"When You Were Mine" is a cool, sparse little powerpop-esque song from Prince's "Dirty Mind" album.
In 1983 two different artist, Mitch Ryder and Cyndi Lauper, covered it.
The original:
From 1980 Prince's version.Very sparse. He plays all the instruments and it sounds like that. Like a cool little demo, not fully fleshed out to it's full potential. Musically, a little bit of a throwback to the songs the early 60's girl groups used to do. Phil Spector would turn these types of songs into big productions.
The cover:
In 1983 John Cougar Mellencamp helped one of his teenage idols, Mitch Ryder, stage a comeback.
He produced Ryder's "Never Kick a Sleeping Dog" (just about impossible to find on cd. a real shame). The single was a great version of this Prince song. Production-wise it was the precursor to Mellencamp's fantastic "Uh-Huh" released later that year.
the other cover was from Cyndi Lauper on her breakthrough release "She's so Unusual". Not bad but a bit mired in 80's production. A bit of a slower tempo.
The Winner : The Mitch Ryder cover.
The Prince original is good, but Mitch Ryder's version took the song to the next level .
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