Prince wrote this song for his movie Purple Rain. In the film, the song plays under a montage after his character loses his girl (Apollonia) to his rival (Morris - Morris Day of The Time). We see Prince riding his motorcycle along with shots of intimate moments with Apollonia. In the movie, Prince has a difficult relationship with his father, who beats his mom. Scenes of his father come in on the lyrics where Prince calls him "demanding." The film is semi-autobiographical, but how much is based on real life remains a mystery, as Prince rarely gave interviews and didn't talk about his personal life. In the movie, the song expresses his fear of becoming like his parents. When the doves cry, that's his musical refuge - the barrage of keyboards in the chorus represents the doves crying.
Besides writing and composing the track, Prince played all the instruments on the song.
There is no bass on this song. Prince took out the bass track at the last minute to get a different sound, though he hated to see it go. "Sometimes your brain kind of splits in two - your ego tells you one thing, and the rest of you says something else. You have to go with what you know is right," he told Bass Player magazine.
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