Prince Charming (album)

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Prince Charming
Studio album by Adam and the Ants
Released November 1981
Recorded Air Studios, London. August 1981.
Genre New Romantic, post-punk, New Wave
Label CBS Records
Epic (Canada, Japan and US)
Producer Chris Hughes
Adam and the Ants chronology

Kings of the Wild Frontier
(1980)		 Prince Charming
(1981)		 Friend or Foe
(1982)

Prince Charming is the third and final album by Adam and the Ants, released in 1981 (see 1981 in music). Unlike Kings of the Wild Frontier, Prince Charming showed the Ants moving away from their earlier Burundi drum style. This album features former Roxy Music bass player Gary Tibbs in place of Kevin Mooney, the bassist from Kings of the Wild Frontier. The album spawned the two number-one singles "Stand and Deliver" and "Prince Charming" plus a remixed version of the Top-Ten single "Ant Rap". The album was remastered and reissued in 2004 with several demo tracks.

The song "Prince Charming" has musical similarities to Rolf Harris' 1965 song "War Canoe", and in March 2010 Harris claimed on BBC Radio 5live's Danny Baker Show that an out-of-court settlement had been reached and a large sum of royalties received after a musicologist had found the two songs to be musically identical.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [1]

Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine rated Prince Charming three-and-a-half out of five stars. He explained that it was "a markedly different record than [Kings of the Wild Frontier], intentionally so", and that "the songs just aren't there." However, he concluded by stating that it "simply has style and sound -- which, in retrospect, isn't all that bad".[1]

Track listing

All songs written by Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni.

  1. "Scorpios" – 2:46
  2. "Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios" – 3:28
  3. "Prince Charming" – 3:18
  4. "Five Guns West" – 5:02
  5. "That Voodoo!" – 4:18
  6. "Stand and Deliver" – 3:35
  7. "Mile High Club" – 2:42
  8. "Ant Rap" – 3:26
  9. "Mowhok" – 3:28
  10. "S.E.X." – 3:50
  11. "The Lost Hawaiians" - 1:05 (unlisted track)

Some releases have "Prince Charming" as track 1, and "Scorpios" as track 3.

Prince Charming was remastered and reissued in 2004 with six demo tracks:

  1. "Prince Charming (Demo)" – 3:09
  2. "Stand and Deliver (Demo)" – 3:04
  3. "Showbiz (Demo)" – 3:07
  4. "Picasso Visits the Planet of the Apes (Demo)" – 3:21
  5. "Who's a Goofy Bunny Then? (Demo)" – 4:24
  6. "Scorpio Writing (Demo)" – 3:20

Personnel

Note - Merrick and Chris Hughes are the same person; Merrick being Chris Hughes' middle and stage name.

Notes

  • "Stand and Deliver" spent the most weeks at number 1 in the UK singles chart for 1981 (5 weeks) and was the 2nd biggest seller of the year after Soft Cell's Tainted Love
  • "Prince Charming" spent 4 weeks at the number 1 in the UK singles chart[2] and was the 3rd best selling single of 1981.
  • "Prince Charming" is the 1st 80's song played in series one of Ashes to Ashes after Dec. Alex Drake "wakes up" to find herself "trapped" in 1981.
  • British screen legend Diana Dors plays the "fairy Godmother" in the video for "Prince Charming".
  • Scottish pop singer Lulu makes a cameo appearance in the video for "Ant Rap", playing a "damsel in distress".
  • The album Prince Charming was the 9th best-selling album in the UK for 1981. Adam and the Ants' previous album Kings of the Wild Frontier was the #1 seller, meaning that the band had 2 best-selling albums of 1981 inside the top 10.
  • To cash in on the success of singles "Stand and Deliver", "Prince Charming" and "Ant Rap", EG/Polydor Records released "Deutscher Girls/Plastic Surgery" as a single in 1982 (prior to Adam Ant's next official single release "Goody Two Shoes"), which made it to #13 on the UK singles chart. "Deutscher Girls/Plastic Surgery" are early songs from the Jubilee OST and do not feature any of the "Ants" (including Marco) from the Kings of the Wild Frontier/Prince Charming era, only Adam Ant.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Prince Charming - Adam & the Ants at AllMusic. Retrieved July 5, 2011.
  2. ↑ Adam & the Ants UK chart history, The Official Charts. Retrieved December 16, 2011.
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