Planet Earth (2007)
This catchy rock-pop song is one of two obvious singles on Planet Earth (the other being Chelsea Rodgers) and is certainly not afraid to wield a rock’n’roll trope about women, cars and, yes, his guitar. Great to sing along to but it came at a high cost of entry, requiring a purchase of The Mail on Sunday and with it a chunk of your soul. The album version (there’s also acoustic and alternate versions in circulation) is a collage of pre-loved parts: a U2 guitar riff, a Beatles Back in the USSR chorus and if Rolling Stone are to be believed, a Duran Duran bassline. Following hot on the heels of the album’s Barry Manilow-showcasing opener it becomes clear Prince isn’t afraid to reuse and recycle at this point. Maybe it’s all part of the Planet Earth eco theme. Or more likely a calculated marketing attempt to cast his net far and wide into the British mainstream’s psyche in order to fill his shows for the upcoming London 21 Nights gigs. And it worked. It’s still tamed down for polite company and I often wish this particular guitar would feature a dirty switch, like the one he turns on in Mad. But for Middle England it was a lit pinwheel thrown into their Hitachi CD trays.
A cool, punky little jam. I really like the ” … you know the rest” bit at the end, as if Prince was aknowledging that the chorus line is as catchy as it is repetitive and would probably become really obnoxious really quick if the song didn’t clock under 4 minutes total. The timing is everything!
The “I wish you well” line is like the hedonistic playboy sibling of the angelic “I wish you heaven” line from the song with the same name.
Speaking of that, I can’t be the only one who noticed how some phrases, ensembles of words, sentences are reused by Prince, sometimes 20 or 30 years apart, and how some lyrics call back to others from the past. In this era of bloated cinematic “extended universes”, it’s like a Prince extended universe with floating echos everywhere! I love noticing those little bits and filing them away in some corner of my mind.