Prince (1979)
I’ll be honest, any attempt to pin this ethereal track down with words is futile. There’s no combination of letters that can paint an adequate picture of its majesty. I offer only a well-worn cliche. The Kawa model in occupational theory uses the metaphor of a river to describe the stages of life. At first, it is a babbling brook, lively and energetic yet shallow. Further along, the river gains depth with maturity and settles into a steady flow. With old age, before the point it joins the next realm of the ocean, it’s calm and slow-moving but has broadened and contains a powerful vastness beneath the surface. When We’re Dancing Close and Slow was written while Prince was in the shallow river stage of life but the song has a calm deepness that belies his years. The title is borrowed from one of his idols, Joni Mitchell, but the music is taken from a deep reservoir of introverted world-building. Why try to analyse it? In the words of Lennon: let’s turn off our minds, relax and float downstream.
