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Over the past week, a number of Prince scholars have done incredible threads about P’s 3121 album, as part of @deejayumb and @EdgarKruize’s #PrinceTwitterThread series.
Well, today's my turn, and I’ll be talking about his song “Satisfied.” Check it out
Well, today's my turn, and I’ll be talking about his song “Satisfied.” Check it out
Now, before we jump into “Satisfied,” let’s revisit the other #3121album threads that my fellow Prince scholars have done up to this point
To start things off, @EdgarKruize set the mood with a general overview of the album and the 3121 era https://twitter.com/EdgarKruize/status/1291435739859877895
Then @yan_kry came in with some fantastic insight and context on the album and title track https://twitter.com/yan_kry/status/1291829469863272448
The next day, @darlingnisi gave us an insightful and entertaining thread on 3121’s second track “Lolita” https://twitter.com/darlingnisi/status/1292249271169945601
Following her, @deejayumb, shed new light on the third track for the album “Te Amo Corazón” https://twitter.com/deejayumb/status/1292399340477087749
After that, @RichardCole_NOW came in with a two part thread on one of my favorite P tracks “Black Sweat.”
Part 1: https://twitter.com/RichardCole_NOW/status/1292840930932924421
Part 1: https://twitter.com/RichardCole_NOW/status/1292840930932924421
After his thread, @princesfriendyt gave us even more reason to love Prince’s sexiness by doing a deep dive into his song “Incense and Candles” https://twitter.com/PrincesFriendYT/status/1293180464732110848
Then @CaseyRain came in with rich and deep analysis of “Love” https://twitter.com/CaseyRain/status/1293644424107483137
And then yesterday, @cascitritchie gave us a fashion history lesson on Prince’s 3121 era looks https://twitter.com/CasciTRitchie/status/1293941749400862722
Which brings us to today’s thread on “Satisfied.”
Surprisingly, it’s a song that a lot of Prince fam feel “meh” about (just check http://prince.org for some reviews)
I don’t want to change your view on it (taste is subjective). But I do want to change how you listen to it
Surprisingly, it’s a song that a lot of Prince fam feel “meh” about (just check http://prince.org for some reviews)
I don’t want to change your view on it (taste is subjective). But I do want to change how you listen to it
Now, Prince fam are usually iffy about “Satisfied” because, to them at least, it sounds too similar to (or perhaps even a watered down version of) “On the Couch” from Musicology
And listen, I get that. Both are blues tracks written in 6/8 and feature an organ and horns
But that’s where the similarities end. Lyrically, “On the Couch” is about a man begging his partner for sex (she tells him to sleep on the couch because, presumably, she doesn’t want to have pre-marital sex). Importantly, there’s no begging going on with “Satisfied”…
Prince opens the song with “before we get started.” Already, this suggests that sex has been agreed upon. So “Satisfied” is less about when they’ll have sex but how. Prince is not interested in pleading (as he was in “On the Couch”); he’s interested instead in pleasing
And it’s a pleasure that is focused on her and not him. As he says in the chorus “I just want to get you satisfied.” This is, of course, something that’s been a Prince hallmark since the Dirty Mind days with songs like “Head”
“Head” and “Satisfied” also share the theme of long durations of women centered pleasure. Prince will please his partner “morning, noon, and night” on “Head.” For “Satisfied,” he tells her “This is gonna be a long night/ A little bit longer afternoon”
Also, just because I want to, shout out to “Jack U Off”
Back to “Satisfied”…the pleasure Prince sings about in the song is one that centers foreplay, and in particular mental stimulation as a form of foreplay. As he sings: “I'm just trying to get you to think about doing things that you've always wanted but could never find”
This kind of foreplay is something that Prince really hit home in 1988 with “Lovesexy”
But just as “Satisfied” harkens back to prior Prince songs, I think it also alludes to a non-Prince track. I’ll use the rest of the thread for this, but I think the song is also a reference to Aretha Franklin’s “Dr. Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)”
Now Prince was a huge fan of Aretha (and the feeling was mutual). The Prince Estate outlined some of these connections in their tribute to her after her passing (the 2 year anniversary of her death is actually in two days): https://www.instagram.com/p/BmjMufKF65s/
But let’s look at the connections between “Satisfied” and “Dr. Feelgood.” Both are 6/8 blues structured songs with organ and horns (shout out Muscle Shoals). Prince’s vocal styling on “Satisfied” seems to also borrow from Aretha at some points…
But one of the main overlaps is their discussion of sending company home when it’s time for sex...
As Aretha sings “Now I dont mind company because company’s alright with me.” But when Dr. Feelgood comes around, “I tell you girls I dig you but I just don’t have the time.” For Prince, he requests that his partner “send your company home” because hes about to satisfy his partner
And it’s this attention and intention to satisfaction, this focus on making her *feel good*, that really hits home the connection between the two songs. When I listen to “Satisfied” I hear Prince describing to us what exactly made Aretha call Dr. Feelgood Dr. Feelgood
But the connections continue. Let’s take a listen to Aretha’s version of “Dr. Feelgood” at the Filmore West in San Francisco in 1971. Listen to the whole thing but especially the moment at 5:27.
Scholar @ejlordi argues that this performance is "perhaps the most beautiful & unexpected sermonic passages in American popular music.” And in so doing, this performance illustrates that while Aretha “recorded secular music, she never left the Church; she took it with her”
You can read @ejlordi’s New Yorker article about this performance here https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/aretha-franklins-astonishing-dr-feelgood
Also you should buy @ejlordi’s new book *The Meaning of Soul Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s*:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-meaning-of-soul
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-meaning-of-soul
So why am I bringing this up? Well because just as “Dr. Feelgood” was this bridge between the secular and spiritual at the Filmore, Prince also saw the gospel potential in “Satisfied”
Check what Morris Hayes said when @twinkiejiggles asked him about the song: “He used to have me do this whole skit on that song, where I had a church lady hat and the whole nine...I'd be like well, well, well...and playing the organ intro to this thing, and then he'd come in...”
You can read the full interview here https://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2018/09/20/morris-hayes-on-3121-prince
And you can hear that kind of gospel performance of "Satisfied" on Prince’s Indigo Nights live album. Peep the handclaps and tambourine on the 2 and 3 and 5 and 6, the old church lady voice and singing, the references to a “sermon,” etc.
This play with the spiritual and the sexual isn’t anything new of course for Prince. He’s been doing this since Controversy (shout out @polishedsolid and the upcoming #1plus1plus1is3 symposium)
And as @DrAlishaLJones argues in her book *Flaming?:The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance*, sexuality is all up in the Pentecostal and gospel music traditions. Buy her book! She even talks about Prince! https://global.oup.com/academic/product/flaming-9780190065416?cc=us&lang=en&
But what makes “Satisfied” special to me, and you saw this above, is how this play between the spiritual and the sexual is rooted in and routed through the work of Aretha Franklin (via "Dr. Feelgood")
No wonder then that Prince’s band often performed Aretha’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” right before “Satisfied.” We can see this most explicitly when Prince performed at the 2005 NAACP Image Awards (6:55 mark; shout out Támar Davis)
I’ll stop there and say thank y’all for reading. And thanks to @deejayumb and @EdgarKruize for the invitation. @arrthurr is up tomorrow to talk “Fury” and then we have @pressrewind75 @deejayumb and @EdgarKruize to close things out on this #PrinceTwitterThread for the #3121album
If you liked what you read, or learned a new way of listening to “Satisfied,” please check out all my writings on music on my faculty page https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/ehpowell
And also please pre-order my book *Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music* (with @UMinnPress) which will be out this Nov. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/sounds-from-the-other-side
