Little Red Corvette

Prince got the idea after dozing off in Lisa Coleman's pink 1964 Mercury Montclair Marauder following an all-night session, and the lyrics came to him in bits during catnaps. Basic tracking took place on 20 May 1982 at his home studio, and the mix was made at Sunset Sound on 11 and 12 August 1982. It joins a Linn LM-1 beat and a slow synthesizer build to a rock chorus, with car and horse imagery standing in for sex. Coleman and Dez Dickerson sing backing vocals, and Dickerson plays the guitar solo. Pitchfork heard in it a fusion of funk's swing and rock's swagger, and Slate's Jack Hamilton wrote that it is about ambivalence, vulnerability and fear.

Released on 9 February 1983, it reached number six on the Hot 100, then his highest-charting single and his first top ten in the United States, and it did better on the pop chart than the R&B chart. In January 1985 it was reissued as a double A-side with 1999 and reached number two in the United Kingdom. It returned to the Hot 100 after his death. The video, shot in late January 1983 during rehearsals for the second leg of the 1999 Tour, was the second of his to play on MTV. Rolling Stone ranked it number 108 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs, and readers of Guitar World placed Dickerson's solo 64th all time. Logged performances of it number 652, from 11 November 1982 in Chattanooga to 14 April 2016 in Atlanta.