194: June

HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
The last track on Prince’s penultimate album is a gorgeous waif of a song, with stream-of-consciousness lyrics that invite you to pan for meaning. Here’s my interpretation. The lyrics reference Richie Havens and Woodstock. Havens’ opening set at Woodstock in 1969 ended with an improvisation of the old Spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child. In June, after referring to Havens’ voice, Prince begins to repeat the title “sometimes I feel like…” but then switches to thoughts about his own birth, and then to a birthday somebody famous is having today. As June was written in June it’s fair to assume the birthday is his own, which is just “another full moon” to him as his religion doesn’t observe them. But even people who don’t celebrate the date must still take stock when another year gets added to the account. I think this song describes Prince daydreaming while cooking pasta on his 57th and final birthday. The Richie Havens song was playing either in the kitchen or on his mind’s turntable, and his mind wanders to thoughts of his deceased mother. You’re off somewhere being free, while I starve, in the lonesome cold. That line alone makes me want to shed a single Sinéad tear. As does hearing his version of Motherless Child where he changes the lyrics from “a long, long way from home” to “’cause you left me on my own”. The song and daydream end with the pasta burning. But the goosebumps remain long after the album’s finished.