Programme notes
Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl (1982) • TopPop
Summary
A 1982 single by the trio Vanity 6, written and produced by Prince, who also played most of the music. The production is minimal in the way his early-eighties records often were — a hard drum machine, a bare synth line, and a great deal of empty space.
The vocal is delivered as provocation rather than performance, and the arrangement leaves it nowhere to hide.
Why it matters
It is a clear document of how Prince used side projects to work in registers his own records were not covering, and of the Minneapolis sound at its most skeletal. The record's frankness about desire, sung by women rather than about them, was unusual enough on radio at the time to be treated as a problem.