I spent almost 20 years as a nightclub DJ and the only thing I learned from it is this: don’t take drugs.

If you’re really looking to alter your reality, let me recommend the subjunctive as a safer alternative. It’s not a verb tense, it’s a verb mood, which is used in writing to indicate how the speaker wants the listener to understand and interpret what they say.

• “If I were a famous rockstar, I’d have a big black jet with a bedroom in it.”

I’m sure we all would. This is the subjunctive, a clear reference to something that exists in a hypothetical, imaginary, or drug-fuelled haze sort of way.

• “If I was doing karaoke, I wouldn’t sing a Nickelback song.”

In everyday speech, most people use “was” here. It gets the point across, but grammatically speaking, “was” belongs to the indicative mood (the mood of plain facts and reality). Because the reality is that you and I aren’t singing karaoke right now, traditional grammar demands the subjunctive: “If I were doing karaoke…”

Notice how much more formal “were” feels? It’s not the way we talk with friends, loved ones, or Playboy Bunnies with bleach-blonde hair.

To summarise:

• Indicative (was): states reality or facts. When used in hypotheticals, it sounds informal and conversational.
• Subjunctive (were): expresses the hypothetical, counterfactual, or imaginary. Formal, precise, and traditional.

Now that you understand the subjunctive and know when it’s used, let’s watch a couple of pop legends screw it up on purpose.

Ah, the maestro of Minneapolis. This song, the second single from “Sign O’ The Times”, was a top twenty hit in the UK but only a very minor hit in his homeland, possibly because of the syntactical salami served up by the song’s syntax.

Standard grammar rules for counterfactual hypotheticals dictate that Prince should have used the past subjunctive: “If I were your girlfriend.” (Because, demonstrably, he is not his girlfriend’s girlfriend). Instead, he opts for the past indicative: “If I was…”

Prince was writing this to his then girlfriend/partner/fiancee, Susannah Melvoin. What he’s expressing is the jealousy he feels over the close bond that she shares with her twin, Wendy, a regular Prince collaborator, member of backing band The Revolution, and famous for being the one not called Lisa from the duo Wendy & Lisa.

He’s describing a different level of intimacy from that which we might typically see in a heterosexual romantic relationship. The basis of that is a different type of masculinity, one that isn’t afraid to be vulnerable and open, and especially different from the type of masculinity present in the USA under President Ronald Reagan, who spent a long time acting like a cowboy and prior to that was in the movies.

So why does Prince not use the more grammatically correct “If I Were Your Girlfriend?”

For one, because it suits the mood of the song better. He craves the kind of intimacy he’s describing, and rejecting the formal subjunctive for a conversational was closes the intimacy gap in the song’s lyrics. It’s no longer a far-off possibility in his mind, and the song is him making the case to his girlfriend. 

But also, because he was a total screaming genius and neither you nor I have the credentials to tell him that anything he did was wrong.

The song was originally set to be on a different album of songs by his androgynous alter-ego Camille, and he does sing it in Camille’s register. The use of the Camille character and the boyfriend/girlfriend dichotomy of the lyrics opens up the possibility of an alternative reading where Prince/Camille is singing the song to a male (or other-gendered) lover.

Ah, the Bard of Blackpool and the Troubadour of Tyne and Wear. Yeah, I was really struggling to find synonyms to make that alliteration properly land and it’s a shame neither of them were born in Vauxhall or Gillingham.

“I’m Not Scared”, an original Tennant/Lowe composition, was first performed by the band Eighth Wonder who comprised Patsy Kensit and some other people although to this day no-one knows who they were. The Shoppies’ own version featured on the album “Introspective”, released the same year as Eighth Wonder’s version, and was part of the setlist for their 1991 “Performance” tour (from which the video above comes. As you can see it’s a very traditional rock and roll tour).

The section we’re interested in is the bridge, and specifically the repeated refrain:

“If I was you, if I was you
I wouldn’t treat me the way you do” 

What we see is the same playful dismantling of the subjunctive mood, but to startlingly different emotional affect. When Neil Tennant says, “If I was you” he’s clearly referring to a hypothetical situation because without the intervention of a Freaky Friday plot twist, he’s never going to inhabit the body of the person he’s referring to. Clearly, the rules demand that he uses the subjunctive.

But just like Prince, he switches from “were” to “was”. Where Prince is in a committed relationship, Tennant seems to be in a difficult relationship. Where Prince is looking for more and deeper intimacy, Tennant seems to be asking for any intimacy at all. His lover seems to be distant and aloof, and the lyrics point to them being in trouble with the wrong sort of people. Both songs collapse the subjunctive waveform, but to very different ends.

As with the Prince song, there’s no lyric in “I’m Not Scared” that genders the romantic subject of the song. The same lyric sung by a straight woman and a gay man (one known for playing many characters in his songs, or at least writing from many viewpoints, a description that could also apply to Prince) opens up the same potential queer reading as “If I Was Your Girlfriend”. 

Neither song sticks strictly to standard subjunctive grammar, but both are written entirely in its spirit. The subjunctive is the rejection of fixed facts and the potential queering of possibilities, which meshes perfectly with the shallow escapism of pop music – where anyone can be a Barbie Girl or a Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, regardless of what they’ve got tucked inside their trousers.