Most posts on this blog lately feature a load of different, spuriously-linked songs, and gone are the days when I'd write about any one song in detail. But I've been reading Jeff Tweedy's new book, World Within A Song, and I like the way each chapter focuses on just one track. Often he goes off on a ramble and the chapter ends up having very little to do with the track in question, but it still makes for a fascinating read.
So I thought I'd try something similar. A series in which I focus on one song per post (although inevitably, as below, I might end up mentioning others). I'm not sure I'll have anything remotely interesting to say, and I'm certainly no Jeff Tweedy, but I like to set myself little challenges to stop life getting too dull.
I'm starting at complete random with U Got The Look. It was the first Prince single I bought. Although it wasn't just Prince, was it? It was Sheena Easton too. And at that time, I was possibly more familiar with her than I was with Prince himself. I grew up on Radio 2, Tel and Ray Moore in the morning, Diddy David Hamilton and the mighty John Dunn after school. Back in 1980, when Sheena Easton released her debut single off the back of her appearance in Esther Rantzen's Big Time, Radio 2 was the only station I listened to.
Despite her Lanarkshire lass, Esther Rantzen & Radio 2 beginnings, Sheena ended up being a much bigger star on the other side of the pond. After her Bond theme, she pretty much gave up on the UK (or maybe we gave up on her), whereas in the States she had 15 Billboard Top 40 hits, seven of which made the Top 10. Over there, she's one of the best-selling British female vocalists of the 80s, and because she jumped effortlessly between genres, she is the only artist to have a Top 5 hit on each of Billboard's primary singles charts: the rechristened-to-avoid-Dolly-confusion "Morning Train (Nine to Five)" (Pop and Adult Contemporary), "We've Got Tonight" with Kenny Rogers (Country and Adult Contemporary) and "Sugar Walls" (R&B and Dance).
That last one was written specially for her by Prince, but it caused quite a stir when moral rights campaigner Tipper Gore (the American Mary Whitehouse) named and shamed it on her Filthy Fifteen - a list of songs so indecent that I had to go and make a playlist out of them immediately. I'm not suggesting Tipper did the same. She probably used a C60.
But we're not here to talk about Sheena, we're here to talk about U Got The Look. Back when Prince died, 8 years ago now, I cobbled together a list of my Top Ten Prince Songs, and put this at Number 3. I'm not sure I'd stand by that list now - Raspberry Beret would be much higher, for a start. And where was Little Red Corvette? Take Me With You? Kiss!?!
An impossible task. But my point is, I don't think U Got The Look is really up there with the very best Prince had to offer. To use a football analogy (has it come to this?), it's in the Championship, not the Premier League. But it gets extra points from me because it was my first, and we always remember our first, don't we, Prince? (It's hard to write about Prince without every other sentence becoming an innuendo. They just bounce off the tongue...)
Here's what I wrote back in 2016...
I was 15, and I thought Prince must surely be the king of chat-up lines...Your face is jammingYour body's heck-a-slammingIf love is goodLet's get to rammingAnd they played that on the radio, and nobody batted an eyelid. Because it was Prince.You know, listening back now, I think this is Prince's answer to Paradise By The Dashboard Light. (Maybe it's just the baseball metaphors.) The only difference being that Prince, unlike Meat 'n' Jim, didn't have to promise the earth to get his end away. Because he was Prince.
Meat Loaf - Paradise By The Dashboard Light
I'm not sure I recognise the comments about chat up lines above... they're obviously mine, but I must have been in a particularly bullish mood when I wrote them. The truth is, at the age of 15 I was terrified at the very idea of chatting anyone up, and I certainly wouldn't have used a line like that. But I think the point I was trying to make - very clumsily - is that Prince represented a kind of hyper-masculine sexuality without ever appearing macho or chauvinistic. I can't think of any other male rock star who's walked that tightrope so carefully. I'm not sure 'Men with a capital M' wanted to be him, but women definitely wanted to be with him.
Actually, there's a much better chat up line in U Got The Look than the one I mentioned above...
You got the look (you got the look)
You must'a took (you must'a took)
A whole hour just to make up your face, baby
Closin' time, ugly lights, everybody's inspected (Everybody's inspected)
But you are a natural beauty unaffected (Unaffected)
Did I say an hour?
My face is red, I stand corrected (I stand corrected)
That's the bit in which Prince realises his chat up line could actually be taken as an insult, and then corrects himself. What a great piece of writing.
Despite the fact that Prince portrayed himself as sexually voracious in his lyrics, he did so with his tongue firmly in his cheek. There's a sense of humour to all these songs that more macho songwriters do not possess. Also, I'm not entirely sure that it wasn't all an act - when the hell did he get time to chat up, seduce and perform in the bedroom? The guy was a complete workaholic. Perhaps the truth is closer to how Bill Callahan imagined it...
Prince alone in the studio
It's two a.m. and all the girls are gone
The girls thought they were going to be able
To have sex with him
They wore their special underwear
Once the tracks were laid down
Prince's back turned around
Raspberry headphones on his head
On his ears
Prince alone in the studio
It's three a.m.
Prince hasn't eaten in eighteen hours
Dinner's burned on the stove
But Prince, he doesn't even know
Prince alone in the studio
It's four a.m.
And he finally gets that guitar track right
And it's better than anything any girl could ever give him
Because prince is alone
Prince is alone
Oh Prince, you are so alone
And when it's all complete
He feels like a hunter on the street
And when it's all complete
He feels like a hunter on the street
Actually, if you watch the video, that becomes even more likely... because the whole song is just a dream. It starts with Prince falling asleep in his dressing room, and ends with him waking up, looking sad, confused and alone.
I didn't know any of this when I was 15. All I knew was that Prince was cooler than any rock star I'd ever seen in my life. Three and a half decades later, that's still the case.
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