Retro Spins: Prince - Lovesexy

 

Prince's 1988 album, Lovesexy, answers the question of how many albums you need from the singer that features him naked on the cover. The answer. Zero. Absolutely none. By far this is the worst, and most unappealing album cover from Prince in my collection. Yeah, it just doesn't work for me.

Though it went gold, critically, Lovesexy was the least successful Prince album since 1981's Controversy. It also wasn't initially the album intended to be released. In December of 1987, Prince was going to release The Black Album. However, citing a spiritual epiphany and believing it was evil, he opted to withdraw that record, and cancelled its release. This led to The Black Album becoming one of the highest bootleg records of the era, created from the few promotional copies that were known to be in existence at the time.

With no new album, Prince rushed back into the studio, and began work on what would become Lovesexy. Unlike prior albums, it simply doesn't have the commercial hits that would be expected from the artist who delivered 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign 'O The Times. However, that stated, that's also not to say it's bad.

I think a lot of the critical reception was that this album was on the heels of Sign 'O The Times, and that was considered to be his opus. So, in that regard, I can understand the negative response.

However, for me, I feel quite the opposite. I like this album front to back. It's quite frankly a diamond in the rough of relatively unknown Prince material. The title track has a very familiar sound in retrospect of things to come on his 1989 Batman soundtrack, and to me, that makes it one of the standouts because I love that album.

I suppose if I didn't like the whole thing that this could be problematic. While it does contain nine tracks, early pressings of the CD don't break these down individually. Instead, it's just one long extended play track. This could make it annoying to get to the song you want if you're not playing it in its entirety.

While I certainly don't need any Prince albums with him stark naked on the cover, this one is definitely one you should check out. Don't skip the classics by any means, but also don't miss this one.

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