I Love It More Than I Did: Prince, Crooked Fingers, and “When You Were Mine” by kim z. dale

Prince died on my birthday. Your consolation prize when a favorite musician dies on your birthday, particularly a megastar like Prince, is you get to hear a bunch of their music on your birthday every year after their death. Prince has a lot of music to choose from. Starting the Friday after Prince died, The Current, a radio station out of Minneapolis (a.k.a. Prince’s hometown), played a 30-hour marathon of Prince songs. They played the songs in alphabetic order which made for a sometimes-jarring jumble of hits, b-sides, and rarities. It was amazing.
The Prince Vault attributes more than 1,000 songs to him. Many of his songs were written for or covered by other artists. The March Faxness tournament proper includes two Prince covers: “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor and “Kiss” by Tom Jones and the Art of Noise. Those are excellent representatives but far from the only notable Prince covers. One song that has been covered by multiple artists is “When You Were Mine.”
Or should I say “When U Were Mine?”
The song first appeared on Prince’s 1980 Dirty Mind album, which was before he began his stylized titling in which “to” becomes “2” and “you” becomes “u.” Technically, the Prince song is “When You Were Mine,” but the Crooked Fingers cover lists the title as “When U Were Mine,” as do several other versions including a live recording by Prince himself. What’s a writer to do? In this essay I use “When You Were Mine” since that was the original title.
The first time I heard “When You Were Mine” was a cover. A version appeared on Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual album, which like many tween girls in the 80s, I had on well-worn cassette. There was controversy about the Cyndi Lauper recording because she didn’t change the male pronouns in the lyrics. Honestly, I don’t remember being shocked or even noticing the implicit bisexuality in Cyndi’s rendering of “When You Were Mine.” My friends and I were too busy tittering over the realization that “She Bop” was about masturbation.
My husband introduced me to the Crooked Fingers version of “When You Were Mine.” I’m often a passive music listener, meaning I listen to whatever is on the radio or things someone else plays. As a result, I don’t often know what I’m listening to even if I like it. I’m notoriously bad at remembering names of bands and singers, so I’m pretty sure our initial discussion about the song started something like this:
Him: “Crooked Fingers does a great cover of ‘When You Were Mine.’”
Me: “I don’t know who that is.”
Him: “Crooked Fingers. It’s Eric Bachmann’s solo project.”
Me: “I don’t know who that is.”
Him: “He was in Archers of Loaf.”
Me: “I still don’t know who that is.”
Him: “He’s done some work with Neko Case.”
Me: “I know that one!”
In a highly-stylized Pitchfork review of the Reservoir Songs EP on which the cover of “When You Were Mine” appears, William Bowers described Bachmann’s musical transition from Archers of Loaf to Crooked Fingers as a mutation from “a staccato-barking, dissonant chord-ninja into a twangy, pulsing, guttural Neil-trouba-Diamond-dour.” Basically, Crooked Fingers’ music is as different from the college rock sound of Archers of Loaf as it is from Prince’s synthesizer-driven pop.
Sometimes when a cover song dramatically changes the tempo and instrumentation of the original it can come off as gimmicky. If the new sound seems to conflict with the lyrics, it can even seem like a joke. Neither is true of this cover. In this case, the dramatically different sound of the Crooked Fingers recording almost creates a new version of the story, without changing the words.
“When You Were Mine” is about love and promiscuity and loss. The lyrics reveal the story’s details gradually, in a way that allows our perception of the situation to shift over its verses. In the first verse we are introduced to a lover who has done our narrator wrong. Despite—we are told—this person being given the narrator’s money and being allowed to wear their clothes, she “didn’t even have the decency to change the sheets” after sleeping with the singer’s friends. The listener assumes this is a simple case of betrayal.
But in the second verse we learn our lead character may be more complicit in the dissolution of this relationship than they initially let on in. After all, they admit they let the lover fool around. They were in bed with the lover and their lover’s other lover. This scenario begins to look less like cheating and more like an open relationship gone wrong.
Then, we reach the bridge which says, “When you were mine/You were all I ever wanted to do/Now I spend my time/Following him whenever he's with you.” Is the act of following an indication our narrator is a stalker, or are they just torturing themselves? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. The lyrics can be interpreted in several ways, which is where the varying musical styles of the Prince and Crooked Fingers recordings become significant.
Prince sounds angry and resentful as he sings the story in ragged falsetto over a peppy dance beat. Yes, the chorus says, “I love you more than I did when you were mine,” but we aren’t sure he loved her much before. He mostly sounds bitter, not forlorn. Yes, he is jealous, but I get the impression he’ll dance away the loneliness and probably find another lover soon (although that interpretation may be influenced more by Prince’s persona than the song itself).
In contrast, Bachmann’s version oozes with loss. Sung achingly over a simple accompaniment of banjo and cello, the lyrics come off less accusingly and more reflective. There is a brief a cappella section at the start of the bridge in the EP recording. When the strings cut out, I stop breathing. I find myself leaning in, rapt to hear what comes next even though I know the words by heart. In two videos I’ve seen of Bachmann performing the cover live (once on stage and once in one of his living room concerts where he performs in fans’ homes), he plays more quietly in that section but doesn’t let the accompaniment drop completely. Perhaps the silence is too intimate when other people are around.
The most heart-wrenching detail in Bachmann’s cover is the end. Bachmann stops the song without playing the final note of the musical phrase. We are left waiting, unsatiated. It is a choice that leaves us wanting more, like the lover in the lyrics left the narrator wanting more, like an artist who dies leaves us wanting more.
Since Prince’s death my appreciation of his music has increased. It’s a shame that’s how it often happens. When a writer dies, we revisit their books. When an actor dies, we revisit their movies. When a musician dies, we revisit their music. We revisit those past works with an increased intensity because we know there will be no new works to enjoy. We love them more than we did.

Kim Z. Dale writes stories, plays, and essays. Her writing has appeared in anthologies including ones from Belt Publishing, O’Reilly Media, Kendall Hunt, and Aschehoug Undervisning (Norway). Her plays have been performed at numerous festivals and small theatres, predominantly in Chicago and Pittsburgh (her current and past hometowns). Kim can be found on Twitter as @observacious. More information about Kim’s work can be found at kimzdale.com.