The five filthiest songs Prince ever wrote
Prince‘s music sure was horny.
He knew how to rub people up the wrong way, and as one of music’s most revered stars, he was in the perfect position to do so.
A rare combination of virtuoso and conceptual visionary, Prince was one of the most successful and controversial musicians of the 1980s. Whether it was in his own records – with and without The Revolution – or in the songs he produced with the likes of Sheila E, he was always pursuing something groundbreaking.
Prince rose to fame in 1979, when his breakthrough hit ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ soared to the top of the R&B charts. After developing a reputation as the R&B world’s one-to-watch, he nullified any possibility of being pigeonholed with his decade-defining 1980 album Dirty Mind, which, as you will discover cemented him as one of America’s most revered purveyors of erotically-charged pop.
For the next ten years, Prince developed a powerful mythology in which he cast himself as a sexually voracious and unrelentingly imaginative musical genius. By the time the 1990s came around, his name was a byword for controversy, spectacle and sensuality.
Prince’s lustful, libidinous lyrics were just one byproduct of his inextinguishable rebel spirit. They seemed to have been crafted with the set intention of upsetting bourgeois sensibilities, which they very often did. Here, we’ve bought you five of the singer’s most erotic, fetishistic and explicit songs.
Five of Prince’s filthiest songs:
‘Darling Nikki’
We begin with one of Prince’s most overtly sexual tracks: ‘Darling Nikki’, taken from the Purple Rain soundtrack album. In the track, Prince recalls an encounter with a sexually vivacious woman in a hotel lobby, who he finds “masturbating with a magazine”.
Prince was no stranger to the sexually explicit pop song, but this was the first track of its kind that was released as a single. It received a great deal of attention from fans, critics, and worried mothers alike. It also led to the introduction of Parental Advisory stickers on album covers. Nice one, Prince.
What makes ‘Darling Nikki’ linger isn’t just the shock value, though. Beneath the controversy is a track that feels deliberately confrontational, almost daring the listener to look away. Prince wasn’t simply pushing boundaries for the sake of it; he was testing how far pop music could go before the mainstream pushed back, and in doing so, he changed the rules for everyone who followed.
‘Jack You Off’
This playful number from Prince’s appropriately-titled 1981 album Controversy features yet another character lost in a maze of self-pleasure: “If you’re tired of the masturbator, come on over two my neighbourhood. We can jump in the sack and I’ll jack you off.”
When The Rolling Stones asked Prince to open for them at a massive stadium show in L.A., he decided to play this song. The mostly male audience were outraged by its deeply homoerotic undertones (or should that be overtones?) and quickly began yelling homophobic slurs and pelting the singer with bottles, forcing him to leave the stage early.
Moments like that live performance only added to Prince’s mystique. Where most artists might have softened their approach in front of a hostile crowd, he leaned into it, doubling down on the very elements that unsettled people. It was a risky move, but one that underlined his refusal to be boxed in by expectation or audience comfort.
‘Head’
If you’re looking for the song that cemented Prince as music’s erotic provocateur, this is it. ‘Head’, taken from his 1980 album Dirty Mind, is just about as red-blooded as it gets. In the track, Prince reminisces about the time he seduced an 18-year-old woman on the day of her wedding.
The account is a male fantasy if ever I heard one: “I’m just a virgin,” the girl tells him, “And I’m on my way to be wed. But you’re such a hunk, so full of spunk.” After being promised the best oral sex of her life, she decides to ditch the wedding vows and run off with Prince.
At the same time, there’s a knowing theatricality to ‘Head’ that stops it from collapsing under its own excess. Prince plays the role of the seducer with such conviction that it almost feels like a caricature, blurring the line between fantasy and performance in a way that became central to his early persona.
‘Sister’
Sister is by far one of the most troubling songs on Dirty Mind. The track sees the speaker (possibly Prince) open up about the sexual relationship he had with his sister, who is twice his age. “She showed me where it’s supposed to go,” he says. “A blowjob doesn’t mean blow / Incest is everything it’s said to be.”
Most disturbing of all, however, is the power the speaker’s sister wields over him. In fact, by the end of the song, he is begging his sister not to turf him out on the street: “Oh, sister / Don’t put me on the street again / Oh, sister / I just want to be your friend.”
It’s this discomfort that makes the track so difficult to shake. While other songs on Dirty Mind flirt with taboo for effect, ‘Sister’ goes further, forcing the listener to sit with something genuinely unsettling. Whether taken as provocation or narrative experiment, it remains one of the most divisive moments in Prince’s catalogue.
‘Erotic City’
Released in the wake of Purple Rain, Prince’s Shelia E. duet ‘Erotic City’ earned the singer yet another number-one single. The lyrics are, in fact: “We can funk until the dawn/making love till cherry’s gone.”
Of course, nobody heard “funk”; they heard “fuck”. This convinced the FCC to hand out fines to radio broadcasters in Texas, Arizona and Nevada for playing the song, though that did nothing to dissuade other broadcasters from cranking it out at full volume. The young and the horny were lapping it up, after all.
Despite the backlash, ‘Erotic City’ thrived on its ambiguity. Prince understood that suggestion could be just as powerful as outright declaration, and the blurred line between what was said and what was heard only fuelled the song’s appeal. It became another example of how he could turn controversy into currency without ever fully explaining himself.
