Prince

Prince’s second album opens the gap between precocious talent and actual pop stardom. His 1978 debut For You had demonstrated that he could write, arrange, produce and play virtually everything himself, but it had cost heavily and failed to provide the major pop hit his label wanted. Prince, recorded the following year, keeps the self-sufficiency but tightens the songs. The result is more direct, more rhythmically confident and much closer to the artist who would soon become impossible to ignore.

Recorded at Alpha Studios in Burbank between April and June 1979 and mixed at Hollywood Sound, the album was again written, arranged, composed, produced and performed by Prince. Its vocabulary already stretches freely across R&B, funk, pop, rock, disco and soul. Rather than presenting those styles as separate experiments, Prince treats them as interchangeable tools. A dry guitar figure can sit beside a disco pulse, a falsetto vocal can carry both innocence and provocation, and the arrangements are disciplined enough that his multi-instrumental ability never turns into clutter.

“I Wanna Be Your Lover” is the pivotal song. It reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, topped the US R&B chart and became Prince’s first significant hit, while also giving him his first UK chart appearance. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” pushes the guitar harder, and “Sexy Dancer” makes the connection between his funk instincts and the dancefloor explicit. Across the album, sensuality is already central, but so is craft: hooks arrive quickly, grooves are economical and Prince understands exactly when to leave space.

The record eventually sold around three million copies and was received more warmly than its predecessor, but its real fascination is developmental. Prince is not yet the maximalist pop architect of the 1980s, which means the mechanics are unusually visible. You can hear him learning how to make virtuosity concise. The musicianship is formidable, yet the songs increasingly hide the labour behind pleasure, rhythm and personality. That is the breakthrough inside the breakthrough.