“Little Red Corvette” sends me revving through the engine of time to the late winter of 1983, when the music video for it first aired on MTV. No one in my circle was sure what to make of it, Prince or his other video, “1999.” We were seniors in a suburban Philly high school who mostly listened to AOR rock radio, though MTV was also a staple of our entertainment diets. Prince’s synth-driven R&B/rock hybrid sounded like it hailed from another planet, just about. But as the days, weeks and months blurred into the summer and then fall, I adjusted to its atmosphere and bought the 1999 album on cassette, and followed it with Purple Rain and the albums that followed. Prince’s songs—all the ones you’d expect—punctuated the soundtrack of almost every party and bar I went to in those days.
For as popular as it was, however, “Little Red Corvette” hasn’t been covered all that often. Rebecca de Mornay delivered a (surprisingly) solid rendition in the otherwise forgettable 1985 movie The Slugger’s Wife, which also saw her covering Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” but by and large it’s been left to idle alongside the roadside—largely due to its iconic status, no doubt. Which is why it was a surprise to me to learn that Jackson Reed and the Silverbirds, a rock band out of Calgary, have put their own spin on it.
Their rendition is less R&B and more Heartland rock, and races along at a slightly slower tempo. “It sounds like Bruce covering it,” my wife—a longtime Springsteen fan—said (or words to that effect), when I played it for her the other day. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the spin Bruce and the E Street Band put on “Purple Rain” when they played it following Prince’s death in 2016. The lyrics about a girl who loved and left the narrator remain, of course, as does the song’s glorious hook. The younger among us may not realize the song’s iconic status; for them it will, I think, simply sound great. For those who once plugged 1999 and Purple Rain into Walkmans or Walkman clones, it’ll never replace the original—but that’s okay. It’ll still send us spiraling into memories of late nights and early morns, of bars, dance floors and backseats.
Reed’s version can be streamed from all the usual suspects. The video, for its part, features a classic Corvette Stingray—red, of course. (Springsteen fans should also take note of Reed’s T-shirt….)
The Old Grey Cat 