I remember loving "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" back in 1994 when it was ubiquitous on the radio.This was freshman year of college, at a time when I was much more into grunge and punk and hard rock than Prince. Prince had always been there, I'd grown up loving his music. But at this point I'd set aside a lot of R&B and funk and soul that I used to love. Thankfully I came back to these genres once my musical tastes matured. But loving that particular Prince song at that time of my life was unexpected. I felt vaguely embarrassed by my affection for this blatantly sincere love song. The song broke through my ironic defenses and hit me right in the heart. Prince elevates and celebrates women in the song, in a way that's actually touching. "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" isn't the first Prince song I thought of after hearing of his death—in quick succession it was "Raspberry Beret", "Little Red Corvette" and ...
we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars