215: Solo

Come (1994)
The story of one of Prince’s most hauntingly beautiful creations starts with him seeing the play M. Butterfly. The Broadway show must have left an impression because five years later, when planning a musical, he asked the play’s writer David Henry Hwang to provide a script and to also compose a poem about loss. The musical never happened but a few days after receiving the poem, Solo was born. A version exists with the dream duo of Sonny T and Michael B on bass and drums, but why overegg the lily on the cake? Solo’s power lies in its minimal simplicity. Harps and thunderclaps – summoned by the words ‘angels’ and ‘rain’ respectively – help augment the vocals, but the track’s an acapella through and through. And having dismissed the band and outsourced the lyrics, Prince diverts all his creative energies into letting his voice craft a monument to melancholy. He glides over the vocal registers like they’re black ice. In an alternate universe, countless reality tv contestants are murdering this song instead of the gymnastic melisma of I Will Always Love You.

216: In a Large Room With No Light

Unreleased (1986)
One of his more catchy outtakes. In a Large Room With No Light is so hummable you can be on your seventh listen before snippets of the bleak lyrics bleed through: “a child with no eyes… babies blown to kingdom come…” He isn’t joking when he sings about the lack of light. This is dark. And once you’re aware, the chorus turns from cute allegory into something more dystopian. Like a Hanson video directed by Marylyn Manson. Luckily, The Revolution and Sheila E’s band are on fire here and the backing vocals bubble up like pink champagne. I just wish I can go back to a more innocent time when I sang along with the sha-la-las in blissful ignorance.

217: $

Lotusflow3r (2009)
Seneca, the Roman Stoic, once described the pursuit of riches as “empty and daubed with showy and deceptive colours, with nothing inside to match their appearance”. Almost two thousand years later, the American philosopher Method Man counterpointed with “get the money, dollar dollar bill, y’all!” This track off Lotusflow3r says both at the same time. It skips along with nary a care in the world and the singer (in the breezy manner of someone who’s never had to choose ‘show balance’ on an ATM) tells us that money doesn’t buy happiness. But he sure loves the attention and lifestyle it affords him and wants us all to know it. The hollowness of fame and money is a common theme in Prince’s music. In both Don’t Play Me and My Name is Prince we’re told at the top of the mountain there’s nothing there. Normally the message is God will fill that void, but here dancing and the female gaze is the antidote. And also – in a tragically candid moment – popping pills. It’s such a light-footed, beguiling song that it seems perverse to bring attention to that foreshadowing line, so I’ll end by saying $ is Movie Star without the farce; Life o’ the Party without the spit and nettles. It’s ostentatious in a charming way and just because it glitters doesn’t mean it ain’t gold.

218: Cindy C

The Black Album (1987)
Well here he goes again, falling in love with the face in a magazine, but this is no normal love letter – what elevates Cindy C is the extremes it’s pushed to. Enough eyebrows would have been raised if Prince had left this as a three-verse indecent proposal to Cindy Crawford. But as usual he goes further and the randy devil is in the details. First Prince plies her with booze: elderberry wine and whatever concoction his mixologist Sheila E serves up (listen to her making a percussion cocktail ninety seconds in). Then in the third verse Wendy tears into the supermodel in the right-channel “…she can’t even walk in those shoes… she can’t even dance…” So far, so restrained, and if Prince had plumped for the conventional fade-out at four minutes Ms Crawford could sleep easier. But there’s a fourth verse where a discordant guitar darkens the mood and Prince launches into a spoken verse about her “furry melting thing” awaiting him. This is immediately followed up by him going full-deranged, yelling “what’s the matter with meeeee” while the right-channel voice becomes a justly horrified Cindy. After that plunge into psychosis, the bubblegum chaser of Cat’s verse seems incongruous. Prince was unaware she had lifted the rap from JM Silk’s house tune Music is the Key, and only found out when he initially reused it for Positivity. It was probably best left where Cat found it but at least it lightens the mood. Cindy C is the only Black Album song Prince never played live, suggesting it may hold a particular embarrassment. Or maybe he was sparing the subject’s blushes. Either way, the only times he used the word savoir-faire again on record, was on the spiritually cleansing Eye No and 7.

219: Last December

The Rainbow Children (2001)
Behold an epic, rousing closer to make Andrew Lloyd Webber disown Jesus Christ Superstar as tawdry junk. Last December starts off like Gold or Purple Rain minus the fireworks or frisson. A tame but pleasing, spiritual send-off to finish the record on a gospel high. A happy ending. Closure. And on a lesser album, that would be your lot and you would be thankful. But on The Rainbow Children Prince goes that extra mile and here he gives a turbo injection of guitar just before the three-minute mark. A blistering solo, thrown in like a smoke bomb to disrupt the wholesomeness and tear holes in the Earth. And when the mist clears we hear glimpses of Santana and whispering, fiery-eyed djinns. The four horsemen of the apocalypse perform dressage while the entire cast of human civilisation, living and dead, rejoin the stage for the final curtain call. Prince told us in The Same December that in the end that’s where we’ll go, and now that time has come. The choir returns to hold our hand once more, while we leap into the ravine, Thelma & Louise style, and leave the parting word ‘one’ reverberating in the air for an unnaturally long time, like the last note in A Day in the Life or the final word ever spoken on Earth.

220: 777-9311

What Time Is It? (1982)
Despite Prince writing The Time’s first three albums, the band are such their own entity that it takes a lot for their output to make it onto these pages. 777-9311 forces its way in by brute funk force alone. The bassline is a beaut and the Linn drum pristine, but it’s the final three minutes that truly make this a Prince classic. His Stratocaster guitar solo crashes against the synths as if Shiva has started clapping along; the flame of destruction in his left hand colliding with the drum of creation in his right. The story goes that the title was Dez Dickerson’s home phone number and used without his knowledge. Predictably, the unwanted attention later forced the Revolution guitarist to change his number, but I hear nowadays if you ring those seven digits at midnight you’ll get through to the Hindu Lord of the Dance himself.

221: Sexual Suicide

Unreleased (1985) / Crystal Ball (1998)
A non-fiction book of the same name was written by George Gilder in the 1970s. Gilder’s main premise is sex before marriage and polygamy are destroying civilisation, and will eventually lead to its collapse. Not a theory you expect Prince to have subscribed to so it’s unlikely to be referenced here, but what is the meaning of this song? I’ve found two common interpretations and they hinge on how the chorus is transcribed. Folk who read the lyrics as “people gonna talk sexual suicide” think it’s Prince’s brag that leaving him is akin to killing your sexlife. While those who believe it’s “I’m gonna take a sexual suicide” reckon he’s vowing celibacy if dumped. I hear “talk” so I’m happy with the first bragging interpretation, but if the countless online lyric sites are right, and the sexual suicide is his, then surely masturbation is being referenced rather than celibacy? Not in a literal Michael Hutchence way, but in a petite mort by his own hand way? Remember, this is mid-80s Prince and onanism euphemisms were his stock in trade. Whatever the meaning, this Parade outtake is a perfectly formed peach. A four-in-a-bed romp between Eric Leeds’ sax, a filthy dose of bass, the synths from Girls & Boys and a drumbeat that Prince learnt from Sheila E. Horny in all senses of the word. George Gilder would hate it.

222: Power Fantastic

Unreleased (1986) / The Hits/The B-Sides (1993)
Originally a Wendy & Lisa composition called Carousel, Prince changed the lyrics and recorded Power Fantastic in one take, intending it to be used on the ill-fated Dream Factory album. Eric Leeds said the session gave him goosebumps and revealed the band all felt they had taken part in something special. You can see why. Even in recorded form, hidden on the end of a three-disc compilation, the song has a mystical quality. Sublime and fragile as the fire of life itself, its qualities are difficult to pin down. I’m sure many would feature this in their top 20 Prince songs. It certainly has the potential to get there for me, but at the moment I can only enjoy it on a cerebral level. I sense it has restorative properties beyond my ken, and – like a court reprieve or the handhold of a bystander while the paramedics arrive – it needs to be lived to be fully appreciated. But until the time comes to pull this particular bottle of tonic down from the shelf, it’s good to know it’s there waiting – its essence in reserve like a tree in winter.

223: Insatiable

Diamonds and Pearls (1991)
Written ten months after the release of Scandalous Sex Suite it’s perhaps not surprising Insatiable has a similar sound. The drumbeats on both ballads are reverb-heavy, suggesting a cold, cavernous room with a bed as its altar. Seduction as sermon. Only this time there’s a camcorder involved. But Insatiable also contains elements of every Prince slow jam that’s come before. It has Do Me, Babys vulnerability, International Lovers cockiness, Adore’s reverence and humour. Prince is the Hokusai of soul ballads and the late-night seduction is his Mount Fuji; explored via different moods, landscapes and perspectives. Speaking of Japanese artists, there’s a tradition for calligraphers there to spend hours grinding inks, and only putting brush to paper at the end of the day in a single, short flourish. You can imagine Prince doing the same; spending daylight hours preparing the studio and then as soon as the sun sets, committing the track to tape in a steamy, one-take sitting. Another ode penned to the higher power that is Unbridled Lust.

224: Supercute 

Supercute single (2001) / The Chocolate Invasion (2004)
Supercute was released as a concert-only single and earmarked for the shelved High album. It has a showtune vibe – a red light West Side Story or Grease – where the protagonist Prince sings about his summer nights lover and an entourage of Other Princes join in on the chorus. But things get x-rated fast. The tale begins with the jet sound effect from the late-nineties tracks White Mansion and Come On. It’s his love interest arriving on a 747, but it’s not the only noise we’ll hear that’s a low, humming drone. Later on, the story focuses on toys. And not ones Pixar would write an animated film about, although they may well be called Buzz and Woody. This is the part where Tony/Danny pleasures Maria/Sandy with a vibrator whilst trying to get her to confess her private joy technique. And on a post-2000 Prince single too? Egads! Contrary to popular belief the smut didn’t stop when the cussing did.

225: Purple Music

Unreleased (1982)
Prince gets high on his own supply as he writes a ten-minute dissertation on The Funk and the narcotic qualities of his music. It’s the base ingredient from any rumpshaker in his repertoire, distilled and served uncut. Naked, other than a smattering of Controversy-style rhythm guitar, tantric bass and an intriguing sketch at 8:20 where Prince’s unheard answer to the question “what would you like to bathe in this morning?” disturbs his computer valet to the point of malfunction. It’s a section that only lasts 20 seconds but in just a few words he paints a thousand pictures. All of them NSFW.

226: I Wonder U

Parade (1985)
I Wonder U is barely even a song. The pint-sized Parade piece lasts for 100 seconds, and 15 of those sound like New Position hasn’t finished yet. But the atmosphere in its brief timeframe is electrifying. It’s astounding how much work has gone into something so diminutive. At an early stage, the track included a full orchestra before Prince decided to keep only the flutes. He also removed his vocals to leave only Wendy’s, making it the first song on a Prince studio album sung solely by somebody else (or the only one if you discount the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack and the 3rdeyegirl collaboration). Its short duration makes the track almost subliminal, leaving you no time to dwell on the moods it stirs within – eddies of virgin snow and forgotten dreams swirl but we’re onto the next track before they settle – however like eyebrows or a pinch of salt, it’s absence would leave an oversized void.

227: Fuchsia Light

Unreleased (1988)
I imagine after creating the psychedelic and intricately programmed Lovesexy, Prince unwound by churning out something much blunter and single-minded: like this six-minute industrial funk beat with an array of horns fighting for breathing space. It’s sledgehammer stuff but it does the job. In the words of Le Grind, it shows you what your hips are made for, whilst simultaneously pounding you in the face with unrelenting ardour. The track was recorded for use on Tony LeMans’ album and the story goes that Prince pulled it after returning from the Lovesexy Tour to find Tony having an affair with Ingrid Chavez. If true, the line about fuchsia light being a ”symbol of monogamy and trust” suddenly got a lot more relevant.

228: This Could B(e) Us

Art Official Age (2014) / HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
Prince often retweeted memes he featured in, but the viral “THIS COULD BE US BUT YOU PLAYIN” jpeg of himself and Apollonia inspired an album track. Twice. Out of the two versions of This Could Be Us, the remix is punchier and puts some meat on the space-ballad’s delicate bones. The original starts off with a Close Encounters melody, twinkles like a malfunctioning holodeck and slows to a close HAL-style. But HITnRUN’s revisit takes the sci-fi effects and ramps it up into warp-drive. The second half is now basically an instrumental and all the better for it, although the song’s lyrics aren’t as corny as they first sound. “You want me like a new pair of shoes” and “you’re the cage to my dove” may seem like clumsy and misguided pick-up lines, but in the context of Art Official Age’s narrative, Mr Nelson has yet to receive his first affirmation on how to interact with the opposite sex. The recently awoken time-traveller is still concerned with words like “me” and “mine” and is currently reliving past relationships where he wants to possess and be shown off as a possession. It’s this restricting mindset that’s caging his dove of inner peace. Or hey, Prince may have just grasped for a word rhyming with ‘love’ without thinking too hard about it but where’s the magic in believing that?

229: The One

Newpower Soul (1998)
If you’re looking for a Newpower Soul slow jam that has teeth, something that is rich but not cloying, Until U’re in my Arms Again ain’t the one. And if you’re looking for class and sophistication, a track that delights without leaving an icky taste in your mouth, then Shoo-Bed-Ooh: that ain’t the one. But if you’re looking for a dancefloor respite with a beat that “sweeps you off your tired, weary feet”, with a gentle array of string instruments that lap at the frayed edges of your existence; if you’re looking for a soulful potpourri that doesn’t turn to compost after repeat listens, then look no further, The One is the one.

230: Others Here With Us

Unreleased (1985)
A Parade outtake where Prince wrings every last ounce of blood-curdling horror from his Fairlight synthesiser. Howls, screams, sobs and Psycho string-stabs accompany creepy Sixth Sense lyrics. There are very few Prince tunes you could describe as genuinely chilling but Others Here With Us cuts to the bone. In the right frame of mind it’s more unsettling than a Victorian doll’s head outside your window on a stormy night. But the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman: this was kept in the vault with every other that delved too far into scary waters. An alternate version exists with added orchestration but that just distracts from the acid-washed terror and like Mavis Staples once said: “the devil ain’t got no music” – just a backing-track made up of the screaming souls of the innocent. If you’ve never heard the original then do yourself a favour and listen to it once. Alone. With the lights off. And then never ever sleep again.

231: The Word

3121 (2006)
In the beginning was The Word and The Word was good. Not great – the beat seemed basic and the acoustic riff forgettable – but the melody was a hummer. Above-average filler. Not the first name on the teamsheet but a dependable squad player. Then The Word was heard through headphones and hordes of musical elements came scuttling from the shadows, like woodland sprites out of the presence of humans. The elves brought their turntable tricks while the faeries cast spells of ethereal ambiance. Dryads provided Latin percussion, the goblins wreaked havoc on the panning and a leprechaun upturned a whole Pro Tools folder labelled Numinal Shenanigans. In any other song, Prince’s Santana-style solo would have been the highlight, but here it turns in circles like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, overawed by the entire field of sound it walks through. Or maybe the wee folk were always there and I just need to get better speakers.

232: Teacher, Teacher

Unreleased (1982 / 1986)
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, for your delectation and delight the dashing damsels Wendy and Lisa will perform inimitable feats of derring-do on a harpsichord-powered carousel spinning at 78rpm. Watch the Purple Maestro join them atop his fabulous array of galloping horses for a three-minute ride through pop perfection. Gawp at the gumption. Hyperventilate at the hypnotising harmonies. Marvel at the magnificent monkeys – the only primate solo in town! A cyclone of fun for old and young. You’ll leave filled with mirth and merriment or your money back.

233: Family Name

The Rainbow Children (2001)
Emancipation and The Rainbow Children have a lot in common. Both are deeply personal yet wildly experimental and see Prince flying with unclipped wings, high over mainstream tastes. But a lack of constraint means both have their indulgent lulls. Emancipation has listless soundscapes, added solely to pad out each disc to 60 minutes, while The Rainbow Children has a computer delivering a lengthy, impenetrable sermon at the beginning of Family Name. If Prince had ditched this intro along with the preceding three tracks – the atmospheric but disposable Deconstruction, a jarring show tune The Wedding Feast and the sweet but energy-sapping She Loves Me 4 Me – I honestly believe The Rainbow Children could stand shoulder to shoulder with his early classics. Eight minutes is all it would need to lose, but this desire of fans to meddle is probably why early releases of The Rainbow Children came as one single long track. Regardless, I’ll now do what Prince should have done and skip straight to part two of Family Name, which starts two and a half minutes in with a short skit about the slave trade. This sets up the central premise that African-Americans have had their ancestral names taken from them and when the vocals finally begin you realise the song’s worth the long wait. The lyrics, with its stereotypical Jewish surnames, may be responsible for the “controversial new album” sticker slapped on some copies, but what tends to be lost amid shouts of anti-semitism is that the lustre of the words “Gold-“, “Pearl-“ and “Rose-” highlight how slaves were given names, like Clay and Brown, that were deliberately demeaning. Controversy aside, Family Name grooves like a Burmese python. Then at 5:27 Prince spits on the floor and dark clouds of Maya Angelou’s rising dust start to block out the sun. The track soon gets obliterated by a ferocious guitar sandstorm, which hits us with the power of the moral arc of the universe finally colliding with justice. Car alarms go off. A broken-winged blackbird sings like it’s the dead of night. Thomas Jefferson appears through a wormhole to tell his fellow Americans “we’re going to pay for this”. A hurting world confronts its past. Then suddenly we find ourselves on the other side, amid a wondrously clear daybreak. Martin Luther King recites his dream as we stand on the verge of The Everlasting Now. Moments like these eclipse the entirety of Emancipation. And possibly everything since. You just have to wade through a lot of album overgrowth to get there.

234: Neon Telephone

Unreleased (1985) / Vermillion (1988)
Before the turn of the millennium, my only dalliance with Prince bootlegs was a purchase of the Chocolate Box lp I chanced upon in my local wrecka stow. I felt like I’d discovered the New World but was all too aware that its ten songs (half of which were alternate versions of album tracks I already owned) were barely the tip of the iceberg. I’d read about fabled outcasts with evocative titles like Electric Intercourse and Rebirth of the Flesh but they were just sailors’ tales from distant continents. Unicorns and mermaids. Then Napster arrived and it promised the keys to the vault. I typed in all the unreleased titles I could think of – magic passwords that could beam mythical beasts into my computer – and waited to see if any would materialise. Neon Telephone was the first to arrive. To anyone growing up in today’s fibre-optic age of instant gratification, it’s difficult to relay the anticipation that a night of downloading a single song on a dial-up modem could generate. Especially when a call to your landline is all it would take to land you back at square one. So when the status bar reached 100% my excitement was at fever pitch. I tentatively pressed play. I may have been underwhelmed by the sweet slice of pop psychedelia at first – no song could have matched all the bright colours my imagination had filled it in with over the years – but it had Revolution charm and seemed like a grower. Then a minute from the end, with no warning the song slows down into a slew of phone rings, dial-up noise, and cross talk. I thought the file was corrupt, that an incoming call had not disconnected me but insinuated itself into the audio. Or maybe what I was doing was against the laws of physics and I was being transmitted alien warnings or an admonishment from Prince himself. I still toy with this idea sometimes and like to believe I’m listening to a glitched copy, but this means having to ignore Three o’Clock’s release in 1988, which attempts the same ending. If I could gouge out the part of my brain that holds the memory of their version I happily would. Prince’s first demo is the only true Neon Telephone and it’s experimentation instantly transports me back to those early explorative days in the filesharing Wild West. A morally dubious but infinitely exhilarating time. On one hand, I was participating in the destruction of the music industry, but on the other, I had found my very own unicorn-making machine.

235: Love Sign

1-800 New Funk (1994) / Crystal Ball (1998)
The big follow-up hit to TMBGITW that never was. Prince’s duet with Nona Gaye was pressed as a promotional single for the 1-800 New Funk compilation and featured remixes by Blackstreet’s Teddy Riley and Digital Underground’s Shock G. A full retail release was planned but nixed by a record label still smarting from the backfired decision to let Prince release his last single independently. However, Shock G’s Silky Remix found refuge on Crystal Ball four years later and has dated the least out of all the versions, probably due to owing a heavy debt to the timeless DMSR. Love Sign is a soulful rose placed in the barrel of a g-funk rifle. An appeal for throwing up love signs instead of guns, which (in spite of the relentless “pop, pop, pop go the pistol” refrain on the original) is a poignant song to give a woman whose father was fatally shot. It’s also arguably the chillest track Prince put out in the 90s. One for the Lotus-eaters. I’ve heard it said that listening to music can alter your heartbeat – if so, Love Sign could be prescribed as a high-strength beta blocker and should be avoided being taken with alcohol.

236: Ol’ Skool Company

MPLSound (2009)
Prince berates it back to the old school with a funky Camille grumblefest. Camille is now old and cranky and complaining about wealth inequality, the current state of music and, ironically, people who complain. For somebody telling us they’d rather not reminisce, they spend a lot of time getting nostalgic about music and traditional family values back in the day. I guess that Better With Time sentiment of the preceding song didn’t last long. If Ol’ Skool Company was an acapella it would be a pitched-up Grandpa Simpson telling those pesky kids to get off his lawn, but luckily, like with Musicology, Prince flashes his credentials. A meaty Minneapolis Sound beat reminds us whose genre it is, and when the gripes stop and the guitar sings I forgive all contradictions and build a pyre of my entire CD collection in solidarity.

237: Possessed

Unreleased (1983) / Purple Rain Deluxe (2017)
Prince wrote Possessed after attending a James Brown concert, and later dedicated it to him on 1985’s Prince and the Revolution: Live. On this video, the song wears its influence fully on its sleeve, but the original studio version, recorded two years earlier, took Mr Dynamite to another level – James Brown 2.0: Spooky Electric Boogaloo. On this robo-funk groove, the Oberheim synths shimmer and the empyrean guitar-work is pure fire, but the lyrics go to a darker place as Prince rattles the cage of his inner suppressed demon and stokes his “satanic lust”. It’s the “I want you, I need you, I must have you” brand of pop where the tape is left running and all the worrying implications and subtext leak to the surface. This early incantation may have scared him as it was subsequently buried in a lead box before it broke free to live amongst the shadows of the bootleg world. A new version was recorded the following year and briefly cropped up in the background of a scene in Purple Rain, however it would be 33 years until we got to hear it in full. The lyrics were reworked to be less menacing (apart from a bizarre aside about tearing people into little pieces to sell as a jigsaw puzzle) but conversely, the music is infinitely more unsettling. Bassless and guitarless, the 1984 version flutters and trembles like the palpitations of a diseased mind. It’s a lot more experimental and will likely take up residence in the darkest corners of your dreams but unlike the 1983 original it forgets to inject the funk into its dysfunction.

238: Old Friends 4 Sale

Unreleased (1985) / The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
l never used to understand the scorn for the updated Old Friends 4 Sale. Maybe because I heard it before the unreleased original, but to me the two versions didn’t sound too dissimilar. Yes, the haunting melancholy has been slightly bleached with time and we’ve lost the personal references about Dez leaving and Wendy joining The Revolution (first verse), The Time disbanding and the subsequent fallout with Morris (second verse) and Prince’s bodyguard selling an exposé to the National Enquirer (third verse). The newer, vaguer lyrics barely make sense, but the string section is the same one recorded in 1985 and still the shining jewel in this ballad of betrayal. Or so I thought. Not long ago I heard the pre-orchestral demo and realised the strings were a distraction all along. Without Clare Fischer’s input we’re relying solely on the vocals to carry us along and hooo boy do they move. A pit of bleak despair has opened up for us to fall into and it’s now clear his later performance is more 9pm showtime than this 4am hotel room rendition, bloodshot and wrecked. There’s no clearer contrast than in the dying seconds: compare how Prince struggles to summon the lifeforce to deliver the final lines in the 1985 recording, while in 1991 he’s chipper enough to throw in a Louis Armstrong-style croon afterward. Pain has been replaced with theatrics; despair replaced with flair. If you’re after authenticity then the original wins hands down, but is hearing somebody’s spirit break in real time really entertainment?

239: Space

Come (1993)
After having our mind expertly teased away from our body on Come’s title track there’s no respite. The last blast of horns have barely faded and the strings are still hanging in the air when a distant drum loop starts (like Led Zepelin’s When the Levy Breaks heard from space) and we suddenly realise just how far above the earth’s summit we’ve ascended. NASA chatter, beautiful and incomprehensible as birdsong, soon dissipates along with our inner monologue and we’re left outside our thoughts, free to explore the arcana of the cosmos. Virgin souls swimming in a limitless ocean of aether while our ears are being massaged in another realm. It’s an experience that would later explode into a million remixes, including a Madhouse aquatic jazz remake, but none will match that first Space walk where the strobing stars sync with our firing synapses.