The list of superstar artists with underwhelming singles chart records is long, and complex. There’s Led Zeppelin, who simply didn’t bother releasing them. There’s Chuck Berry, whose ding-a-ling made number one two decades after he’d helped invent rock and roll. There’s Stevie Wonder, whose two chart-toppers don’t begin to do his talent justice…

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, by Prince (his 1^st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 17^th April – 1^st May 1994

Then there’s Prince – the star with possibly the biggest disparity between talent and number one hits. Not that he has a terrible overall chart record in the UK: seventeen Top 10 hits is nothing to be sniffed at. But only this one chart-topper (the 2^nd biggest hit of his long career, apparently…)

And I’m just going to come out and say it… For ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ to be Prince’s only #1 is as big a travesty as ‘My Ding-A-Ling’. It might even be bigger. At least Berry’s novelty is dumb fun. This is syrupy, over-produced tripe, with some queasy lyrics… It’s plain to see, You’re the reason that God made a girl… The fact that the song debuted on the 1994 Miss USA pageant speaks volumes.

As I listen, all I can think of is all the brilliant Prince tunes that came and went without making #1… And not only is this dull, it’s disappointingly chaste. This from a man who recorded songs like ‘Soft and Wet’, ‘Cream’, and ‘Sexy MF’. There’s a spoken-word portion, as in all the worst love songs, in which Prince semi-raps: And if the stars ever fell, One by one from the sky…

It leads on to the most enjoyable bit of the song though, in which Prince provides his own backing vocals in a deep voice before launching back into his more famous falsetto. The song’s odd sound effects – tears dripping, clocks ticking, birds twittering – are interesting too. These moments are where we come closest to the fun, creative-chameleon Prince, who’s sorely missing from the rest of this sludge.

Of course, ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ isn’t technically a ‘Prince’ song. It came at the start of his ‘Love Symbol’ period, AKA the time he was known as ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’, as part of a rebellion against his Warner Brothers contract. He felt they were holding him back, insisting that he chill out and release albums more sporadically. Interestingly, this single – one of his most successful – was released on a small, independent label, rather than Warner Bros. The corresponding album didn’t see the light of day for another year and a half, and is still involved in a lawsuit over plagiarism involving ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ and an Italian song called ‘Takin’ Me to Paradise’.

Prince does already have two other chart-toppers to his name as a songwriter. Two classics: Chaka Khan’s ‘I Feel for You’ and Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. And of course there’s ‘Purple Rain’, ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘Kiss’… So many that I might have to do a post on Prince’s nearly-number-ones. All these hits kick this one into the long grass… And yet. The charts often don’t play nice…