My Top 1000 Songs #803: Raspberry Beret

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Yes, it feels like a bit of a cheat, once again dipping into the vast and wonderful Prince catalog and settling on one of his catchiest pop tracks rather than something a little slinkier. But, hey, when my friend described my music taste as jittery white guy music, supplying a name for my book and this blog, she wasn't kidding. 

"Raspberry Beret" (like much of 1985's fine and, these days, seemingly underrated Around The World In A Day LP) has Prince exploring his inner Sgt. Pepper, but still locked in on that pop-funk amalgam he mastered on the prior year's Purple Rain. Who am I to complain if he opts to cast a wider, more psychedelic-friendly net to lure in the music nerds who can't dance?

Plus, the video was an all-timer, a peak-period MTV track that had us all hanging on the dorm sofa waiting for it to come on again. (And that version tacked on the longer intro groove, absent from the frustratingly truncated LP version.)

Live, solo piano (abbreviated part of medley), 2016:

Hindu Love Gods (Warren Zevon + R.E.M.):