Sitting somewhere at the intersection of love, sex, obsession, and anguish, “The Beautiful Ones” stands out as perhaps the ultimate love-gone-wrong song of Prince’s catalog. Which automatically puts it way up on the list of all such songs in the history of the world.
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Many musical sleuths have wondered who inspired the song (although Prince eventually cleared that up). What really matters is that anyone who’s fallen in love with someone before securing that person’s love in return can relate to the high drama and devastating emotional upheaval at the heart of the track.
Something “Beautiful”
Prince never lost sight of the overall picture. Purple Rain encompassed not only the writing and recording of a new album, one coming out at a crucial point in his career, but also the creation of a major motion picture. But he never fumbled those multiple balls that he was juggling. Instead, he turned them into a display of dexterity that dazzled the world.
Prince’s songs were nothing if not deeply personal. He couldn’t have connected in the way that he did if he didn’t put his heart, soul, and (occasionally) libido out on his sleeve for the world to inspect. That’s why people often went rifling through his many relationships for clues to the provenance of his songs.
For many years, the accepted wisdom on “The Beautiful Ones” was that Susannah Melvoin inspired it. Prince didn’t deny or confirm for many years. Eventually, he explained that it was Vanity (nee Denise Matthews) on his mind when he wrote the song.
Beyond that, Prince remained cognizant of the plot of the Purple Rain film when he wrote the song. He needed it to fit into a crucial sequence in the film where his character, in the middle of a love triangle, addresses the object of his affection from the concert stage. And in that regard, it fits like a lace glove.
Diving Deep into the Lyrics of “The Beautiful Ones”
Prince lays the simple choice on the line right at the beginning of “The Beautiful Ones”. “Baby, baby, baby,” he coos. “What’s it gonna be? Baby, baby, baby/Is it him or is it me?” He begs her to spare him inconvenience and insanity: “Don’t make me waste my time/Don’t make me lose my mind.”
In the second verse, he wonders if he somehow let her down with his lovemaking. But he suggests that a certain type of girl will inevitably cause sorrow no matter what you do. “The beautiful ones, they hurt you every time,” he insists.
He goes even deeper than that in the song’s spoken-word bridge, implying that everyone fixates on some vision of an ideal love. “The beautiful ones always smash the picture,” he explains. Desperate, he proposes marriage to her, but reality interrupts this reverie: “The beautiful ones, you always seem to lose.”
Prince then departs from the main melody, vamping in a screeching falsetto with a series of increasingly desperate pleas. He once again boils it all down to the main question that he asked at the beginning of the song. “Do you want him?” he asks. “Or do you want me?/’Cause I want you.”
Prince didn’t release “The Beautiful Ones” as a single, but it is generally regarded as one of his most powerful musical moments. The who ultimately doesn’t matter. Instead, the what and the why, which he elucidates in excruciatingly raw, honest fashion, make this a slow song beyond compare.
Photo by Rob Verhorst/Redferns
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