The track that won Prince the ‘Razzie Award for Worst Original Song’
The brilliance of Prince was never in question, but sometimes it seemed that music came so seamlessly to him that he could just as easily make a mess of it as he could a masterpiece. This is why many masters have notable honest mistakes to their name, whether that be The Beatles disowning ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’, David Bowie knowing he had pushed things too far with Never Let Me Down, or Bob Dylan’s inexplicable ‘Wiggle Wiggle’.
As the old proverb goes, “A ship in harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” As a pioneer it is understandable that you’re going to sail into choppy waters sometimes as you search out new lands. However, there was one track in Prince’s pioneering repertoire that was bad enough to be crowned with an unfortunate ‘Razzie Award for Worst Original Song’.
In 1986, Prince starred in and directed the musical rom-com Under the Cherry Moon. The production would bear none of the hallmarks of his musicals success with the exception of working a fruit into the title. The movie may well have won the novelty accolade of ‘Worst Picture’ at the tongue-in-cheek Golden Raspberry Awards, but the soundtrack behind it went on to sell well over a million copies, proving that to be creatively daring you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth.
However, even among the smooth, the song ‘Love or Money’ stood out as a choppy track. That year the song gave Under the Cherry Moon its second Razzie award. It won out over ‘Howard the Duck’ by Lea Thompson and Dolby’s Cube, ‘I Do What I Do’ by John Taylor, ‘Shanghai Surprise’ by George Harrison, and ‘Life in a Looking Glass’ by Tony Bennett.
The track, served as the B-side to ‘Kiss’ and sadly that is like putting a fast food joint next to a Michelin Star restaurant. With a computerised voice that forecast the rise of annoyances like ‘The Crazy Frog’, the song acts as a hate crime against decency. With a premise that asks the over-simple question ‘Love or Money’ endlessly on repeat, Prince captures the sound of madness amid his debut directorial motion picture.
The Purple Rain star once said, “Technology is cool, but you’ve got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.” On this occasion, he was sadly sucked into the electronic world of synthesised vocals a little bit too far. There have certainly been worse efforts by great artists, but even Prince wouldn’t put of much of a fight to say it wasn’t one of 1986’s worst duds.
As for the film itself, it sees “two con artist brothers attempt to swindle a soon-to-be wealthy heiress, but things get complicated when one falls in love with her.” The movie is as equally up-and-down as the soundtrack. It simply doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself, and that makes for a weirdly interesting watch, if not a slightly bewildering one.
