Prince – Lovesexy [CD]

Lovesexy was a mind trip, like a psychedelic movie. Either you went with it and had a mind-blowing experience or you didnt. Prince, Rolling Stone, 1990

Lovesexywas not the album that the music industry was expecting Prince to release in 1988. In what Jon Pareles ofThe New York Timesdescribed as one of the most enjoyable and peculiar moves of the 1980s, Prince announced that he would follow up the critically reveredSign o the TimeswithThe Black Album, a raw collection of hard-rocking, funky dance music. But then, a mere week before its scheduled release, he scrapped his plans and demanded that Warner Bros. destroy all copies of the album. Only one of the songs from that album, When 2 R in Love, would be saved from the cutting room floor, and within seven weeks Prince had recorded an all new collection of songs to join it on the albumLovesexy.

Lovesexy was a brighter, lighter, and more melodic release, inspired by the more spiritual direction that Princes music had started to take in the second half of the decade. We need love and honesty, peace and harmony, positivity, he sings in the albums closing track, echoing the sentiment that courses throughout the album: after confronting societys deepest troubles in his earlier political work,Lovesexysought the unite and uplift. In Princes words,Lovesexywas his gospel album.