Party like it's Armageddon...
76. Prince "Let's Go Crazy (extended version)"
To my pubescent eye, Prince initially seemed like just another silk-sheet R&B smoothie, albeit one with a seriously overactive libido, which I had no taste for at the time, naive young lad that I was. "Let's Go Crazy" was the song that convinced me otherwise, and it's also one of the select few songs from the 1980's top 40 that has gotten better with age. There's traces of everybody from the Stones (listen to the big slashing guitars) to Sly Stone (the stomp of the beat and the relentlessly infectious chorus) to Bob Dylan (in the sardonic vision of the lyrics). But above all, Prince has never, before or since, rocked out this hard. This extended version includes the piano based midsection and great ending guitar freakout absent from the single version, and the portentous introduction which sets the stage for a song that looks at death and imminent apocalypse and has only one marching order: Dance, Motherfucker!
To my pubescent eye, Prince initially seemed like just another silk-sheet R&B smoothie, albeit one with a seriously overactive libido, which I had no taste for at the time, naive young lad that I was. "Let's Go Crazy" was the song that convinced me otherwise, and it's also one of the select few songs from the 1980's top 40 that has gotten better with age. There's traces of everybody from the Stones (listen to the big slashing guitars) to Sly Stone (the stomp of the beat and the relentlessly infectious chorus) to Bob Dylan (in the sardonic vision of the lyrics). But above all, Prince has never, before or since, rocked out this hard. This extended version includes the piano based midsection and great ending guitar freakout absent from the single version, and the portentous introduction which sets the stage for a song that looks at death and imminent apocalypse and has only one marching order: Dance, Motherfucker!
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