I’m attempting to think of a creative way to discuss Prince’s “Head”, and it might be the fact that I’m a bit under the weather, but the only way I think I can explain it is just to talk about its, uh, plot.

Prince is chillin’, as one does, when he passes a young lady in a wedding gown. Not only is this lady about to get married, but she’s still a virgin. She looks Prince over, declares him a “hunk” who is “full of spunk” and decides to suck him off on the way to her wedding. Now, first of all, who gets dressed up to get married and winds up walking the streets alone in her wedding dress? Anyway, I digress. She enjoys the experience, and then finds herself in Prince’s bed, where apparently his sex is so good that homegirl decides to kick her hubby-to-be to the curb and marry Prince instead. As an addendum, Prince decides that turnabout is fair play and promises to give her head morning, noon and night.

See? Typical love story.

Obviously, the chances of something like this happening in real life are slim to none (although if anyone could pull it off, it would’ve been Prince). Lyrics like this would be scandalous in 2020, so imagine how scandalized America was in 1980. I’d imagine that folks who went to Prince concerts around the time were even more scandalized once they saw the…uh…choreography to “Head”‘s live performance, which included keyboardist Gayle Chapman pantomiming fellatio on Prince.

Was I scandalized when I first heard “Head”? Absolutely, even though it was 1993 or so. Did it turn me into a raging pervert? No. I mean, first of all, I had raging pervert inclinations long before “Head” came into the picture, and the song didn’t make me run out into the streets of New York City looking for cocks to suck and/or pussies to lick. What “Head” did do-for me and probably a bunch of other liberated people (or at least people who badly wanted to be liberated)-was normalize natural sexual behavior between consenting adults-and he did it to a groove so nasty it made you want to dance even if the idea of oral sex repulsed you.