| Oui Can Luv is an acoustic album by Andy Allo featuring Prince on acoustic guitar. To date, the album has only been available to stream for 12 hours on the music platform Tidal, with whom Prince has an extensive partnership.
The album includes nine songs; eight are known to be cover versions (including two of Prince’s own songs, I Love U In Me and We Can Funk, revised as Oui Can Luv). Nothing is known about the authorship of the remaining track, False Alarm, so it is treated here as a writing collaboration between Prince and Andy Allo.
The songs on the album mostly come from singer-songwriters:
- Fast Car was written and performed by Tracy Chapman, from her debut album Tracy Chapman (1988), and also released as her debut single shortly before the album.
- Push And Pull, as Push & Pull, was written by Nikka Costa and Justin Stanley and performed by Nikka Costa, from her first U.S. album Everybody Got Their Something (2001), and also available as a promo-only single the following year.
- Love Is A Losing Game, written and performed by Amy Winehouse, first appeared on her 2006 album Back To Black, and was released as a single in 2007.
- Wild World was written and originally performed by Cat Stevens, and first appeared on his 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman, and also released as a single two months prior to the album’s release.
- Waiting In Vain, written by Bob Marley and performed by Bob Marley and the Wailers, first appeared on their 1977 album Exodus, and also released as a single the same year.
- More Than This, written by Bryan Ferry and performed by his band Roxy Music, was released on their 1982 final album Avalon, and was released as the album’s first single prior to the album’s release.
Prince, of course, had previously released both I Love U In Me (initially as the b-side of The Arms Of Orion in 1989), and We Can Funk (on the Graffiti Bridge album in 1989, although initially recorded in 1986 under that name, following a 1983 recording under the original title We Can Fuck).
Early steps
Andy Allo had previously released alternate versions of some tracks.
A similar acoustic version of Love Is A Losing Game, which had been in Prince’s live repertoire before Andy Allo joined the band, was streamed on Andy Allo’s Facebook page in July 2011, within 24 hours of the announcement of the death of the song’s original singer and writer Amy Winehouse.
Andy Allo had released a solo acoustic version of Waiting In Vain on her website prior to joining Prince’s band in June 2011.
Oui Can Luv, in a similar acoustic take with Prince on acoustic guitar, was available on Andy Allo’s Facebook page in late 2011.
Many of the songs had also made appearances in Prince’s live shows over the years:
Sessions and compiling
The only two musicians believed to appear on the album are Andy Allo on lead and background vocals, and Prince on acoustic guitar, marking this the most stripped-down album in Prince’s catalogue (although The Truth and One Nite Alone... were announced as acoustic albums on guitar and piano respectively, they were more heavily produced with full bands and sound effects on some tracks).
Nothing is known about when the album was recorded, or whether it was recorded in a single day, or over time. It has been announced that the songs were recorded at Paisley Park Studios, Chanhassen, MN, USA, however. It is likely that the tracks were recorded in 2011-2012 during sessions for Andy Allo’s second studio album Superconductor, but this has not been confirmed.
Release
No other plans have been announced for this album to receive a wider release.
|
2015: Back In Time ◄
