‘Sex in the Summer’: The tragic story of an underrated Prince classic
“My name is Prince” the diminutive genius hollers on his 1992 banger of the same name, as if anyone listening needs an introduction. “And I am funky”, he goes on to elaborate, as if anyone listening had any doubt. Pretty much the entire discography of the man can electrify a dancefloor within a moment’s notice. On ‘When Doves Cry’ he manages to do exactly that without a bassline, just because he could.
However, he could have said “And I am horny” and said just as much about himself. His work was drenched in sex, and yet it never got boring or one-dimensional. The man was priapic the way Robert Smith is sad or Ol’ Dirty Bastard was insane; it so informed the work that it achieved dimensionality and character by sheer volume.
While a slice of pop perfection like ‘Kiss’ might be a more standard study of how cool it is to want nothing more in life than to rail someone who wants to rail you, that’s not where the conversation ends. Prince writes about sex as what it is, an expression of love and all the joy and darkness that it can bring.
The aforementioned ‘When Doves Cry’ is a study of animal attraction being the worst thing that can happen to a couple who should leave each other, but can’t. ‘Little Red Corvette’ is about the contradictory frisson of vulnerability and defensiveness that comes with a one-night stand. Perhaps the most interesting and mature take on the subject in his entire back catalogue comes from a song on his 1996 album Emancipation, though.
What Prince classic has a tragic story behind it?
The album contains a song called ‘Sex in the Summer’. On the surface, this is more or less the same as any other filthy Prince jam. This was the man who once opened a song about a girl he knew called Nikki by bluntly labelling her “a sex fiend”. It takes one to know one I guess. Yet, this is a song about the most obvious result of having the sexual capacity of a rutting rhino your entire career.
While lyrically, this is a song about a love fest in the summertime, there’s a very specific musical choice in the song that harks to a particular consequence of having that much of a good time. A warm, low-pitched, rhythmic thump. You see, Prince’s then-wife, Mayte Garcia, was pregnant with his son at the time of recording and Prince, ever the musical maverick, used his ultrasound as part of the song’s backing track.
He elaborated on the reason for this in an interview with Oprah around the time of the album’s release. He said “It really grounds you, it makes you realize that things you thought were important aren’t really. That’s what it meant to me.” Tragically, he would lose the baby – a boy named Amiir- a week after birth due to a rare genetic condition called Pfeiffer’s syndrome.
It’s little comfort, but there is something to be said for having a little piece of Amiir in the music of his father. The sound of his little heart beating, proof of his life, living on forever in something that gives the world so much joy.
