Sign O’ the Times (1987)
Prince takes Addicted to Love and shows Robert Palmer how it should be done. The power chords and 4:4 rock beat remain but liquid funk seeps in via the bass and Sheena Easton replaces the objectified, blank-eyed mannequins. U Got the Look ended up as a duet but Sheena says her vocals are erratic because she was under the impression she was only providing backing. All the better to complement the Camille-infused weirdness. In his book Prince, Matt Thorne calls U Got the Look the album’s “least lyrically sophisticated track” but among the “sho nuff”s, “crucial”s and “slammin”s (which, to this day, I still mishear as “fireman!” at 2:17) there’s a verse that I rank among his finest – the one where he compliments Sheena’s character on her make-up, then corrects himself when he sees her natural beauty under the closing-time lights. That section unfolds with such effortless dexterity that you can forgive him for slapping a gauche “let’s get 2 rammin” in the chorus. This was an unashamed pop song after all. The Hits liner notes say it was conceived as a private test to see if a friend would like a commercial-sounding song before it hit the mainstream. Prince tinkered with it a lot in his quest for a guaranteed hit. One of the outtakes even featured a banjo solo – which, along with the blues progression and references to the World Series, all show that appealing to the American psyche was foremost on his mind during this process. In the end, he scored his hit and as Prince wrote in his own draft of the liner notes: “sure enough, the friend didn’t like the song until it was in the Top 10.”
