THIS could be awkward. Back in 2008, the music critic Ann Powers tells us in her retrospective on the career of the artist eternally known as Prince, she somehow found herself in the Purple One’s bedroom. “I nervously contemplate the room’s heart-shaped bed and the Bible on the nightstand,” she recalled in Archive on 4: A Night with Prince, last Saturday night.
For those fearing the worst, relax. Prince had just chosen his bedroom to maximise Powers’s listening experience as she hears the new album he has recorded with the singer Bria Valente, an album he has written and produced and one which is very much aimed at the boudoir.
“Remember those old Barry White records?” Prince asks Power. “A whole lot of people are going to get pregnant off of this.”
A Night with Prince on Radio 4 saw Power spin off from her memories of her own night with Prince to look at the man’s awesomeness, basically. His sonic innovations, his attempts to cross over to a mainstream audience (at the start of his career he was booed and bottled off the stage while supporting the Rolling Stones. They weren’t keen on his trench coat and bikini briefs look. And possibly his blackness), his battle to claim ownership of his own music and the constant tension in him between sexuality and spirituality.
Read More: Prince Philip and performative grieving
The carnality of Prince’s songs was up front and centre here and given a sex-positive spin by Power and her guests who argued that Prince was never controlling when it came to sex in his lyrics. Indeed, he wanted his women to have the upper hand.
But it was the spirituality that Powers responded most to, specifically when talking about The Cross from Sign O’ The Times, one of his masterpieces (says me and everyone else who’s heard it).
“I love The Cross,” Powers explained, “not for its somewhat moralistic lyrics about how faith makes burdens bearable. But for the way the song opens beyond those words into spiritual bliss as all great religious music does.
“Prince’s guitar leads the prayer. The song lifts you up like a real heavenly ascension. This is what I want from spiritual music. The expression of what words can’t capture.”
Amen.
Listen Out For: Luther Vandross: So Amazing, Radio 2, tonight, 9pm. Gregory Porter celebrates the life and voice of one of America’s greatest ever singers. (This is also not up for debate.)
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