370: It’s Gonna Be Lonely

Prince (1979)
A slow walk through young heartbreak with shimmering synths and a message of devotion in the face of desertion – a theme that his first two albums were built on. In 70s Prince bingo you’d be shouting house if you had any of the following words in a row: ‘blue’, ‘lonely’, ‘forever’, ‘baby’, ‘together’, ‘love’, ‘go’ and ‘leave’. But underneath the pre-Dirty Mind lyrics sits a solid steel ballad. A whetstone sharpening his tools in order to truly king the genre in forthcoming years. As a quiet, unassuming album-closer in a sea of ballads it’s often overlooked, but obviously not by Kanye who recycled the guitar riff to great effect in his 2007 Jay-Z love-in, Big Brother. One thing that always wrongfoots me though is the one non-falsetto line in the middle, because although I know Prince says “your accent from gay Paree”, I always hear him addressing somebody called Barry instead. Changes the song somewhat. You always want to leave, Barry, who do you think you are?