I wish there were no rules.” Here, it doesn’t matter about being booed off stage, or the scathing words our so-called peers deliver after the fact. It’s not about those who exist moment to moment, wondering why Prince didn’t walk the same walk as Mick Jagger or any other white rocker in 1981. Here, it’s taking those actions and acknowledging them, even shouting about them if that’s needed, but then continuing on, aware but never weak. All-knowing but forever free.
