Tracks

Prince: "U Got The Look"

(1987)

By Amir Nezar | 10 January 2008

So Robbie Williams and Prince have been making it onto my mixes lately. It probably has to do with the fact that I’ve made, like, five “Dance Mixes,” more accurately titled, “Too Hot for TV” mixes. But no matter how many I make, Williams and the Purple One are on each installment. Here’s why Prince’s “U Got the Look” is synonymous for me with “U Made the Cut.”

There are certain bad things that happen to musicians. You may have heard of drug overdoses and suicides. But after the big three (toss in being dropped by your label), there’s Jesus (irony, anyone? Anyone?). Jesus has killed Prince’s good music. Just as Miles Davis made his craziest, most erotic music when he was tore-the-fuck-up, Prince was at his peak when he was making videos with tons of skimpily dressed women doing dirty dances, and wearing assless pants. This was about that time. “U Got the Look” is funk on a bender, and it sounds delicious. You get the toms going “du-du-du-du-dum,” and then SMACK, the first synthesized drum beat and that squelch of synths. The man with more eye-make up than your blue-haired grandma is singing “You got the look / You musta took / A whole hour just to make up your face / Bayyybaaaah,” and be-damned if this isn’t bliss. The song is a funk bender because it’s always veering towards chaos; vocals get manipulated, synths ram a hundred miles an hour into a huge beat, and there’s this line about “Let’s get to ramming.” Guitar squalls crash the party as some coked-out point. And yet it’s all deftly held under control; shit gets loud, but no cops are gonna break this party up. Hooks are scattered everywhere, picked up and discarded like strung out beautiful baby dolls. And over it all, reigns the Prince Supreme, before he was wholesome, before he got political – when his music was such sex-in-a-molotov-cocktail genius that I got caught at an embarrassing moment by my roommates herky-jerking my shoulders like I was getting paid a million bucks to move it.