Category: Vanity 6, 1982
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Roundup: Vanity 6, 1982
It’s been about nine months since the last time we completed an album around here–which, if nothing else, means that we’re just about keeping pace with Prince himself, who released Vanity 6 just under 10 months after his own Controversy. Let’s see if we can finish 1999 by October! In the meantime, here’s how I…
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3 x 2 = 6
Just as he’d done for his own Controversy, Prince put the finishing touches on the Vanity 6 album at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The last song he recorded for the album, on April 5, 1982, was also the last song on the track list: a gauzy synthpop ballad arithmetically titled “3 x 2 =…
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If a Girl Answers (Don’t Hang Up)
“If a Girl Answers” brings to mind the sense of queer kinship, recalled by author Hilton Als, among “the colored queens I had known growing up, who called Prince ‘Miss.’”
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Bite the Beat
Prince’s main contribution was the lyrics: Vanity 6’s most sexually aggressive this side of “Nasty Girl.”
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Wet Dream (Wet Dream Cousin)
Vanity was chosen to lead the group for her firecracker personality, bedroom eyes, and ability to fill out a lace camisole, not for her powerhouse pipes. The trouble is that Prince wasn’t always good at selecting material that played to her strengths.
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Drive Me Wild
At the core of Susan Moonsie’s dirty-schoolgirl persona was “Drive Me Wild,” one of the handful of songs originally recorded for the proto-Vanity 6 Hookers project in 1981.