There are two songs on Prince’s 37th (!) studio album — released in 2014 — that, if carefully attended to, will rip your heart out: “Way Back Home” and “Breakdown.” Listen at your peril. They form a kind of diptych of longing, pain and transcendence. They clearly presage the death of a man who has overthrown every regime and outgrown every identity. Here I’ll review only “Way Back Home.”

At least in the space of the song, this much is clear: Prince wants out. “There’s so many reasons why I don’t belong here,” he sings. He wants to rest and be comforted — to go home — but his own drivenness is like a fierce overlord. It demands everything: “But now that I am I, … Gonna conquer with no fear.” Who else would he be if not “I”? Who was he before he was “I”? He was with his Jehovah.

He was a full fledged zealot by this point in this life and yet it’s easy for us, his fans, to forgive him this. Because his zealotry wasn’t superficial. It had depths. He was a true seeker. He studied language closely and that attentiveness enriched his music. His attraction to the rigid rule of Jehovah’s Witnesses is understandable for a man who was notoriously controlling. It was a place to rest. In the church, he was not in charge.

In “Way Back Home,” he wants desperately to return to womb of God. Listen closely to the percussion and the fabric of those heartbeats, woven together with the sounds of a watery environment — they are unmistakably the sounds of an infant in the womb. The womb reference here should also point clearly in another direction — any diehard Prince fan will know. For a moment, Prince had a son. He never spoke about it.

His confidence fluctuates wildly throughout the song. A female voice opens with a spoken affirmation: “Any person or object whatsoever That requires your attention Is something that has veered from its path And preordained destiny of total enlightenment.” But loved ones require our attention. Is this just a rationalization for Prince to obsess about his work? Is it as narcissistic as it sounds? Not when placed in the context of the plaintive cry of the chorus which at one point steps just to the edge of a sob: “Just trying to find, trying to find. My way back, back home.” The backup singers voice a chant-inflected lullaby: “until I find my way back home.”

His confidence reaches a pitch again when he refers to himself as a rare example of someone who is alive, only to plummet once again. “Is this the way?” he whispers. An extraordinary admission of doubt and vulnerability for someone as severe and inflexible as Prince.

A spare, acoustic rendering of this song would be the more obvious choice. But this kind of treatment would draw too much attention to the content. Prince hides the song in plain sight by submerging it in a precise, electronic structure reminiscent of Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric? And it worked. There has been very little comment on this piece despite its shattering message.

“I’ve heard about those happy endings, But it’s still a mystery, Lemme tell u about me, I’m happiest when I can see My way back home. Can u see my way back home, Can u see my way back home.” I think we can Prince. I think we can see it. Godspeed.