Prince & The Revolution - "Kiss"
I just want your extra time and your... mourning veil.
As I noted last month, my planning-ahead-on-the-calendar self looked at February and thought “ah yes, the month of commercialized romance and uncomfortably sexy advertising, THAT is the the month for Prince.” And not until I was midway through the January post did I remember that by this point in February we are so over Valentine’s Day and have moved on to planning our Oscars viewing parties and St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans.
Too bad! I’ve decided we are still in the season of romance and boy do I have some uncomfortably sexy moves for you. Dig out that last chocolate in the box and press play on this madness (with the warning that it’s a tad NSFW, depending on your monitor size and your workplace’s tolerance of women in their underwear):
We open in… a Star Trek: Next Generation holodeck??
That tracks, honestly. This whole video could very well be a fantasy programmed by a certain Commander William T. Riker.
Prince rises into the holodeck clearly shirtless, but in the next moment he’s suddenly clothed in an outfit that I would both kill for and look ridiculous in. A tiny shirt-lette1 with big buttons and matching big-button pants that are like the dancier version of Adidas tearaways? Fantastic! Sold!
While Prince spends this whole video jumping and spinning and chasing a woman, Wendy gets to sit and chill and jam on the acoustic guitar.2 Good for her! I bet it was exhausting being Prince, but I bet it was also exhausting being in The Revolution. Take a seat while you can, girl.
And then the next room of the holodeck is revealed and Riker’s fantasy—oops, I mean model Monique Monnen—appears in lingerie and… a shroud?
This is a Prince video, so I realize she is supposed to be sexy, but it’s feeling a little sexy AND spooky. (Spooxy? Spexy?) Monique is hot, but that black veil is giving some real mourning/death vibes. Prince’s looming giant face behind her doesn’t help, floating around like the god of this strange new lingerie underworld we just entered.
But I guess it gets Prince excited because he is suddenly without his big jacket and shirt-lette and is HOT for this sexy sad woman. SO hot that he steams up this glass that they suddenly find themselves behind (which looks like the back of a bus window—what are you doing to us, Riker?):
Prince is SO GRABBY in this video and I totally understand Monique not being fully interested. Just because she is wearing lingerie and you want her kiss does not mean that SHE wants YOUR kiss, SIR. He even gets forceful with Wendy, who is very much not interested:
And then we have the best moment of this video, where Monique gets to sing one of Prince’s “yeaahhhs” and Prince is like EXCUUUUSE ME?
No joke: that image is now my desktop wallpaper on my work computer, because I feel the same way when I open up all my to-do lists each morning. I also enjoy dragging, say, an Excel doc icon right next to his left ear so he’s like “ew, THAT file?” I’m a lot of fun!
Despite Prince majorly dissing Monique’s lip-synching, she consents to some touching. Maybe because he slides into the scene in a very impressive way:
Monique is finally ready to dance with Prince (but with her mourning veil intact) so they do… whatever this is:
It’s like being in a very crowded workout class where you’re in the zone, working on your splits, and then you feel a spray of sweat and realize someone is working out RIGHT next to you and they have no concept of personal space.
Prince eventually pulls off her veil and he’s so excited that he screams into it:
By the end though, I’m not sure how he really feels. She’s unveiled, she gives him a kiss (on the neck), and they’re back inside the sweaty bus. And yet he looks so forlorn:
What’s up, Prince? Why so sad? Maybe he enjoyed the chase more than actually getting the girl. Or maybe he regrets throwing off his shirt-lette so far into the void of the holodeck that he’ll never get it back. OR maybe he’s not sad at all. Maybe he’s merely exhausted from jumping and spinning doing jumpy splits. It’s a mystery!
No matter what’s going on at the end, I certainly feel fulfilled. This is everything I want from a Prince video: sexy-but-spooky women, impressive jumps and splits, and strange spaces that don’t feel real.3
FYI: This is the first post of mine where I’ve used some .gifs that I did not create myself. It seemed a shame to make more when there are stellar ones already out there, and it’s proof that this video is so culturally important that thousands of other people want to watch Prince knee-slide into frame and kiss a woman’s abdomen.
If you ever want to revisit all the .gifs that I do make for posts, you can see them all on my Giphy page HERE. Perhaps I will eventually sort them into collections but for now you get to enjoy them in all their mish-mashed glory. Bookmark your faves and send them to your friends and coworkers when they’re having a bad day!
BONUS: In my Googling around for this post, I learned that Black-ish did a whole episode about Prince, in which they recreated many of his classic videos! Their version of “Kiss” is superb and Tracee Ellis-Ross gets to be both Wendy and Monique (although minus the veil, which is totally fine). I need to watch this whole episode.
See you next month with some moves that will definitely not be Oscars or St. Patrick’s Day themed!
Love and jazz hands,
Molly
Not a real garment name, but should I go ahead and copyright that immediately?
Which is funny because we hear absolutely no acoustic guitar in this song, unless you count the stuff that’s been mixed to sound like a keyboard.
If you also love Prince videos for those reasons, you will love my first encounter with “Diamonds and Pearls.”