Best Opening Lyric To A Top 20 Prince Hit

parked your car sideways

yep

All 7 and we'll watch them fall.

lol

dig if you will vs. parked sideways vs. deacon blues homage vs. dearly beloved vs. you don't have to be beautiful vs. here we are folks

damn this is hard, great poll idea

deacon blues homage?

"I guess I should have known by the way your parked your car sideways that it wouldn't last."

It's funny, and even poignant: how much can we be expected to invest in a relationship that we know immediately is doomed? Also, who bases the longterm viability of a new relationship on such trivialities (is Prince the original Seinfeld?)

Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues": I cried when I wrote this song/ sue me if I play too long

Prince's "1999": I was dreamin when I wrote this/ so sue me if I go 2 fast

(the "sue me" part of "1999" is in the 2nd verse, not the opening lyric, but still)

actually since a lot of these are spoken asides and not the proper first couplet of the first verse, the poll option for "1999" should really be "Don't worry, I won't hurt U, I only want 2 have some fun"

yeah i was on the fence on that

this is an amazing list

I think my logic was that the radio/video edit of 1999 starts after the intro

Rev on point in the first post.

In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name

Although I'm not a huge fan of "Sign 'O' The Times" as a song this is a helluva line in isolation.

Yeah, think I actually would've gone back and voted for the "Sign" line had I thought about it for more than 30 seconds. Still, "I guess I should've known...," which I voted for, is a pretty killer runner-up.

What's the matter with your life? Is the poverty getting you down?

^^^ said in the voice of Jonah Goldberg.

the SOTT line is the one that comes off the worst in the context of this poll imo

relative to the song's merits, anyway

whereas the first line of "Diamonds and Pearls" is exactly what the song deserves.

The redundancy is kind of staggering.

the "Thieves in the Temple" line works best when you hear the chorus. I've always thought it's one of his most underrated singles.

ignoring the merits of the songs the opener for "Sign o' the Times" walks this

"It was only last June …" is gonna get overlooked here, although maybe I'm investing it with too much of the awesomeness of the song. But in any case the answer is "Dig, if you will …"

I love "Sign" as the intro of an amazing, diverse 2LP - the only way I've heard it - but I can't really picture it as a top ten single. The first one of his I experienced in real-time was "Batdance."

yeah it's amazing that his commercial propulsion in early '87 was strong enough to lodge this in the top three (and it was an R&B #1!).

I started putting together a similar poll for Stevie Wonder but it wasn't nearly as good. (Also "Everyone's feeling pretty/It's hotter than July" was clearly the best. I at least had to think about this one.)

growing up i watched this Tommy Davidson standup special a ton and i think i always got a distorted idea of SOTT being one of Prince's biggest hits because it was the song Tommy sang the tune of when he was doing his hilarious impression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lonC3qKlguM

I've always had a soft spot for the weird syntax of When Doves Cry. It was a bit of a toss up between that, 1999, and Little Red Corvette.

what about "Skeletons in your closet itchin' to come outside"

(prince impression at 2:40)

voted Doves over Corvette

Is Prince underrated as a lyricist? I'd have thought he was considered one of the greats.

i think it's more that his lyrics are so exceptionally inseparable from the vocal performances (and that basically nobody else could hope to pull off half the things he writes) that he's rarely thought of purely in terms of being a 'lyricist' (as opposed to songwriter, musician, all around genius etc.)

"It's been seven hours and fifteen days" ought to be the winner in all honesty

good point; I tend to think of Joni in the same way, can't imagine how she can make parse what she does.

xp

obv the world thinks he's a supergenius but most discussion of his songs understandably revolves around the music more so than the words he throws on top, which deserve some recognition

RBeret

Went with..."I was dreamin' when I wrote this" over "Dearly Beloved". The man was a poet and we didn't even know it til this poll! Good one!

Such a good poll! It really says a lot about Prince's underappreciated wordsmithery (and his sense of humor -- Mr. McGee!).

Known to his friends as Henry

6 o'clock already, I was just in the middle of a dream.

And:
Where I come from, there's a place called Heaven.

These all are as good as most any poetry collection's index of first lines. Can't vote yet.

cool thread http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

great idea for a thread!

Dig, if you will, the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss.

i don't think the courtliness of this had fully struck me before.

i think i'm gonna vote for:

I was dreaming when I wrote this; forgive me if it goes astray.

from prince's dreams to your heart <3

"Dearly beloved": that will never not be a badass way to start a song, and album too

of the big undeniable classics, i'm most blase about "Doves" and "Let's Go Crazy," but those opening lines are still just amazing to me

Right? Seems like there's nothing more unlikely than "dig if you will the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss" subsequently unfolding out into deep-seated family psychodrama and a meditation on overdetermination--like maybe he hints at it with the way he sets up tableaux (using the picture of a kiss as a symbol of the relationship as a parallel to the way family portraits are often freighted with symbolic gravity, I guess...?) but that seems to be only connection that I can see...

ANIMALS STRIKE CURIOUS POSES

It's a shame "Gett Off" didn't go Top 20 cuz "How can I put this in a way so as not to offend or unnerve?" would be a good addition to the list.

But then again, the first line is "WRRRRRRRRG! NAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Here we are, folks! The dream we all dream of.

Perhaps this doesn't sound as awesome as some of the others on paper, but the way it's delivered is IMO the best among this bunch, even better than (rather similar) "Dearly beloved..." opening.

From a purely lyrical point, I think nothing tops "In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name". I still remember being 11 or 12 and seeing the video for "Sign o' the Times" - the one with the animated letters - for the first time on MTV, and being totally mesmerized by it as soon as those words appeared. That was the first time I became aware of the genius of Prince.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

funny how the point of decline is evident here

"7" boasts a helluva good opening line, and one of Prince's last surprising choruses.

I have distinct memories of friends hearing "7" on the radio in early '93 and being like, "'Savoir faire'?! Wha?!"

I kinda hate that song tbh

shakey ban collier

"7" is what all of Around the World in a Day should've sounded like in the first place.

I think my problem is its emblematic of when Prince's inscrutability became more of a liability than an asset - the nonsensical lyrics and the weird Star Wars-matte painting visuals undermine what is still a pretty potently composed pop melody.

good god this is impossible

"7" is what all of Around the World in a Day should've sounded like in the first place.

right on

this is actually easy for me. "i was dreaming when i wrote this..."

^ that's what popped into my head when I saw the thread title and couldn't even imagine any other options. "dearly beloved" was the only other possible option for me but it's not even close.

Pop Life ftw

First thing that struck me is that he's had less than 25 top 20 hits, which is shocking for someone of his stature

Pretty sure I Would Die 4 U should be:

'I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I am something that U'll never understand'.

Either way, has my vote. That song is killer. The way it can be both anxious and confident. It's propulsive and feels inevitable, yet every time it starts I still feel uncertain for a moment think where the hell is he going with this?

To me it's the most "throwaway" of the PR singles: melodically and structurally. What puts it over for me is the thickness of the synth arrangement -- it's like encased in ice -- and how imperious-scary Prince sounds.

prob my favorite song here, popture otm

This is Reason #673 Why Prince Rules: I'm pleasantly surprised by other people's favorites. A few months ago someone mentioned to me how much she dug "America" -- apparently MTV played it this flop single a lot in late '85. That's an adventurous pick!

Next poll, best lyrics written for women and/or Camille:

"I think they got more water upstairs then they got sugar on their candy cane."

I think my problem is its emblematic of when Prince's inscrutability became more of a liability than an asset - the nonsensical lyrics and the weird Star Wars-matte painting visuals undermine what is still a pretty potently composed pop melody.

This is a fair complaint. I think I remember being more or less done with Prince at this point too. I was about 12 at the time, though.

i was 10 and thought "My Name Is Prince" and "7" were a good bit more entertaining than the Diamonds & Pearls singles that introduced him to me

The album that "7" is off of was the first Prince record that I was obsessed with, even though I'd had Purple Rain ever since I can remember. Not that I think it's a *better* record than Purple Rain, not at all, but it is the one that led to my exploration of the "classic" Prince albums.

Lots of good little songs on Love Symbol ("The Morning Papers," "Blue Light," "I Wanna Melt With U").

just had to go w the opening line of my fave album of all time i'm afraid.
everything about it = classic.

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4112/5126703187_55f80fa451_z.jpg

Alfred & Eric otm about "7"

even with the caveat of growing up just outside of the Twin Cities, damn does reading "my first exposure to Prince was O)+>" make me feel super old

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Fair win

Great poll, great thread. Worth it for Drugs' great reading of "When Doves Cry" alone.

pretty otm results, although "you don't have to be beautiful to turn me on" is pretty underrated and i still don't see what people like about that awkward "in France..." opening

the phrase "a big disease with a little name" is an understated but still devastating way to refer to HIV/AIDS

yeah i mean it's a good turn of phrase but the line as a whole i think is far less perfect than a lot of the others