Oh My God (and Jesus as well) - Lovesexy by Prince

Lovesexy has always been a bit of a problematic record for me. It was when it came out and it remains so now. First of all it came out just after Sign O The Times, so my expectation levels were ridiculously high....after the whole Black Album thing feverish was barely adequate to describe the anticipation around what Prince would do next. It has probably taken me many years to reclaim this record from the 'stuff that just wasn't as good as what came before' pile and give it a fair crack of the critical whip. Then of course there's the cover. I know it was shot by a cool photographer, I know it is meant to be a representation of rebirth, spirituality and sexuality......but really it's just shite isn't it. I mean come on fella, I know you've shown plenty of your flesh over the years but you've got absolutely no strides on at all there mate.........I had to walk into school with that record! I might as well have just given my dinner money straight to the 3rd year bullies. And I was in 6th form at the time...... Finally, given the whole 'spiritual rebirthing' crack that was all over this record (terrible title as well by the way....), as an atheist it's been hard to really connect with some of it. Certainly at the time of release I wasn't yet aware of my atheism, but even then I wasn't able to engage with the songs lyrically. It's perhaps been made easier in later years as I have grown up a bit (careful now...) and have more of an ability to understand and respect faith even if I still don't and never will believe it. There's increasingly little in the world to actually have any faith in that I can understand why people would hold on to whatever they can, maybe I'm just too much of a rationalist to go with that, but I'm less inclined to be as hateful or aggressive towards it than perhaps I once was. Therefore I'm not really going to focus on that side of it too much, other than to say the main flaw the spiritual themes bring to the piece as a whole is that they seem to make the music appear almost as an afterthought....here's a notion, I'll think it into a theology of sorts, ooh look here's some lyrics, I'll just hang some music around them. This viewpoint is of course made instantly preposterous when you remember that the lead single from this album was Alphabet Street. Perhaps one of the things that made Lovesexy a bit of a let down at the time was the very fact that Alphabet Street was and remains a stone cold piece of genius, the pop song as proper art. Plant it anywhere on any of Prince's classic albums any it will fit right in snug as you like. His last great single....? Hmmm, there's not many afterwards that I'd entertain with a place at that table.....Gett Off, Musicology, Black Sweat......and even then that's probably a whole different conversation. Don't be getting me wrong now, this isn't a bad record in ANY way, shape or form. I'm giving it a bit of a hard time, and in some ways I'm being unfair. It is still ridiculously funky in places, Eye Know and Dance On being cases in point. It still has huge pop tunes. It is also however a bit over produced for me....it's the first Prince record since his eponymous second album that sounds too deliberately crafted, even if that kinda contradicts what I said earlier about the music. It's not slapdash or tossed off, it just sounds like it will just.....do. There's little here that sounds spontaneous, accidental, off the cuff......or, ironically, a 'gift from God' moment. It is a great period of Prince's career however.....the live shows of the time were crazy, the after shows are some of the greatest things I have ever heard and if we are all very lucky the Camden Palace after show that was filmed may one day get a proper release. We got the 12" version of I Wish You Heaven ( rescuing it from the twee mishmash on the album) backed with the Parliament/Funkadelic aping Scarlet Pussy (I know, but he writes them, not me......). Many of the articles I have read since Prince's death have differed around what his 'imperial' period was - some just lazily go for the 80's as a whole, some are more precise. I'm of the latter school.....as good as some of the other records are, you have to pitch your tent in the 1999-Sign O The Times field. Controversy is too patchy to allow us to start that list with Dirty Mind, and sadly I can't argue for anything other than an artistic canyon opening up to separate Lovesexy and its successors from the 5 albums that came before them. But if you've never heard Lovesexy in its entirety, how can I put it without unnecessary hyperbole........it's still an album that Madonna or Michael Jackson would have killed to have next to their name. So maybe go out and buy it. Just take a brown paper bag for when you leave the shop......