Growing Up With Prince
The late legend’s music shaped various chapters of my life in powerful ways
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with Prince.
It may have started at the onset of puberty, watching his raunchy videos on Top of the Pops. I distinctly remember catching on to “Little Red Corvette” as a young’un, oblivious to why he was singing about a car. (Any sly double-entendre completely went over my head.) I didn’t start to understand sexual innuendos until four years after Prince’s sexy sportscar romp, when Debbie Harry’s French Kissing awakened my youthful loins; it made viewing with the parents extremely uncomfortable!
All I knew is that I was becoming obsessed: Prince’s sound, the way he dressed, the way he moved, how he looked at the camera knowingly. His eyes promised a world of adventure. I didn’t know what “oozes sex” meant back then; I just knew I needed some of that.
Then came Purple Rain. I was 11. The impact this one soundtrack had on my life was astonishing. I knew every lyric to every song. Purple became my color. “Let’s Go Crazy” was my theme tune. I insisted on shirts with frills that made me look like some weird suburban pirate. I still hadn’t quite grasped what “Darling Nikki” was all about (I was a slow learner). I did know it contained naughty words that we…
