TOP 40 DEBUT: December 8, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #11 (January 26, 1980)
Prince celebrated his nineteenth birthday on June 7, 1977. Less than a month later, he signed a six-figure recording contract with Warner Brothers. (In a preview of future mythmaking to come, news outlets erroneously reported his age as eighteen.) The Warner deal guaranteed three albums and full producer credit, an unprecedented show of support for such a young, unproven artist. Prince responded by blowing through his entire advance—twice—in the process of recording his debut effort, 1978’s For You. And after the record stalled at a disappointing #163 on the Billboard 200, Warner execs began pressuring their new signing to return to the studio and produce a hit—but this time, on a tight budget.
For the first (and probably last) time in his life, Prince listened to his label. Upon its release, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” delivered on all fronts, topping Billboard’s R&B chart, selling over two million copies, and pushing its parent album, Prince, to platinum status. But that’s not the true measure of the song’s importance. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” proved to the world that Prince could easily thrive within the established parameters of urban radio, then gave him the clout to withstand the next two hitless years spent reconstructing those parameters in his own image.
Prince Rogers Nelson was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, named after the stage moniker used by his father (pianist John Lewis Nelson) in his jazz group, the Prince Rogers Trio. From a young age, he was obsessed with music: writing his first song at age seven, starting his first band by thirteen, and learning to play a reported twenty-seven different instruments ahead of recording his debut album—by himself. The “one-man band” angle initially convinced Warner execs to take a chance on this high school upstart without a single major production credit to his name. Upon the release of For You, it became the label's main marketing gimmick.
Prince later admitted he found his first record “too perfect sounding,” an unfortunate by-product of countless weeks of overdubbing. So his mission statement for the next one? Work faster, and stay spontaneous. Prince was recorded in just seven weeks; it takes less than ten seconds of listening to know he made the right decision. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” crackles with a kinetic energy sorely missing from the stillborn grooves of For You, feeling less like a studio exercise and closer to a live band workout—albeit a “band” that only exists inside the mind of one single, multi-talented individual.
The irony, of course, is that Prince had already put together a fully-functioning group by January 1979, featuring many of the same musicians—guitarist Dez Dickerson, keyboardist Doctor (née Matt) Fink, and drummer Bobby Z—who would remain with him through 1999 and beyond. But in the wake of a disastrous show at Minneapolis’ Capri Theater, Warner Brothers shot down the idea of a full-scale tour, sending their one-man band back into the studio instead. The members of his actual band? Not invited. Even at this nascent stage, all parties understood that Prince could better articulate his vision alone than with a backing group; the eventual success of his self-titled, self-recorded second effort simply hammered that point home. It would take four years, and four more albums, before the musicians supporting Prince on concert stages and video shoots actually appeared together on an official recording.
Prince isn’t as adventurous as the records that follow, possessing neither the raw, relentless thrust of his next full length (and first masterpiece), Dirty Mind, nor the dizzying studio experimentation of Controversy and 1999. But its best moments still work like gangbusters. There’s a real kick to hearing Prince figure out the secret codes of a hit record in real time: Witness the Brothers Johnson-esque funk of “Sexy Dancer,” or the slinky Rufus homage “I Feel For You.” (And yes, we’ll talk about Chaka Khan closing the circle once we reach 1984.) Or simply check out the shoulda-been-a-smash “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?," which is nothing but peak after giddy peak, from giddy falsetto whoops to chirpy keyboards to twin guitar leads to Prince ripping off a minute-long, face-melting solo just because he can.
Every time I put Prince on the turntable (side note: The original vinyl is one of the best sonic experiences in his entire catalog), the first word that comes to mind is “playful.” Prince wasn’t yet twenty-one when he recorded these tracks, and it shows—in the best way possible. Much of the album sounds like a kid let loose in Warner’s expensive candy store, that sense of fun translating directly to the songs themselves. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” is a sex song like most Prince songs are sex songs, but far too bright and fizzy to be confused with his later work. Even its double entendres—like the just-long-enough pause between “I wanna be the only one that makes you come… running!”—are delivered with the goofy grin of a naughty school boy. The boundary-pushing explicitness of the trenchcoat-and-bikini-briefs era was almost a year away. The Prince of “I Wanna Be Your Lover” is only starting to test his limits, doubling down on his own joke (“I wanna be the only one you COME for”) mainly to see if you’re paying attention.
Musically, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” aims for disco and winds up anticipating the Eighties instead. The track’s minimalism—a side effect of pesky budget constraints—becomes its greatest strength. Instead of the beyond-tired ‘70s cliché of stabbing strings attacking the same note in the chorus, Prince substitutes an electric guitar playing octaves; instead of busy horn parts, he uses cheap synthesizers. The live drum track mimics a machine. The extended instrumental coda features Gary Numan’s favorite weapon, a Polymoog synth. (Said coda being lopped off for single release even foreshadows future Prince hits saving the bulk of their weirdness for the 12” mix.)
Granted, singing a lead vocal entirely in falsetto might’ve simply been Prince’s attempt to emulate the delivery of the era’s great soul divas—or perhaps just one diva: Patrice Rushen, later revealed as the inspiration for his love-smitten lyrics. (Prince reportedly offered “Lover” to Rushen, as well as “I Feel For You.” She passed on both. That had to sting.) But four years later, with radio fully embracing gender fluidity via Boy George and Annie Lennox, the single’s androgynous approach appeared prescient. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” fit squarely within the confines of commercial R&B of the time, and not by accident. Yet even when aiming straight down the middle, Prince was already canny enough to hide plenty of quirks in the margins.
For most artists, “Lover” would go down as a career high point. For Prince, a bonafide genius about to reconfigure pop music many times over, it doesn’t even rank among his ten best singles of the decade. But the song’s real legacy extends far beyond the music itself. Without the success of “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” Prince wouldn’t have been granted the freedom to follow his muse down the dark and twisted byways of Dirty Mind, or been able to spend months in studio solitude creating the “Minneapolis sound” as the hits dried up. The Prince who eventually returned to the charts in late 1982 would go on to set the world on fire. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” is that glorious moment when he first sparked.
GRADE: 9/10
I WANT MY MTV: You can almost hear the execs at Warner Brothers pushing for more shots of Prince playing all the instruments (drums! bass! guitar!) in this early promotional clip. MTV’s early racism meant a lot of viewers came to this video late, and for anyone already familiar with the 1999 clips, not seeing Dez, Bobby Z, and the rest—or maybe just seeing Prince sporting those free-flowing locks—took some adjusting.
BONUS BITS: Here’s one of the legendary moments in Prince’s early career, as Dick Clark tries (and fails) to interview the largely unknown musician following a mimed performance of “Lover” on American Bandstand. According to Dickerson, Prince planned the whole thing in advance, calculating that feigned aloofness would result in more publicity. He was right.
BONUS BONUS BITS: Corinne Bailey Rae put her own spin on "Lover" for the opening track of 2011's The Love E.P. It's a fun-n-frothy take with maybe one-tenth the sex of the Prince original.
BONUS BONUS BONUS BITS: In 1992, Prince sampled several of his early hits, including “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” for “My Name Is Prince,” the second single from the Love Symbol album. Let’s pretend “Purple Medley” doesn't exist, agreed?