Prince, Ani, and an old, strange friend of a song

I am a huge Ani DiFranco fan. Her lyrics single-handedly changed my life and my writing practice. Plus, her fiercely independent streak and business acumen in running Righteous Babe Records inspires me to keep going in this crazy, shifting music industry.

I was introduced to the song Providence early on in my Ani discovery phase, around the year 2000.

It was also the first song of hers I didn’t get.

It starts out like it should be accessible, but then makes some 90-degree turns along the way. It didn’t follow much of the song structure rules. There’s some things out of harmony and bridges that made no sense. She also growled and spat and hiccuped with her vocal delivery over some seriously creepy background vocals. Oh, the creepy background vocals.

And all this strangeness, on purpose? They went into the studio and said “yes, exactly like that”? It was too much for me to wrap my head around.

But it was a song I turned back to, over and over again, to see if I could figure out why I still liked it.

How can someone write a song that sounds like it should go in one direction but instead draws a completely different map and bring everyone along with the new structure? And what exactly is she saying? There’s some clever lines in there, I know, and if she can attach such crafted wording to this strange thing, maybe I should pay attention.

It got under my skin. I would think about that song over and over again, and hit repeat, and repeat, until finally it wormed into my vocabulary and introduced a new possibility of songmaking, of atypical creativity, of thinking outside the song structure box.

Yesterday, I learned the creepy background vocals was Prince.

In the days he publicly battled the music industry, writing “slave” on his face and changing his name to a symbol, he had mentioned off-hand that he wanted to join Righteous Babe Records, that he admired Ani for refusing to sign to a label and keeping full creative control.

Ani said, call me.

And he did.

She played on his “I Love U, But I Don’t Trust U Anymore,” and his gift in return was this strange song.

I admit I was not a fully devoted Prince fan, but I liked him. Since his death I can’t stop reading, watching, listening all things Prince, trying to wrap my head around exactly what was so appealing to me. He was a strange artist, on purpose. He pushed sex and excess and weirdness and difference in a mainstream context. It’s like he went into a pop-star-creating factory, gave them bizarre instructions and said “Yes, exactly like that.” On purpose.

Like this strange little Ani DiFranco song.

With Prince’s death I returned to his vast career, and I regret it’s only in hindsight can I see exactly what he was doing. As a budding musician myself, I finally understand why The Great Unpronounceable did what he did as a stand against a tyrannical music industry who tried to claim ownership over him. Ani avoided it, Prince got trapped in it. What then is my way through this?

Now I’m also a digital marketing strategist by trade, so I do not subscribe to Prince’s anti-Internet mindset. He had the benefit of massive worldwide success behind him, so he could do what he wanted as far as online control. I’m not in that position — I just want to be heard and be accessible on every platform possible while the whole buying-music business model falls apart. I’ll figure out other streams of revenue for my music as I go along.

But there’s something about his insistence on creative control that gets buried under my skin. And I’ll keep reading, and searching, and reading, until I finally figure out why I like this.

I don’t get it, but I like this.