Prince once tried to claim that he didn’t have any guitar inspirations. He said, “I haven’t had a lot of time to develop a favourite artist. I try not to listen to too many people. It’s distracting.” But in reality, the musician had several other artists that he looked up to, turning to them for vital inspiration for his own tracks. On ‘Baby Knows’ especially, he looked to one person in particular.
“I crave great musicianship, and I don’t care who provides it,” Prince said, meaning that his inspiration knew no bounds when it came to genre. He could be just as moved by a great pop song as he could by a rock riff. On ‘Baby Knows’, he was clearly looking towards country and blues as he collaborated with singer Sheryl Crow, the darling of the country rock scene.
That influence is heard across the song as it sounds like the type of track that would be played in a saloon somewhere, making it easy for a gaggle of people to be line-dancing along to it like some kind of Coyote Ugly scene. But, like with all of Prince’s songs, it’s never that simple. The country influence is met with electronic details and a more classic rock riff.
But the riff goes beyond rock into the genre’s true history as an offshoot in the lineage of blues. In the tone of his guitar and the boisterousness of his composition, there are undeniable influences of blues rock, early rock and roll, and the legends that crafted that sound.
Prince held his hands up to that, admitting that this track was made with one man in mind. “I tried to go after Chuck Berry for that one,” he said, keeping the rock and roll pioneer in the forefront of his brain as he crafted the track.
Throughout his career, Prince honoured Berry as a vital inspiration. It’s easy to see why the Purple One was so influenced by him as both turned typical rock and roll into something altogether more electrifying and captured the world with their gripping on-stage swagger. Prince performed ‘Johnny B. Goode’ plenty of times, shredding through the song as one of his all-time favourites. But here, he was channelling Berry into his own composition, merging his classic sound with Prince’s own more adventurous and expansive style that disregarded genre entirely.
The result was ‘Baby Knows’, a track that nods to a lot of different musical camps but refuses to settle into just one.
