(A)Political Prince: An Analysis of Prince's Political Consciousness

Prince is arguably one of popular music's most prolific songwriters. His music, artistry, and style define the decade of the 1980s, however his lyrics did more than inspire "Dance, Music, Sex, and Romance." As early as his 1980 Dirty Mind album, Prince expressed his views of social and political conditions. Throughout his career he continued to pen songs that voiced his views of domestic and global issues. Most recently, on his album HITtnRUN: Phase Two Prince pleas for peace on the track "Baltimore," titled for the city where Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, died from injuries sustained while in police custody. The purpose of this study is to examine the lyrics of Prince's political songs using systemic functional linguistics, which is Halliday's theory of language that is centered on its social and contextual factors, as a way to explore Prince's political consciousness. Findings show the evolution of Prince's political consciousness over the course of his career.