Subtract almost everything for Kiss

How did Prince arrive at the playful, minimalistic work of genius that is his 1986 song Kiss?

The freshest inspiration is often found by looking at old things with new eyes. Sometimes the best and simplest ideas have been there all along, staring you in the face, waiting to be discovered. Such ideas can seem blindingly obvious in retrospect, but it will likely take a once-in-a-lifetime moment of genius to originate and execute such an idea.

Leave stuff out

New and surprising things can be created not by generating something entirely from scratch, but by taking something that already exists and adapting, reducing or in some way refining it and – crucially – stamping what you produce with your own unique touch.

I love Douglas Adams’s take on the origins of the Sony Walkman, from his 1996 Wall Street Journal interview. Adams notes that the Walkman is essentially a portable cassette recorder with the ability to record taken away:

“One of my favourite pieces of technology in recent years is the Sony Walkman. The brilliant idea was that if you look at a traditional stereo cassette player – the deck and amplifier and speakers – you could leave stuff out. And you’d suddenly have, not something that was less good, but was a whole different way of looking at it. So very often you can make a major advance not necessarily by adding something, but just by looking at what’s already there with new eyes.”

The other day, I was delighted to come across another example of what we might call innovation through subtraction, in the form of a fresh (to my ears) take on a song I have known since I was a teenager: Kiss by Prince.

An extreme minimalism

I have heard Prince’s minimalistic work of genius Kiss countless times since its appearance on his Parade album, which was released 40 years ago this month. In Kiss, Prince presents the barest suggestion of the elements of a song, somehow creating a masterpiece from almost nothing.

 

Prince’s Kiss is a song stripped to its barest essentials. What I did not know until these past few days is that Kiss might have started life as someone else’s song stripped to its barest essentials.

Have you ever heard You Got to be a Man by Helene Smith? If you know and love Kiss, you may well find a side-by-side comparison with You Got to be a Man interesting.

I had no idea until the other day that You Got to be a Man even existed, let alone that it could have provided direct inspiration for Kiss. My ears were opened to this wonderful song while listening to music writer Taylor Parkes on a 2018 episode of the Chart Music podcast. Parkes says:

“There’s a record by Helene Smith called You Got to be a Man, which Prince completely and utterly ripped off for Kiss, which is almost the same song. Now, anyone can do that. But, the way Prince did it…”

He tries to imagine how Prince approached the writing of Kiss as a possible response to You Got to be a Man:

“You can imagine Prince saying: ‘That’s a fantastic record, but I’m going to top it. First of all, I’m going to strip away all the brass, all of the organ, everything distinctive from the record. I’m going to get rid of the bassline.’ So what’s going to be left on the record? ‘Well, it’s just going to be a treated LinnDrum and me squealing in a falsetto voice. Also, I’m going to rewrite the lyrics so it’s about watching Dynasty. And it’s going to be great.’ Oh well, good luck with that. And he fucking did it, it was brilliant. It was better than the original record, and it was a massive worldwide hit.”

Parkes argues that what truly sets Kiss apart as a work of genius is a “a little flourish”, a playful touch that Prince chose to add:

“But the key is that that’s not all. When you listen to You Got to be a Man – that in itself is a rip off of Papa’s got a Brand New Bag* by James Brown. In converting it, Prince removed every part of the arrangement that ripped off the James Brown record. But then the last thing he did was take the one detail that’s on the James Brown record that isn’t on the Helene Smith record, which is the little guitar lick at the end of each verse, and he put it in Kiss as an incredibly arcane musical in-joke, that also sounds fucking amazing. Just as a little spin on the heel, a little flourish and a little bit of flash, all while operating within the self-imposed demands of an extreme minimalism, and in a commercial context where he’s one of the biggest stars in the world. To have that much talent, coupled with an attitude that playful, and to make them both work together… This is something that none of us can even dream of.”

The formula might sound simple: Take You Got to be a Man, subtract almost everything for Kiss (and possibly add a spin on the heel to taste). But who could dream of such a formula in the first place?

How might you be able to solve a problem or create something new by taking something that already exists and adapting, reducing or refining it? What spin on the heel could you add to make it uniquely your own?

Gentle reader: See today and all it has to offer you with new eyes. May today reveal to you the beauty and riches that were there all along.

May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.

IMAGES

• Prince Brussels 1986 via Wikimedia Commons.
• Duke Chronicle 1980-01-17 page 14 via Wikimedia Commons.