“I Wanna Be Your Lover” by Prince

"I Wanna Be Your Lover" led off Prince's self-titled second album in 1979, his answer to Warner Bros. after the debut, For You, failed to sell. He wrote it, arranged it, produced it and played all of it himself: bass, guitars, drums, clavinet, electric grand piano and synthesizers, plus every lead and backing vocal.

He sings the whole thing in falsetto, a young man swearing he'd treat her better than the men she's with and smarting that she sees him as just a kid. The crush behind it, it later came out, was on the pianist and singer Patrice Rushen. The single edit stops short, but the album cut rolls on into a keyboard jam with a Polymoog in the mix. It became his first real American hit, reaching number 11 on the Hot 100 and topping the soul singles chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.