He asks the questions, then recites the prayer
Controversy opens Prince’s fourth album, and it arrived first as a single. Warner Bros. released it in the United States on 2 September 1981, six weeks before the album on 14 October. The basic track was cut in late spring or summer 1981 at his Kiowa Trail home studio in Chanhassen, in the same run as Poppa Grooves and Tick, Tick, Bang. Overdubs and the mix were finished at Sunset Sound in Hollywood between 14 and 23 August 1981. Prince played the instruments and sang. Lisa Coleman added backing vocals.
The album cut runs 7:14. A 7-inch edit cuts it to 3:35. The B-side is When You Were Mine, from Dirty Mind. The groove is a steady machine beat, synth bass, guitar and keys. The lyric is a list of questions people were already asking: black or white, straight or gay. In the middle he recites the Lord’s Prayer in full. The ending chant is blunt. People call him rude. He wishes everybody were nude. He wishes there were no black and white, and no rules. Around it the album goes to Ronnie, Talk to Russia, Annie Christian and Jack U Off. The title track is the thesis.
The charts split by format. On the Billboard Hot 100 it entered at 90 on 24 October 1981 and peaked at 70, nine weeks in all. On the Hot Soul Singles chart it reached number 3 and stayed 20 weeks. Paired with Let’s Work it hit number 1 on the Billboard Disco Top 80 and held the top for six weeks, the first Prince songs to do that. Australia’s Kent report put the single at 15. The Netherlands took it to 28. The album reached 21 on the Billboard 200 and 3 on the R&B albums chart.
Along the way, Controversy flirts with blasphemy by incorporating the Lord’s Prayer.
(Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone)
The official video on his channel runs about three and a half minutes and comes from that album era. On the Controversy tour the band behind him was Dez Dickerson on guitar, Brown Mark on bass, Bobby Z on drums, Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink on keyboards. The song stayed in the set. It was the number that stated the argument before 1999 turned the same questions into a party.
In November 1993, to push The Hits / The B-Sides, Warner put Controversy out again in the UK. It reached number 5 there in December. The 1981 single had missed the American pop top 40 and still defined the record: a home-studio funk track with the Lord’s Prayer in the middle and a six-week dance number 1 beside Let’s Work. The questions in the lyric did not get answers. The chart positions did.
