Chaos and Disorder (1996)
A totemic middle finger to Warner Bros intended as an evil-twin bookend to the angelic debut track For You. The simple message of devotion chewed up and spat out 18 years later as a jaded sign-off. Spoilsports WB disrupted the symmetry by deciding to release it before The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale but that hardly dampens Had U‘s cold, downward-spiralling sentiment, sung in the key of fuck you. It suggests visions of a reminiscing Prince facing a lit brazier with a pile of his WB albums, succinctly giving each one a two word eulogy before dropping it into the purifying flames. For You “missed U” but Dirty Mind “found U” and 1999 “convinced U”. Parade “Kiss-ed U” and the pulled Black album was to “tempt U”. Twenty albums in and black smoke painfully fades out the guitar’s lament. Bitter yes but also hauntingly and macabrely beautiful.
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