May Be Qualified

I owned Prince's Sign 'O' the Times on vinyl, which makes me seem like a much cooler kid than I actually was, as I didn't like most of the songs and found the whole thing -- all the peace signs, Prince's mustache, "The Cross" -- a little bit embarrassing. One song I wore out, though, was "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," an expertly crafted pop-rock song that tells a simple yet (to a 14-year-old boy, anyway) utterly fantastical story. The singer meets a beautiful woman in a bar who is crying because her husband left her. She sizes him up and immediately wants him. "I asked her if she wanted to dance," Prince sings, "and she said that all she wanted was a good man, and wanted to know if I thought I was qualified." The singer is flattered, and admits that he "may be qualified for a one-night stand," but he does the noble thing and refuses. "I could never take the place of your man," he sings, sadly yet firmly.

To a 14-year-old whose only previous relationship was a one-week muddle at (no lie) band camp, this story was endlessly fascinating. What was frustrating to me about the song was that Prince was singing it from a position of privilege. I read his nobility as slyness, because when you're Prince, it's easy to do the right thing and turn down a hot woman who needs a long-term relationship, because you know full well that in the next bar will be another, hotter woman who needs casual sex. Because I didn't even know how to talk to girls, I knew that if, by some miracle, I ever found myself with such a dilemma it would be a lot harder to be noble. I spent a lot of time dreaming myself into analogous situations, in which beautiful ninth grade girls left their boyfriends and came crying to me. It was enjoyable to imagine myself as noble. But it was much more enjoyable to imagine myself as not. I can, I can, I can take the place of your man.

There's something hypnotic about the rhythm guitar riff and keyboard line in this song, the way they climb the ladder for four measures and then slide down the chute for four more. Two songs that I later came to love echo this chord progression, and when I listen to the Mountain Goats' "Going to Georgia" and Superchunk's "Detroit Has a Skyline" I'm filled with a wistfulness for my teenage self that likely was not the intention of those songs' writers. "Going to Georgia" is fierce and openhearted; "Detroit Has a Skyline," especially this acoustic version, is elegaic and personal. Neither one has anything to do with my teenage romantic frustration. But that's how I read them now, thanks to their accidental echo of a perfect song written by Prince twenty years ago.

Prince: "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man"
from Sign 'O' the Times (1987)

The Mountain Goats: "Going to Georgia"
from Zopilote Machine (1993)

Superchunk: "Detroit Has a Skyline (Acoustic)"
from Hyper Enough EP (1995)