As a music fan growing up in the eighties, the lead off singles that heralded each new Prince album were always something to look out for, an event offering up a rare treat in an all too often sea of bland.* '1999', 'When Doves Cry', Alphabet Street', 'Kiss', 'Sign O The Times' - fine singles all that in their own way pushed boundaries just that bit further so strange that his first UK number one came in a decade of struggle for the artist instead of the one he part ruled. Maybe there was always something just too off the wall about his best work to enjoy mass acceptance - the bass free face slap funk of 'When Doves Cry' or the compressedtowithinaninchofitslife 'Kiss' for example are borderline experimental recordings with skew enough to not invite the universal appeal of a number one. Maybe, but whatever, 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World' (not a cover of the Charlie Rich song) is as shamelessly direct and risk free a song as he's ever written."Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world? Its plain to see you're the reason that God made a girl" - unmistakably Prince, over the chime of a guitar sparkling like sunlight on water, his falsetto picks out the lyric with a precise sense of wonder at the power and purity of love that banishes the sleazy bump and groan innuendo that had become his adopted trademark. It's the sort of song Take That should themselves have been writing/covering instead of trying to be clever beyond their talent, yet it's precisely this normality and absence of the unexpected that makes it a far less satisfying single than the brace mentioned above.
At a shade under five minutes long I'm on constant tenterhooks for Prince to whip off the mask and blast out a squally solo, for his voice to stretch to a squawk or for a sudden key change to shift it into leftfield to break up the ordinary. But it never comes, and 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World' plays itself out to fade like a stand up recounting a story that has no punchline. Of course, not every story needs a punchline to be memorable or rewarding, but with Prince at the wheel then an interesting journey is the least I expect - I always rely on him to take me to good times at the beach and so it's with a vague feeling of disappointment that he parks up outside an empty warehouse at journey's end.
* 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World' isn't by 'Prince' though, it's by the squiggly symbol he adopted in the early nineties. Unfortunately, my keyboard doesn't have that font and besides, if it looks like a duck and moves like a duck…….
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