What if Prince Was One Of Us?

The new Prince song is a great lens on what a talent of his level can do with even shoddy material.

The track is called “What If” (you can listen to it here) and when word of the song was first leaked two days ago, the first hope was that it was a new original track. Instead, it’s a cover of a middling track by contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Nichole Nordeman. Here’s her original:

The song is a pretty straightforward recitation of the ways believers confront atheists and non-believers, so it’s not surprising it appeals to Prince. But as a composition, it’s strikingly ordinary. Fairly treacly and obvious, with a chugging mid-tempo acoustic guitar groove

But contrast the listlessness of that original version with the urgency and drive of Prince’s 80s-hair-metal production on his remake:

Now, the new gloss on the song doesn’t really elevate the track — it’s still nowhere near what Prince can do on a great song he writes himself. But it’s amazing how much more interesting the song is, even during the verse that’s sung by drummer Hannah Welton. Ida Nielsen’s work on bass alone justifies this song’s existence.

To me, that was why it was worth giving the track a listen. I don’t honestly have much interest in Prince convincing me about religion; I never have. But by covering this song, Prince displays how he hears music, showing that even in the most average song he can pull out something that nobody else might have found.

In that regard, both lyrically and in terms of making a song his own, the new “What If” recalls nothing so much as his 1996 cover of (then-Grammy-dominating) Joan Osbourne’s “One Of Us”. Though “One Of Us” is obviously a much better song than “What If”, it is obviously very similar in being another song about faith and doubt and god. And it’s another case of Prince bringing a fierce rock-and-roll energy to a song that might otherwise have only plodded along. It even features one of Prince’s very best guitar solos.

If women questioning their faith is what moves Prince to give us a glimpse of how he hears the extraordinary in the ordinary, then so be it. These are the things that give us faith in Prince.