More Than Just a Physical Dream

Prince : I Feel For You

[Purchase]

On October 19, 1979, the greatest record release day of the year, Prince's self titled album hit record stores ( along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Damn the Torpedoes and the debut album by The Specials ). To these ears, Prince is a giant leap forward from the debut, For You,  and would be followed by another giant leap forward with 1980's Dirty Mind.

Like For You, this album was written, arranged, composed, produced and performed entirely by Prince. Among the deep tracks is "I Feel For You", a US#3 hit for Chaka Khan in 1984.

The demo released in 2019:

The critics would finally catch on with this album. Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden who writes:

Not only does Prince possess the most thrilling R +B falsetto since Smokey Robinson, but this nineteen-year-old. Minneapolis-bred Wunderkind is his own writer-producer and one-man band, playing synthesizer, guitar, drums and percussion. Whereas Prince's debut album (last year's For You) stressed his instrumental virtuosity, Prince teems with hooks that echo everyone from the Temptations to Jimi Hendrix to Todd Rundgren.

That Hendrix reference comes through on "Bambi", another song that took decades for his fans to discover. Here he is playing the song about a lesbian love interest (All your lovers/they look just like you/ But they can only do the things that you do/ Come on, baby, and take me by the hand /I'm gonna show what it's like to be loved by a man) in 2004...for Ellen DeGeneres. Not sure she would have appreciated the song's contention that straight sex is better than gay sex or that line "Bambi, maybe you need to bleed!"

Robert Christgau was another critic who caught on thanks to the second album, which he graded with a B+. (Every album that followed would score higher until LoveSexy in 1988):

This boy is going to be a big star, and he deserves it--he's got a great line. "I want to come inside you" is good enough, but (in a different song) the simple "I'm physically attracted to you" sets news standards of "naive," winning candor. The vulnerable teen-macho falsetto idea is pretty good too. But he does leave something to be desired in the depth-of-feeling department--you know, soul.

In the U.K. critics would still need some convincing. A 1980 review by Red Starr of Smash Hits scores the album a 5/10 with the dismissive line "different, but hardly electrifying".