Come (1993)
There are a trillion versions of Come. Luckily the opening track on Prince’s 15th album is the only one you need. Earlier drafts experimented with dance, hip-hop and bass-heavy funk but when the song got the R&B treatment it slipped into something more comfortable. If you’re looking for subtle wordplay you’re in the wrong place. Prince goes full-on XXX sexline, even using the word “tallywhacker” which is as sensual as a Carry On film. But entwined throughout the dirty talk is a spiritual message. Explicit verses get interrupted by choruses of spirits calling and the philosophical question “if you could see the future, would you try?” The version on The Beautiful Experience film begins with the message that’s also written in reverse on the album: “this is the dawning of a new spiritual revolution”. It’s his sex as salvation trope still going strong after almost a decade and a half. Prince the profane priest giving his sermon of the mount. I understand that this song is not to everybody’s taste. It lasts almost a quarter of the entire album and has noises that are like having the inside of your head licked. But I find the spirits, sucking and sleigh bells melt into the background when the horn section laps at the song’s shores like an ocean of cream. If the divine can be found in sensual pleasures then these horns are like mainlining beatitude.
The noises make the song entirely unlistenable to me. They cause physical revulsion and nausea.
I don’t mind the music – it hasn’t quite fully lapsed into the lame 90s new power jack swing thing he settled on – but the lyrics are like a Prince caricature by someone who didn’t really appreciate the eroticism and vulnerability of his earlier work (some of it!). It makes you wonder if he became as bland in bed as he was in the studio during this decade. There are times during the mid-90s where he didn’t even look like himself; a cruise ship tribute act. When I saw him live in ’93, I wanted to stand and point like an inverse Donald Sutherland in the seminal Body Snatchers movie, a human outing the replicant. Strange times.