Prince: All Number 1 Songs Ranked Worst To Best
4. Kiss
5th number one, 1986
Music charts in the '80s were an eclectic listing of tunes in every genre possible, from pop to rock and country to disco, while hip-hop slowly but surely became a force to be reckoned with. Artists kept trying new sounds, pushing their music in different directions, all the while turning that era into the blueprint for virtually everything else that followed it. And Prince always rode that wave of change on his purple board, as evidenced by songs like Kiss, which sounds nothing like anything else the decade gave us - and ironically does it by lifting a riff from James Brown's '60s hit, Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, long before samples became a staple of pop music. Prince wasn't just ahead of the times, he was in a timeline all his own.
As for the video, it might make no sense that a short-statured man in a tank top and high heels should ooze such raw masculine sensuality, but there you have it.
Fun Fact: Prince originally wrote this song for a rising new band called Mazarati. After hearing what they had done with it, Prince took the song back, reportedly saying that Kiss was too good for them.