Prince ‘Controversy’ has clocked up its 40th anniversary. The fourth Prince album was released 14 October 1981.
The Prince Estate have released to 1979 solo demo recording of ‘Do Me, Baby’ to mark the anniversary. The official release was track 3 Side 1 of the original album.
‘Controversy’ was almost completely a Prince production. He wrote all songs (Do Me, Baby was a co-write with Andre Cymone), Prince played all instruments on the album and Prince produced the album.
Prince ‘Controversy’ peaked at no 21 in the US and no 55 from Australia but Australia gave him his biggest hit to date with the title track reached no 15. (It only reached no 70 in America and failed to chart in the UK).
Prince would finally become a chart performer with his fifth album ‘1999’ a year later.
‘Controversy’ was the first prince album to associate him with the colour purple. It was also the first Prince album to start playing with spelling in song-titles. The first time he did that was in the albums final track ‘Jack U Off’.
‘Controversy’ could have been controversial at the time but Prince wasn’t yet famous enough for anyone to take notice. Lyrically he spoke of the Ronald Reagan war mongering ‘Ronnie, Talk to Russia’ and noted the death of John Lennon.
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