O(+> (1992)
Where to start? There’s enough material in these six epic minutes to fill a book – hell, a bookshelf! It plays like a trailer for the 3 Chains O’ Gold film in Prince’s head (instead of the eventual TV movie) and features him rhapsodising like the finest bohemian and harmonising with an army of Princes filtering up from the earth’s core. The shape-shifting NPG, in turn, ply this one song with enough key and tempo changes that exceed any normal album’s quota and was amazingly recorded in one uninterrupted sitting, rather than being stitched together in the studio afterward. Over the top? Yes, but beautifully so. Fuck your albums of identikit indie rock that never stray outside their Pixies/Pavement/Punk template of choice: this shoots for the glitterball moon and doesn’t care if it falls short. It is the penultimate song on his Love Symbol album and became, along with the segues, the most obvious carrier of the rock opera concept, drawing the critics’ ire and pulling the rest of the album into their firing line. Shot down with shrill cries of “indulgence” and “bombastic” by po-faced Vanessa Bartholemews. And yes, it realms into silliness but who likes their rock earnest? This is Queen at Wembley. Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon. The Darkness on Mars. A spandexed testimony to the sheer, balls-out ambition and virtuosity of Prince in six glorious parts – an experiment to see how many charms will fit on one chain – but first and foremost it’s big E Entertainment son!
165: Moonbeam Levels
Unreleased (1982) / 4Ever (2016)
Prince’s first vault item to be released posthumously was 1982’s Moonbeam Levels, a much-loved song used to hoodwink fans into buying yet another greatest hits compilation. Although picking a popular bootleg already illicitly owned by many may not be the effective dangled carrot Warner Bros envisaged. Written during Prince’s 1999 era, the lyrics are naturally concerned with death, destruction, and nuclear fallout. They describe a Cold War Chicken Little wanting to be beamed out of this life and into “a better place to die”. Sounds depressing but the music is anything but. The only thing that could beat it is if the moon goddess Selene herself descended from the heavens with her silver chariot’s tape deck blasting out the soundtrack to a dream Elliott Smith once had.
166: The Other Side of the Pillow
The Truth (1998)
Cool like the other side of a pillow: a catchphrase coined by the late sports commentator Stuart Scott and the self-descriptive hook of this sparkling acoustic spritzer. The Other Side of the Pillow’s lyrics are full of similes for cool, allowing any review to write itself. But beyond the champagne charm lies a bedrock coolness that entire industries spend billion-dollar budgets chasing. This is no ersatz cool, worn like branded sportswear – “a logo that sticks to the roof of one’s ass” as Prince sings in Style. This is cool born of blood, sweat and tears. Cool born of the Blues. You don’t get to sound this care-free by growing up free of cares. This refreshment could only come from the previously parched.
167: Eternity
Unreleased (1985) / No Sound But a Heart (1987)
Turn the number 8 on its side and you get an infinity sign. Is this why Eternity, a track Prince wrote while working on his eighth album Parade, also appeared on both Sheena Easton’s and Chaka Khan’s eighth albums? The latter was even released in ’88. The universe is playing us. But forget the released versions – Prince’s touch has been polished away and they’re too of their time to merit anything more than a nod of recognition. Go to the source. The raw demo in the vault. The beat is rudimentary and the lyrics are full of ellipses which sound like half-formed thoughts colliding together, but that melody will lure your feet off the floor like Pepe le Pew’s vapours. A purple pick-me-up from the Pied Piper of Paisley Park.
168: Rainbow Children
The Rainbow Children (2001)
Prince’s new found faith isn’t just found in The Rainbow Children’s lyrics and spoken monologues. The whole album is born of it. It’s in the music, the artwork, the concept, the whole damn package. This puts many people off but it caused a focused Prince to write his most cohesive lp in years. Opening track Rainbow Children (note the missing definite article) is the album in miniature. It starts with some smouldering jazz, a groove which toys with gospel and a guitar workout before ramping up towards a hard funk climax, followed by a smooth Fender Rhodes vamp. The album’s whole suite of characters are in attendance with Prince in various guises telling us his version of Genesis or whatever. He could be reciting Finnegans Wake for all I can make out, or indeed care but the words aren’t important. The atmosphere is king. His beliefs built this amazing world and I’m privileged to be allowed to visit.
169: Strollin’
Diamonds & Pearls (1991)
And now for an intermission. Put your phone on flight mode, disable notifications and pull the plug on your anxiety. Relax and watch All The Things You Feel Guilty About Parts 121 – 526 slip down the drain. You’re due a break from Maya’s drudgery and what better way than to dip your toe into this Raleigh Chopper ride through an endless, ice-cream filled summer. Strollin’ is a John Hughes movie about all the best parts of your childhood. A light-jazz reimagining of Lou Reeds Perfect Day minus the heroin. Ice Cube’s Good Day minus the AKs. The regularly scheduled programme – a 24-hour livestream of civilisation’s collapse – will soon return but in the meantime stay awhile in this carefree retreat. You’ve earned this.
170: Elixer
Elixer (2009)
The story goes that Prince and Bria Valente recorded Elixer when they grew tired of waiting for a new Sade album to arrive. Had they waited a year longer the Essex smooth-jazz siren would break her 10-year hiatus with Soldier of Love and Valente’s debut may never have materialised. This would have deprived us of its sole highlight: the title track – a succulent cherry sitting atop a mound of beige mulch. It really is the album’s one saving grace and I find it telling that it’s the only song Prince contributed his vocals to. It was also his last released collaboration with Clare Fischer – a 22-year working relationship ending with an explicit cunnilingus string-fest. And in case the title’s spelling didn’t tip you off that they do actually sing “he licks her”, Prince eschews all plausible deniability by following it up with a crooned “yes he does!” That is a pun he wants you to get. Take that, prudes!
171: Clouds
Art Official Age (2014)
After an absence of four years (the longest gap in his discography) Art Official Age was Prince’s high-profile comeback, seducing attentions of the press with Warner Bros reunion headlines. It is a truth universally acknowledged that an ageing rocker in the possession of a hyped comeback album is always likely to disappoint. Fires dampen; tastes get conservative; weirdness dissipates. The spirit may be willing but the flesh isn’t match-fit and innovation gets dashed on risk-averse rocks while session musicians clockwatch. The script was written to disappoint but Prince said “Fuck. That. Shit!” Or whatever the nearest non-sweary equivalent is (“Forget. That. Applesauce?”) and delivered a sci-fi themed concept album which surprises at every turn. Space ballad Clouds is a future-funk shuffler that sees the singer being woken up from a cryogenic state after 45 years, into an age that “does not require time”. And it’s not just the singer that’s visiting from another era: relationship advice; plaintive guitar solo; young, attractive protégé; Linn drum. All your 80s favourites reworked into something new. Not your bag? He released a safer band-led album on the same day too so fill your boots.
172: Christopher Tracy’s Parade
Parade (1986)
Why does Prince’s seventh album attract all the Beatles comparisons when it’s his eighth that opens with this amyl nitrate cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)? The Fab Four is certainly strong in this one. We stand at the start of a quick-fire round of four songs in nine minutes so there’s barely time to take it all in, but it’s the only album track, other than the incidental Venus De Milo and Do U Lie?, to sport the full force of Clare Fischer’s orchestra. Prince asked the newly-hired composer, fresh from collaborating on The Family album, to add orchestration to every song on Parade except Kiss. But his contribution largely wasn’t used. We hear some brief snatches on Anotherloverholenyohead and some violas on I Wonder U, but Christopher Tracy’s (née Wendy’s) Parade gets the full orchestral shebang and it’s a glorious symphony in miniature. A rousing clarion call from a pantheon of forgotten gods, who whoop and holler on their merry train out of oblivion. It serves as a tantalising yet overselling trailer for Under the Cherry Moon, which would never be able to deliver on these cinematic promises.
173: Sex Shooter
Apollonia 6 (1984) / Originals (2019)
For 35 years the Apollonia 6 version of Sex Shooter was the only official release (appearing on their album, a single, and in Purple Rain) but it has since been superseded by two other versions – the demo that was cleaned up and finally released in 2019, and Vanity’s unreleased version. Vanity, God rest her soul, was never a gifted singer yet is helped by having Prince’s vocals buried deep in the mix like carbon steel rebar. When she left the band, Prince replaced the overtly sexual songs from Vanity 6’s sophomore album with more sensual fare that chimed better with Apollonia’s sweeter nature. Sex Shooter (a play on a six-shooter revolver) was left in, presumably because it featured in the movie, but asking us to picture Apollonia as a dangerous, love-shooting weapon was an ask too far. In her hands it was always an awkward fit. There’s only one person that can pull Sex Shooter off. It requires the androgynous power of a female lead – Prince imploring us to kiss the gun and blow him away is too on the nose, even for him – but the track needs the devouring glint in its eye that only the original Nasty Girl can provide. Hearing it makes me yearn for that second Vanity 6 album that never was.
174: Te Amo Corazón
3121 (2006)
During a two-year period of my life, I listened to nothing but Colombian music and have since built up a tolerance against any song with corazón in the lyrics (which is roughly 100% of all cumbia). So Te Amo Corazón was ready to fall into my blind-spot and then – oh my god and then – Prince scat duets with his guitar and *kisses fingertips* mi corazón estalla! He could fill a whole album of this 30-second flight into the sublime and beautiful, and it would still end too soon. Salma Hayek directed the video whom he repays by hitting on her via her infant daughter on Valentina. He had obviously created something too smooth for this world and had to readdress the cosmic balance.
175: I’m Yours
For You (1978)
Prince’s first album-closing track is a belter. Until this point on For You he’s been prevented from releasing his inner rock demon but the shackles come off for the finale. If the guitar solo on My Love is Forever was a warning shot, then I’m Yours is Prince’s Butch Cassidy moment. From the off he comes out guns blazing, razing the neat Stevie Wonder-shaped box the marketing department were crafting, with a scream that Robert Plants his flag in the ashes declaring a new king has been born.
176: Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife
Emancipation (1996)
The cream of Emancipation can be found on its second disc, and the crème de la crème is Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife, Prince’s wedding gift to Mayte. Like most weddings, the previous hour or two have been a love-in of sweet sentiment, tired tropes, and readings that range from the rote to the ridiculous – but it’s all been leading to this moment: the vows. And as soon as they start, the album-standard plastic drums get lost under a tsunami of swelling strings, backing vocals and bridal balladry. Out of all the weddings I’ve been to, only my own surpasses this listening experience. And even that may be too close to call.
177: The Ladder
Around the World in a Day (1985)
Our journey up The Ladder starts with Wendy & Lisa-composed strings, lifted from the track Our Destiny. According to Around the World in a Day’s artwork, we’re still in the outro to Pop Life, but both the CD and vinyl track markers suggest otherwise. Either way, the string interlude allows us to take stock and chalk our hands before we ascend a stairway to heaven on rungs made out of the drums from Purple Rain. Clouds of reverb, alto sax and gospel fill your lungs, and a deep sense of cleansing salvation passes through your bronchioles and enters your bloodstream. Some days this makes feel like I’m in Jacob’s dream; on other days I feel like I’m listening to The Cross on cough syrup. I can’t decide which feeling I prefer.
178: When the Lights go Down
The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
A couple of years ago I saw Stan Douglas’ film Luanda-Kinshasa in an art gallery. Or at least I saw part of it. The full thing is six hours long and consists solely of a jazz-fusion funk band jamming in retro garb. The film’s music was captivating – no peaks or troughs, just a simmering, Escher groove that could unfold forever. Musical manna. If the gallery wasn’t about to close I could have easily lasted the whole 360-minute duration. When I listen to the smokey lounge jazz of When the Lights go Down I feel similarly in awe. I just don’t want it to stop. The intro is two and a half minutes long (four of The Vault’s ten tracks will have already finished by this point) but there’s no rush – It’s a delight to bask in the sound of a band at the top of their game. And when the vocals do arrive it’s like the loving embrace of a long lost friend. Some of Prince’s creations floor you with their otherworldliness and others hit you with their virtuosic flawless execution. When the Lights go Down is a textbook example of the latter.
179: Alphabet St
Lovesexy (1988)
Yes THAT Alphabet St. The one even folk who don’t like Prince sing along to. Don’t mistake my triple-digit listing as apathy. There’s just a lot of competition. Alphabet St is a Day-Glo, gangly puppy. A harlequin skeleton where every joint’s an elbow. How does it even stand upright, let alone jerk its body like a horny pony would? Being one of his most-played hits you forget just how damn weird it is. Even without the video it’s an all-syrup Super Squishee ride through kids TV, brought to you by the letters L, S, and D… or W, T, and F. But not G. Ingrid Chavez famously misses out the seventh letter while reciting the alphabet. On a web Q&A in the early 2000s, I remember Prince being asked about the omission and his reply was Ingrid had something else on her mind. Everyone got the intended drift. But maybe what really distracted her was the sheer lunacy happening around her. Is that a cuica? Sure, why not? The 12″ version is even more chaotic and subtitled “This Is Not Music… This Is A Trip” but if this remix is any kind of trip it’s a self-indulgent one through his Fairlight synthesizer’s sound banks. Without vocals, the relentless button-bashing is too masturbatory to fully love. An unreleased and more restrained part 2 is slightly better, yet both parts are infinitely preferable to what would become of Alphabet St in later live shows. The swift morph into a sped-up country hoedown is an ignoble fate to befall such a loveable rogue. Shine on you crazy cartoon diamond.
180: Revelation
HITnRUN Phase Two (2015)
Not to be confused with Resolution or The Revolution, Revelation is a late-career high-point, initially released on the internet in 2014 but with its pharaoh and Hebrew references, I suspect its origins date back to The Rainbow Children. Snatches of sax float in on the wind alongside half-formed memories of jazz and ennui. It’s all very solemn. A track for deep introspection. So we’re off-balance when Prince asks “can I play with it now?” and a soul-bare guitar solo reaches us from whichever plain he now resides. That moment floors me every time. If the album had ended there, Revelation could have launched a thousand myths and conspiracy theories. It would have made a stellar swan song. The Doppler effect at the end sounds like his voice ascending the heavens. Instead, we’re brought back down to earth by Big City with it’s bluntly resolute ‘that’s it!’ sign-off. Who would have thought a song with Zappa aspirations could be the prosaic choice?
181: Electric Intercourse
Unreleased (1983) / Purple Rain Deluxe (2017)
In 2017, folk began to reappraise Electric Intercourse’s history after the previously assumed to be non-existent studio version made a surprise appearance. For years a live bootleg had been kicking around and was thought to be the final version intended for the Purple Rain album, taken from the same concert as I Would Die 4 U, Baby I’m A Star and Purple Rain (and like that closing trio overdubbed shortly after). Was the newly-released studio mix recorded before or after that performance? Was it intended as a demo or a replacement? I would have thought it’s an early draft as it’s a nice curio but the live performance is where the spine tingles are. The question is moot anyway. Does it matter which version ultimately got replaced by The Beautiful Ones? The real question is how the hell did Prince write 180 better songs than this?
182: Papa
Come (1994)
Before today I’d never closely listened to Papa. The child-abuse theme was always too ALL CAPS. The smacks too visceral. It took until now to realise the abusive father commits suicide and that part is written in nine-foot steel letters! Previously I’d obviously averted my ears like a cowardly citizen and wrapped myself in the comforting duvet of underwater blues. Self-preservation. And that’s coming from someone blessed with a trauma-free upbringing. How those less fortunate perceive the song is beyond my ken. Papa feels like it should have an “if you were affected by issues discussed” helpline number tagged on the end but instead has the next best thing: the NPG pierce the storm clouds with a 30-second blast of healing sunlight while Prince ties a rainbow on it. A welcome chance to rearrange your face before you enter the next track… which is Race. Why did I ever think this was his sex album?
183: Dionne
The Truth (1998)
Knock back Prince’s advances and with acoustic ninjutsu he’ll rub your nose in all the things you’re set to miss out on. This is what you could have won: a trip to the Champs-Élysées; your name whispered; a shared martini and a dance to the songs of Henry Mancini till dawn. The consolation prize is having your name forever canonised in Prince’s oeuvre so I think Dionne will bounce back. And who is she? Dionne Farris, the vocalist on Arrested Development’s Alphabet St-sampling Tennessee, believes it’s about her and has written an as-yet-unreleased book and album about their friendship. She received Dionne in the post from him in 1997 and believes the line “did u get the tape I sent u?” in One of Your Tears references this. Even if she’s mistaken it’s a shame those two Truth tracks weren’t sequenced together as they make a great pairing. One wears a mask of I’m-doing-great forced joviality; the other sketches the broken-voiced moment the mask slips. Perfection crafted from rejection. Along with classics like When Doves Cry, The Beautiful Ones and How Come You Don’t Call Anymore, Dionne makes the convincing case that a spurned Prince is the best Prince.
184: I Love U, But I Don’t Trust U Anymore
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)
One of Prince’s most beautiful and forgotten ballads. As intimate as anything on his One Nite Alone album. Ani DiFranco is used sparingly like a delicate spice, while Prince doesn’t so much tickle the ivories but uses acupuncture pressure points to lull them into deep, melancholic bliss. Jorge Luis Borges once wrote “to be in love is to create a religion whose god is fallible”. I Love U, But I Don’t Trust U Anymore is the sound of the ashes from the last remaining temple drifting on a cold, indifferent breeze.
185: The Future
Batman (1989)
I always remember the Batman album being bleaker than it truly is, and that’s down to the tone set by the opening track. With the removal of Dance With the Devil, it’s up to The Future to tip the scales away from goofball comedy and love ballads, towards something more befitting of a Burton-esque gothic Gotham. It’s a somber aperitif. The salt added to cooking wine to stop chefs from polishing the bottle off. Prince, with his face lit from below, tells us he’d rather drink razor blades from a paper cup, while a choir of lost souls harmonise amid off-key and off-time Crystal Ball strings. Is this another tale from his long, dark, pilled-up night of the soul? Anna Stasia without the rapture? If so, it appears ecstasy’s side effects can include visions of a dystopian future and spiders-in-the-brain synths.
186: U Know
Art Official Age (2014)
U Know kicks off a run of superb but similar-sounding, futuristic RnB on Art Official Age that’s easy to overlook following the oxygen-hogging opening quartet. It brings your blood pressure down after the eurodance, sci-fi plot twists, emotional breakdowns and whatever The Gold Standard is. A chance to reboot after your mental bandwidth gets choked. On its day U Know can be my favourite song from this seductive middle-section but loses points by lifting the beat and moans from Mila J’s Blinded – a sample so unusually large for Prince that it almost tips the song into being a cover. In the dancehall world, it would be labelled a version. Ignoring the ethical questions this raises (the first Mila heard of U Know was when she discovered it on Soundcloud) Prince adds enough top-spin to send it into the heavens. The verses hammer out a staccato flow of robotic legalese, which could be the iTunes terms and conditions for all I can make out, but explode into a chromatic firework display of light and neo-soul adoration in the chorus. I have detailed thoughts on how this song fits into the album narrative, which I won’t bore you with here, but I do believe all this relationship legal-wrangling and hitting on attached women is part of Mr Nelson’s old life before being woken in the future. Before he stopped believing in possessions. Before he learnt there are no such words as me or mine. Although Mila J may tell you he always believed that.
187: When 2 R in Love
The Black Album (1987) / Lovesexy (1988)
Poor When 2 R in Love. A song with no true home. The sweet and lullaby-like ballad (his last tailor-made side 1 closer) always sounded like it wandered into the wrong neighbourhood on the Black Album (even more so when nestled up to Bob George on the eventual CD release) and on Lovesexy it was the refugee stowaway, sheltering under I Wish U Heaven‘s protective wing. Two places to bed for the night but no sense of belonging. At one point it was even scheduled to be the title track of a compilation of ballads. You can’t say Prince didn’t try to find its forever home. But who needs an album setting when your Linn drum snaps like teenage hearts and your synths caress with the sound of the universe purring. On second thoughts, When 2 R in Love probably found it’s rightful home on the flip side of the Scandalous 7″ single. Two drum machine halves forming a perfect yin yang of love and lust.
188: The Ride
Unreleased (1993) / Crystal Ball (1998)
The Ride appears on a multitude of live merch but the only official audio release was on Crystal Ball’s third disc – a fierce squall of live guitar realness amid a sea of Pro Tools tinkerings. It’s half the length of The Undertaker’s ur-recording but crams in the same amount of cocksure swag at double the intensity. Prince rides in on his Purple Rain motorbike, offers to take you to Lake Minnetonka, showboats with a few wheelies and then zooms off in a cloud of dirt and blues. In The Ride’s own words, if you like it real slow, the Undertaker version’s got days. But if you want to take the short cut, Crystal Ball knows the way.