Prince’s Vanity
As beautiful as the night sky, full of twinkling stars, headstrong, charismatic, mysterious and the original ‘’nasty girl’’, today I’m going to talk to you about the original Prince girl: Vanity.
Born as Denise Katrina Matthews in 1959, Vanity developed an interest in modelling in her early teenage years. She participated in beauty contests, competed for Miss Canada and even won the Miss Niagara Hospitality title in 1977. However, just being in beauty contest and having a modelling career only doing photo shoots and commercials wasn’t enough for Vanity and so she moved to New York when she was only 17 years old to pursue a career in acting, modelling on a bigger scale and music.
The first movie Vanity ever appeared in was a horror movie called ‘’Terror Train’’ and later on she was the leading actress in a B-movie called ‘’Tanya’s Island’’. Vanity’s fame began to rise and then, in the early 80s, she’d meet someone who would play a big role in her life. That’s where our story begins.. because that’s when she met Prince for the very first time.
“It’s been said that when they met, they both stopped in their tracks; looking at each other, it was like seeing themselves, but of the opposite sex.” — Alan Leeds.
I think many Prince fans can agree with me on the fact that Prince and Vanity will go down in history as one of Hollywood’s hottest couples ever. From the moment Prince laid eyes on her, Prince saw Vanity as the female version of himself. (If you look closely at the picture above this paragraph, you can see how much they looked like each other!) He fell deeply in love with her and wanted to make her one of his very first proteges.
During the Controversy tour (1981–1982) Prince had the idea in mind that he wanted to form an all-girl group that would perform his music and adopt the kind of sexually free, cheeky, energetic persona that he had. The group was going have 3 members, the original members being Prince’s girlfriend at the time, Susan Moonsie, wardrobe assistant Brenda Bennett and Jamie Shoop. Prince’s original plan was to call the group ‘’The Hookers’’ and he wanted to have them wear lingerie on stage and sing songs with sexually explicit lyrics.
All of this changed when young and beautiful Denise Matthews stepped onto the scene.. At first, Prince wanted to give her the stage name Vagina but she wasn’t having any of it, so Prince decided to call her Vanity instead. The girl group’s name changed from ‘’The Hookers’’ to ‘’Vanity 6'’ and instead of Susan Moonsie, Vanity was going to be the leading lady of the group.
The first single Vanity 6 ever released as a band was ‘’He’s So Dull’’ in 1982. This track is my most favorite track on the entire Vanity 6 album, because it’s so uplifting and they’re singing about dull boys. For me, during my teenage years, I could relate to this song in a way almost every single day when I was still in high school, but that’s a different story.
The music video for ‘’He’s So Dull’’ shows Vanity in her signature outfit, the long tailcoat with a gorgeous lace body underneath it and her knee-high leather boots (I think that’s where my obsession with knee-high boots came from) Brenda in her signature more rock chick like lingerie and Susan in an all-white lace body, complete with white stockings and white kitten heels. Susan’s all-white outfit gives of an innocent vibe, which we see again in the outfit Madonna wore on the album cover for ‘’Like A Virgin’’, released in 1984, so two years later.
The second and most known single that Vanity 6 released is ‘’Nasty Girl’’ with the infamous lyrics:
‘’Tonight, I’m livin’ in a fantasy
In my own little nasty world
Tonight, don’t you wanna come with me?
Do you think I’m a nasty girl?’’
Both the song and the music video for the song were banned from various radio stations and TV channels because of it being really controversial during that time, girls in quite revealing dresses and sexually explicit lyrics.. I find this a highly amusing fact, looking at what kind of music videos and songs today’s artists come out with. ‘’Nasty Girl’’ is quite mild compared to some of todays music!
Another fact to mention about ‘’Nasty Girl’’ is that it reached a number 7 position in the Dutch singles chart. I’m from The Netherlands myself, so it’s nice to know that us Dutchies didn’t ban a more controversial song from all of our TV channels and radio stations.
Even though Prince gave Vanity the songwriting credits for this song.. I think we all know that he wrote it, there’s just no denying it!
‘’Nasty Girl’’ is covered, remixed and sampled by many.. but the most known cover version of the song is a cover Inaya Day released in 2004. Also, did you know there’s a sample from ‘’Nasty Girl’’ in Britney Spears’s hit ‘’I’m A Slave 4 U’’?! It was never credited as a sample, but it definitely is in there.
After their third single release, Vanity 6 was the opening act for Prince’s 1999 Tour. (1982–1983) They played together with Prince’s other protege band The Time, but the Time played behind a curtain, as Vanity 6’s backing band, so this caused a bit of a fit between the two bands. During this time, Prince also chose Vanity to pose with him for the cover of a 1983 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
Vanity started reading for her role as Prince’s love interest in his upcoming motion picture, Purple Rain and she recorded a demo for the song ‘’Sex Shooter’’ — which later on would be given to Apollonia and her group Apollonia 6. Later on in 1983, Vanity and Prince broke up and Vanity decided to move on from Prince and everything around him to pursue her career in film. Many reasons were given for Vanity leaving Prince, but one thing we all know is that they loved each other deeply.
Vanity (who changed her name back to her given name, Denise) passed away on the 15th of February in 2016 and Prince opened up about their love for each other and their relationship during his first Melbourne show on the Piano And A Microphone Tour.
“I am new to this playing alone. I thank you all for being so patient. I’m trying to stay focused, it’s a little heavy for me tonight. Just keep jamming … She knows about this one.” That introduced a truly incredible version of The Beautiful Ones, another song from the Vanity era (she was the original choice for lead in the Purple Rain movie), the song ending with Prince changing “my knees” for “Denise … Denise”.
“Can I tell you a story about Vanity? Or should I tell you a story about Denise? Her and I used to love each other deeply. She loved me for the artist I was, I loved her for the artist she was trying to be. She and I would fight. She was very headstrong cos she knew she was the finest woman in the world. She never missed an opportunity to tell you that.” — Prince (2016)
Prince also played a touching version of Little Red Corvette dedicated to her, with bits and pieces of Dirty Mind era songs, from the era when they were together.
He also told the crowd a story about how he threatened to throw Vanity into the pool once and how she said that he wouldn’t be able to do that because he was too little and how Prince then asked his bodyguard Chick (who is 6'’ tall) to throw Vanity in the pool on behalf of him.
I think that, throughout his life, Vanity was Prince’s biggest love and that he has always kept on loving her. You can debate me on that one, but I strongly believe it’s the truth.
May they both Rest In Peace.. we love and miss you so much.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling this story,“ he said, “but she’d want us to celebrate her life and not mourn her.” — Prince (2016)
PS: I will forever envy my mom for seeing Vanity 6 perform live right in front of her in the 80s. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Vanity really WAS the goddess she is described to have been.
