Finally: I give you Prince and one of his songs which (for me) stands above the rest (and perhaps it's not quite what you might expect)

There was are recent entry here in which I trailed Prince, but so far never got around to writing it. So here it is. Prince was once one of my bands (the others were The Kinks, The Beatles and Steely Dan), but like almost everyone else, including those three, he seemed to go off the boil just a little as time went on, though it has to be said that Prince off the boil is still ahead of many at their best. Someone once pointed out that after the few years around When Doves Cry and Kiss, he seemed to have lost his gift for striking lyrics.

Then there was the problem - well, I regarded it and regard it as a problem, that because he was so musically gifted, ironically he had a tendency to coast when, for example, he was doing a funk workout (or what was thought of as funk in the Eighties and early Nineties). Perhaps, like too many ‘stars’, he began to believe his own bullshit. Something similar seemed to have happened to Stevie Wonder, who, as far as this punter is concerned really lost his way after. Anyway I gave up buying ‘the latest Prince’ a long time ago, mainly because he had stopped stretching himself. But I still have quite a few of his CDs though I must admit I don’t listen to them half as much as I used to.

This track is from a CD called The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, which was just a collection of recordings he had knocking around which he allowed

Take a listen (and, by the way, I think the UN, the Yanks, the Brits, the Russians, the Chinks, the Frogs, the Krauts and whoever else is available should put aside their differences for a moment and get together to institute a universal ban on the use of the word ‘reality’ in any song. Ever, even if it does rhyme neatly with ‘spoke to me’ and ‘fantasy’).