Sign o’ the Times (1987)
Slow Love was originally written by Carole Davis and if her version had dropped first then this song would be a cover and therefore ineligible for this list. However, debuting on Sign o’ the Times with new music and lyrics undoubtedly makes Slow Love a product of Prince at his peak. Sadly it’s a ballad that never gets the attention it deserves, being the Luigi to Adore‘s Mario, but when it steps out of its brother’s shadow you notice something that Adore, or even anything else on the album, lacks: a Clare Fischer-composed string section. They’re the subtle star of the show here and fill the sparse arrangement with the music of the spheres – vibrations from a universal choir which stops the cosmos from disintegrating into a meaningless anarchy of atoms. My love for Adore is immediate, fiery and passionate, yet my love for Slow Love is slow, eternal and written in the night sky.