You didn’t think we forgot, did you? Admittedly, it’s been a busy week here at The Glow Up, with the GLAAD Awards, a lingerie line from Rihanna and the questionable Catholic imagination of the Met Gala (oh my!). Frankly, we’re ready to slow it down for the weekend, so we thought we’d start by going classic, and belatedly celebrating a very special anniversary.
On May 10, 1988, our forever icon Prince released Lovesexy, an album as famous for its angelically provocative cover as for any of its songs. It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years, since I remember clearly the day I saw the CD on display at Sam Goody while out with my friends at Lincoln Mall in Matteson, Ill. (OK, so maybe it has been 30 years.) But while the album perhaps wasn’t his most famous, it still spawned some eternal classics, such as the sweet and sexy slow jam “When 2 R in Love” and our Anthem of the Week, “I Wish U Heaven.”
Aside from the fact that we still miss him every day, “I Wish U Heaven” seems fitting this week, as we just celebrated “Heavenly Bodies” with the Met Gala. While there’s no evidence that Prince ever attended the annual event during his life, we like to imagine what the Purple One might have worn to such an occasion—though we have a feeling that as a Jehovah’s Witness, he likely would have found this year’s theme entirely inappropriate, if not the proceedings themselves.
More importantly, as we enter Mother’s Day weekend, we know many of your mothers and mother figures are unfortunately no longer with you. This is our way of letting you know that we wish you love—and that whatever the afterlife might mean for you and your family, we wish your loved ones heaven.
Honorable mention: You know we love a good bop here at The Glow Up, so inevitably, we have to note that “Alphabet Street” was also a single on Lovesexy, and it still makes us bounce when we hear it.
Granted, this was not Prince’s best era for videos—lots of awkward graphics and green-screen treatments—but it definitely takes us back to a happier time and place. We hope it does the same for you.
Happy Mother’s Day! (We know a lot of your mothers love Prince, too!)