30th
Recall: here, Thom Yorke usually says “You’re so fucking special.” That “fucking” is key, because it’s supposed to sound snide. It’s an insult. Prince, on the other hand, does not say “fucking.” And not just because he doesn’t swear anymore; he could have said what Thom goes with in the radio edit, which is “very.” Instead, he changes the entire line, and in doing, he changes the entire meaning of the line. Prince says: “I think that you’re special.”
This is probably the best distillation of Prince’s verbal seduction technique anyone’s ever conjured. That Prince is awesome and desirable goes without saying. Prince’s argument for why you should sleep with him takes that for granted. Of course you want to sleep with Prince; everybody wants to sleep with Prince. But it’s also true that Prince probably wants to sleep with everyone, too. Prince desiring you is not news. Prince walks around desiring things. That’s what he does.
Prince’s argument for why you should sleep with him, then, is that you guys could do something really special together. Prince wants to sleep with you because he thinks you’re amazing. You are his equal, and being the equal of Prince is pretty special. It’s all over his stuff, but maybe best expressed in “Gett Off”: “twenty-two positions in a one-night stand / I’ll only call you after if I say you can,” and, of course, “tonight you’re a star / and I’m the big dipper.” Prince does not think that you’re hot, or that he’s good in bed; Prince thinks that you are the awesomest thing ever. That you are, in other words, special.