454: Man‘O’War

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)
One of Prince’s slow jams. A break-up soul ballad with surprisingly blunt, heart-wrenching lyrics written around the time of the collapse of his first marriage (could the gold chain he refers to be one of Mayte’s 3 chains o’ gold maybe?) It’s a cold track. Prince set adrift on an ice floe drifting away from his heart’s torment, alone and out of tune with the cosmos. Unimpeachable guitar mirroring his desolation – a guitar incidentally that his record label wanted him to cut in order to appeal to the urban market, resulting in a castrated guitarless version on the single release. There’s also a remix on the alternate Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic album and if the original is cold than this fidgety reworking is cryogenic, floating through the Oort cloud with a heart shattered into a trillion ice crystals. It’s the kind of song that passes you by during the summer years but tears at the core of your being when your heart’s being wounded by the vicissitudes of love.