Songoftheday 4/6/19 - When the day turns into the last day of all time, I can say I hope you are in these arms of mine...
from the EP The Beautiful Experience (1993) and album The Gold Experience (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 22
Today's song of the day comes from Prince, who in the early 1990s was fighting with his record label along with making a shit-ton of new music, some released, some not, with his 1992 release Love Symbol Album scoring him a pair of top-40 pop hits with "My Name Is Prince" as well as the top-ten "7". His label finally released a double-album (or 3 CD) compilation, his first, called The Hits/The B-Sides, which had the single "Pink Cashmere" that nearly made the top-40 as well. At the same time, Prince had changed his name to be a hieroglyphic-style emblem foretold on the last album, with the Warner Brothers Records scrambling to send out discs to news organizations to use for what he now called himself as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince". While this was all happening in 1993, the singer was trying to get out of his contract with Warners, feeling his music wasn't promoted properly, and pushed to have two more albums released with the former bootleg The Black Album and Come. Also, he got them to agree to have "The Artist" release a one-off single through the independent company Bellmark, which previously was famous for the one-hit-wonder smash "Whoomp! There It Is" from Tag Team, one of the biggest singles of the rock era. The resulting song, "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World", was released as a single, then as an EP, at the beginning of 1994, where its straightforward pop smoothness quickly pleased fans and the general public alike, landing him his biggest pop hit since "Diamonds And Pearls" in 1991. It was written for his then-girlfriend Mayte, and was so non-experimental that it actually is more shocking...
"The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" became the late artist's nineteenth and eventually final top ten pop hit in April of 1994. The song also spent a week at #2 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine, and crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list at #25. Internationally, the single was also a massive success, landing Prince his only British #1, where he stayed for two weeks. He also topped the singles charts in Australia, Spain, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and reached the top ten in Canada (#3), Ireland (#4), Belgium (#4), Norway (#4), France (#5), Austria (#5), Germany (#9), and Italy (#9). The single would eventually appear on Prince's 1995 album The Gold Experience, along with track "Shhh", which made it to #62 on the R&B Airplay chart without being released as a single. (It was also a pop airplay hit for Tevin Campbell as well.) But before that, he would release his Come album, and have another top-40 hit (SOTD to come).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the "Mustang Mix" of the song that he performed on Top of the Pops in 1994...
And finally, at the World Music Awards that same year (obvs lipsyching)...
Up tomorrow: A country star's career gets started with a lot of native appropriation.
Comments