Trollheart

Album title: Prince
Artiste: Prince
Genre: R&B/Funk/Pop
Year: 1979
Label: Warner Bros
Producer: Prince
Chronological position: Second album
Notes:
Album chart position: 52 (US)
Singles: “I wanna be your lover”, “Why you wanna treat me so bad”, “Still waiting”, “Sexy dancer”, “Bambi”
Lineup:
Prince: Everything. Again.

Holy good fuck, Warners weren't kidding around here, were they? They wanted a hit single and they made damn sure that they ... didn't get one. But it wasn't for the lack of releasing tracks, as it looks like half the album (more, in fact: five tracks out of nine) were put out as singles. Still no hit though. Interesting that Prince recorded this in a few weeks. Warners said, “We need a better album”, he said “Just leave that with me” and less than a month later he said “There you go.” Amazing. Does it suffer from being rushed though? Was it rushed? Prince seems like the kind of guy who could walk into a studio with nothing and walk out a few weeks later with two albums' worth of material!

Review begins

We're funking off, folks (I said funking!) with the first of five singles, “I wanna be your lover”, which shows no sign, I must say, of being rushed or of him churning out anything in desperation to satisfy the suits at Warners. Again, he's doing everything, and again my mind is blown. I mean, I've heard multi-instrumentalists, but this guy was in a different league! Some serious synth going on here. More of a rock vibe then to “Why you wanna treat me so bad” (another single) with a sense of Bowie in there somewhere and some really cool bass work. The keys in this are immense and the chorus is killer. How was this not a hit? Fucking superb guitar solo at the end. This man was a music god, was he not?

“Sexy dancer” smoulders, both with funk goodness and with the almost effortless sexual energy that would characterise so many of Prince's hits; it's not too much in the way of lyrics, more a kind of raw, animal expression of lust as he pants “I want your body!” Sizzling. Of course, if that's not a girl doing the “ooh-ah”s with him then I guess Prince is indulging in the all-time number one favourite pastime for men! Wonderful peppy piano, first time he's used it on either album and boy can he play! Dancing slower then for the first ballad, “When we're dancing close and slow” - maybe something of a cumbersome title, especially as he already has two tracks with more than five words in them, but whereas “Sexy dancer” smoulders and swaggers, this breathes slow and deep and stretches langorously, again effortless but this time it's more a “come to me” vibe than “here I come”, as in the previous. More lovely piano peppers the tune with some swirling synth work, and taken together these two songs form the perfect seduction: “Sexy dancer” the pursuit and “When we're dancing” the sweet surrender and conquest.

The afterglow comes in the second ballad, the truly gorgeous “With you”. Why, if they were going to release five singles, did those idiots at Warners not release this or the previous? They surely would have been hits. This is just so beautiful, favourite so far, and that's saying something as I love this album up to this, and see no reason why I won't love the rest. Well, I love “Bambi”, which despite its cutesy title is anything but: it's a dirty, lowdown, sleazy rocker where Prince breaks out the guitar and the growl he would often use. This man was so versatile. Speaking of versatile, a semi-country song next? “Still waiting” sounds a little like The Eagles or Bob Seger, with a lovely yearning croon from His Princeness. Is that harmonica? Again displaying stunning lack of foresight, the big W failed to release “I feel for you”, which was of course a massive hit for Chaka Khan five years later. Oh yes, it's easy to be clever with hindsight. Fun, too. Adnittedly his original version is a little less punchy than hers, but hey, at least he won the Grammy for songwriter, even if he didn't score with the single as a musician himself, and he got his voice on her version too. What a difference five years makes, eh?

And a superb smoking ballad to end, though it's not a sugary, digital piano effort but instead has real teeth, with a biting edge and a dark warning in the title. Thick heavy bass and sludgy synth adds to the sense of darkness and brooding about it, then the falsetto vocal at the end amps everything up to ten. Superb ending to another superb album. Just superb. Have I said superb? Well, it is. Superb, that is. Superb.

Track listing and ratings

I wanna be your lover
Why you wanna treat me so bad
Sexy dancer
When we're dancing close and slow
With you (If there was a rating higher I could go, this would earn it!)
Bambi
Still waiting
I feel for you
It's gonna be lonely

Afterword:

For a debut album, For You pretty much blew it out of the water, but this second album blows it out of the stars. Not a single bad song, and some absolute corkers. Again, surprising me (though not that much this time round, as I had already been floored by the debut) with its maturity, musicianship and songwriting, Prince is the second of the holy trinity (or perhaps that should read Unholy trinity!) which led up to what many believe is his best album, even if it wasn't as successful as his later releases.

Rating:

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018