Lots of buzz today about a Prince release of a shelved record from 2010. “Welcome 2 America” is the album’s title. The title track was released today, and it’s not a song. There are some back up singers, but it’s Prince just waxing eloquent about things on his mind.
What will the rest of the album be? Miscellaneous covers of other artists’ songs, apparently. If there were really great unreleased songs from the Paisley Park vaults, we would have known by now.
But meantime, what the heck has happened to one of Prince’s biggest hits? “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was a number 1 smash, and a great record. It was a single released by Prince when he was a glyph symbol fighting with Warner Music. They rejected it, and he put it out on the tiny Bellmark Records.
Bellmark, owned by Stax legend Al Bell, went bankrupt later and its assets were bought by another entity. “Most Beautiful Girl” is evidently still part of some mound of legal papers. So you can’t download it or stream it. It’s blocked out from “The Gold Experience,” the album it appeared on originally. What a shame.
But you can play it on YouTube. So here it is, in case you’ve forgotten it or never heard it before. THIS is Prince. “Welcome 2 America” looks like a cash in project.
