Something personal or a song I just like?
Been a raft of deaths of people that I know of my age recently , and the sun is out for a change, so it’s gonna be the latter.
The introduction of the internet (YouTube etc.) has meant that if a song catches your ear then you can look into it. Usually mundane details but every now and then it sends you somewhere you weren’t expecting.
This song is one instance.

I like Prince. Not in a mad fan-boy way like some people, but he has done some ace songs.
And is he really talented, as a songwriter, a producer, and he can be funky AF.

Sign O’ The Times (1987) is my favourite album of his. He was releasing more than one a year so this was his 9th .
Amongst all the big hitters on the album… "Sign o' the Times"…U Got the Look….If I Was Your Girlfriend, was a song of less than 3 minutes that got into my head.

Starfish and Coffee was Nursery Rhyme pop-funk. It’s not an official genre. I made it up.
At surface level it is a catchy pop song with childish lyrics, sharp production and a soft Funk laden undertone.
The album cover informed that he wrote it with somebody in his band called Susannah Melvoin

This is the Original album track…

All good, and this is where the recommendation should end.

However…..a decade on Prince decided to do The Muppet Show…and he did a great job of it.

From the comments I learnt that Prince wrote the song in 8 hrs. after hearing the story of Susannah & Wendy's childhood classmate who seems to have had mental issues. He changed some of the references (she bobbed for apples in the toilet, etc.). There's a podcast of Susannah telling the story of how Prince was fascinated by the story & wrote the song.
This was one of the first things I recall watching on the internet about 20 years ago. Great fun appearance from him and the song really worked on that show.
Did a bit of digging from YouTube, and also looked it up when Wikipedia started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_and_Coffee_(song)
"Starfish and Coffee" is a song performed by Prince, and written by him and Susannah Melvoin. It is the sixth track on his 1987 double album Sign o' the Times, and was based on a true story about a girl named Cynthia Rose that went to the same school as Susannah and Wendy Melvoin. Susannah, Prince's girlfriend at the time, would receive a writing credit for the lyrics on the track due to the story that she told of Cynthia.
During the early sessions for what would eventually become Sign o' the Times, Prince and Susannah Melvoin would often tell each other stories of their childhood memories. At one point, Susannah brought forward a story of Cynthia Rose, a girl that she and her twin sister Wendy used to know at their school. Cynthia was often ignored by classmates, but Susannah took a special interest in learning more and more about Cynthia. Whenever Cynthia was asked what she had for breakfast, her response was often "starfish and pee pee". Susannah would further explain this odd answer:
I never understood the combo meal. Furthermore, as a consequence nobody else could. Here it seemed like the deal breaker for most kids. Above all the kids in our class had no interest in how Cynthia came to get her morning breakfast. I considered it tender and funny, and listened to her tell me anything she wanted to say whether it was firmly planted on earth, or from her planet of tender hearted people who love numbers and draw smiley faces.
Prince would become so fascinated with the story that he felt he had to make it into a song, on one condition: the phrase "pee pee" had to be replaced with a different word, which would become "coffee" Susannah agreed, and after writing down what she had told him on a piece of paper, he went to his home studio and began recording the song. To give the song its magical and unusual feel as depicted in the lyrics, harp sounds were created on synthesizers, while Prince's initial drum kit was doubled with a reversed LM-1 drum loop. After spending ten hours recording with engineer Susan Rogers, the latter woke Susannah up to listen to the track, and Prince, with a smile, simply stated "here it is!". The couple both found to have loved it when they listened to it, and it would remain a part of album configurations for Prince's next album until it was eventually released in March of 1987.
The track would later serve to be the inspiration behind the website of the same name by Susannah, with a page dedicated to the song's creation. Merchandise is sold on the website with numerous references to the song, and pictures and drawings are made of both Cynthia Rose and Susannah

Here is the website for the song
https://www.starfishandcoffeeofficial.com/
https://www.starfishandcoffeeofficial.com/pages/the-story
https://www.starfishandcoffeeofficial.com/pages/photos

In summation, I really like the simplicity of the song but the back story of how it came about elevates it to being my recommendation.
It’s a bit geeky to research something, but this time it was worth it.
Hope you agree…..