Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Robert Christgau	B+
Entertainment Weekly	B
The Guardian
MusicHound	3/5
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Stylus Magazine	(favorable)

Lovesexy is the tenth studio album by American recording artist Prince. The album was released on May 10, 1988 by Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros. Records, a little over a year after Prince's previous studio album, Sign o' the Times, which received critical praise and a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Lovesexy received mixed reviews; it was issued as a substitute record after the last minute cancellation of the infamous The Black Album. The album was recorded in just seven weeks, from mid-December 1987 to late January 1988, at Prince's new Paisley Park Records, and most of the album is a solo effort from Prince, with a few exceptions. The opening track, "Eye No", was recorded with the full band (Miko Weaver on guitar, Levi Seacer, Jr. on bass, Doctor Fink and Boni Boyer on keyboards, Eric Leeds on saxophone, Atlanta Bliss on trumpet and Sheila E. on drums). Sheila E., in fact, plays drums on several tracks and sings backup, along with Boyer. Leeds and Bliss provide horns on most tracks, and Ingrid Chavez provides the intro to "Eye No". The album is designed to be heard in the context of a continuous sequence: LP pressings split the album in two side-long tracks, without visual bands to indicate individual songs. Similarly, early CD copies of Lovesexy have the entire album in sequence as a single track, though some later editions have it as nine separate tracks.

The lyrical themes of the record include positivity, self-improvement, spirituality, and God. It spawned three singles; "Alphabet St." became a worldwide top-ten hit in the spring of 1988, whereas the follow-up singles "Glam Slam" and "I Wish U Heaven" failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100. While it was Prince's least successful album in the United States since 1980, it became his first UK number 1 album (where all the singles became top-thirty hits) and received critical praise. The album was accompanied by the critically acclaimed Lovesexy Tour, of which the Dortmund show in Germany was released on video cassette and LaserDisc. It was also televised (with a short delay for editorial purposes) on the British Channel 4, with the broadcast containing various alternate camera shots in place of the ones used in the officially released video, which was released a year later in 1989.

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Wikipedia