I Need A Girl did not simply tear me up, but it passed under my skin that certain things do, those moments that you only comprehend afterwards, after they have already altered you. Prience (Prince) Moore comes into the song as a gentle knock at the door some time in the middle of the night. Not urgent. Not dramatic. Careful enough not to take you out of the world you had been in, but bring you into his. He has that warm, rain-on-glass smoothness in his voice--the sort that you lean over subconsciously and are afraid to upset by breathing too hard. No performance varnish has been applied to it. No flexing, no shine. It is the sincerity that stuns you, the manner in which he sounds like a person confessing something that he has been living with too long without saying a word.
The music in the background is floating along this slow and patient genuineness. It dances like the manner in which the people move when they believe they are alone -- little movements, gentle movements, a delicateness that can scarcely be called such. It seems like Michael Miller is simply guarding the song and not constructing it, padding it with whispering piano notes and the softest drums that have ever existed, making it seem like the wrong leaf is coming down to the ground. Nothing crowds the space. Everything breathes. And it is breathing becomes of the feeling itself.
Something plain, thrown carelessly about in the air, somehow flowering into this portrait of devotion and longing so close a portrait. Prience picked up that spark and responded with something that has been urging to be uttered in him long years, waiting. It is the radiance of nostalgia without ever having a semblance of wisdom, the beauty of wisdom without the ghost of having wisdom. It is optimistic but sad, like the process of recalling a dream you used to love and forget to pursue.
I have caught myself humming it at strange times nearly ashamed of its natural flow. I Need A Girl does not make its presence felt, it just slips into you, rearranging the most delicate bits first, until you are walking around with it in your hands. Prience (Prince) Moore did not write a love-song. He bottled the desire to see somebody who would make the rest of the world seem kinder, and he presented it like a confession in a whisper in the dark. And honestly? I do not believe I will ever let this one go.
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