All 85 Prince singles, ranked 4 u from worst 2 best

When Prince died five years ago this week, he left behind one of the richest, deepest, smartest, funniest, most beautiful and most complicated collections of work that pop music has ever known.

And it hasn’t stopped growing since he passed.

Prince believed in sprawl, as he demonstrated with double and triple albums and with an internet storehouse of music he invited his fans to wander. Since his death, the artist’s estate has issued multiple LPs and box sets of material pulled from the famous vault at his Paisley Park complex in suburban Minneapolis.

Yet Prince was also devoted to the concise pleasures — and to the market-exciting potential — of a hit single. In his career as a solo act and as the frontman of the Revolution and the New Power Generation, he placed 47 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100, all of them before digital streaming opened up pop’s flagship chart to viral flukes.

To celebrate his flair for the short form, we’ve ranked every one of Prince’s singles, from worst to best, in the list below. (An accompanying Spotify playlist, which includes the songs available on that streaming platform, follows the No. 1 entry.) Using information from Prince’s official website, Discogs and the exhaustingly detailed PrinceVault.com, our list seeks to include the A-side of every single Prince released commercially in the U.S. between his 1978 major-label debut, “For You,” and his death, from an accidental overdose of Fentanyl, at age 57 on April 21, 2016.

The list omits remixes, re-recordings and songs he wrote and produced for other acts, though it reflects some editorial judgment in including several promo-only releases that attained obvious single-hood through music videos, TV commercials and the like.

Three of Prince’s longtime collaborators — engineers Susan Rogers and David Z and guitarist Dez Dickerson — shared their thoughts on a number of songs as well.

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85. “Hardrocklover” (2015)

A character sketch of a woman who prefers hard rock to “Sade and Babyface” — set against an overwrought electro-metal arrangement that fails to explain why.

84. “The Arms of Orion” (1989)
From the “Batman” soundtrack, one of Prince’s gloopiest ballads, with the singer in the role of Bruce Wayne and Sheena Easton as Vicki Vale.

83. “Peach” (1993)
Fuzzy blues guitar + looped Kim Basinger moan = something new to entice folks to pay for “The Hits/The B-Sides.”

82. “The Song of the Heart” (2006)
Prince’s interest in animated penguins + the kids movie “Happy Feet” = an opportunity to write a Golden Globe-winning theme song.

81. “Pretzelbodylogic” (2014)
Noodling by numbers.

80. “Damn U” (1992)
Swank but forgettable.

79. “Purple Medley” (1995)
Just what it says: a tightly edited mega-mix of some of Prince’s biggest hits.

78. “Free Urself” (2015)
The last single Prince released before his death … sounds an awful lot like MGMT’s “Kids”?

77. “Supercute” (2001)

Plenty of musicians have written admiring songs about exotic dancers; fewer have written them from the perspective Prince takes in this sly workplace drama: “Maybe it’s ’cause she come from East L.A. / But every time I see her body on display / I gotta call her name from the DJ booth.”

76. “Pink Cashmere” (1993)
A middling melody gussied up with fancy film-score strings.

75. “Insatiable” (1991)
In which Prince teaches someone named Martha how to make a sex tape.

74. “This Could B Us” (2015)
A so-so electro-funk jam based on a meme based on a scene from “Purple Rain.”

73. “New Power Generation” (1990)
Prince introduces his new backing band with a promise to keep “pumping the big noise in the ’90s.”

72. “The Truth” (1997)
A stinging acoustic blues that might be the most stripped-down single he ever made.

71. “S.S.T.” (2005)
A warm, Bill Withers-ish soul-folk tune released as a fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

70. “Glam Slam” (1988)
Not much of a tune, but any history of late-’80s shoegaze should make room for what Prince was doing here on guitar.

69. “I Wish U Heaven” (1988)
Ditto.

At the box office, Prince’s “Purple Rain” sequel “Graffiti Bridge” made a fraction of what its predecessor did. But the soundtrack still spun off a top 10 hit with its vaguely mystical lead single.

67. “Space” (1994)
Prince goes trip-hop.

66. “Te Amo Corazón” (2005)
Prince goes smooth jazz.

65. “Betcha By Golly Wow!” (1996)
An exceedingly faithful cover of the Stylistics’ early-’70s soul classic from 1996’s triple-CD “Emancipation,” which also featured a respectful take on the Delfonics’ late-’60s “La-La Means I Love You.”

64. “Days of Wild” (2002)
Lengthy live rendition of a rowdy funk-rap cut from 1998’s “Crystal Ball,” with cleaned-up language to suit Prince’s becoming a Jehovah’s Witness around the turn of the millennium.

63. “Fixurlifeup” (2013)
Key lyric from Prince’s fuzzed-out first single with the all-woman power trio 3rdEyeGirl: “Girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another crazy band of boys.”

62. “Partyman” (1989)
On vocals, Prince as the Joker; on bass, Prince as Bootsy Collins.

61. “Scandalous!” (1989)
Another “Batman” cut, this one a synth-smeared ballad for which Prince’s father is credited as co-writer.

60. “Cinnamon Girl” (2004)
The title cribs that of Neil Young’s late-’60s proto-grunge classic (just as Lana Del Rey’s “Cinnamon Girl” did in 2019). But the tune feels more like Prince’s stab at “Beggars Banquet”-era Rolling Stones.

59. “Just As Long As We’re Together” (1978)

Speedy, breathy, super-detailed disco-funk in which Prince can’t decide which instrumental skill he wants to show off first.

58. “Let’s Work” (1982)
Inspired by a local Minneapolis dance craze (and originally titled “Let’s Rock”), “Let’s Work” “is all about the groove,” says Dez Dickerson, who played guitar in the earliest lineup of the Revolution. “We called it ‘the pocket.’ Hours and hours and hours were spent locking that down. And if you couldn’t get in the pocket and stay in it, you weren’t gonna be in Prince’s band very long.”

57. “Take Me With U” (1985)

A lightly trippy psych-soul duet between Prince and Apollonia that feels like the bridge between “Purple Rain” and “Around the World in a Day.”

56. “F.U.N.K.” (2007)
A.C.C.U.R.A.T.E.

55. “Breakdown” (2014)
A moving pop-stardom-is-hard plaint in which Prince reflects on his youthful overindulgence (“First one intoxicated, last one to leave / Waking up in places that you would never believe”) as well as his iffy real estate decisions (“I used to want the house with the biggest pool / Reminiscing now I just feel like a fool”).

54. “America” (1985)
“Prince was oddly conservative — very much a Minnesota boy,” says Susan Rogers, the singer’s trusted engineer throughout the mid-’80s who now teaches at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. “And he could be kind of a scold. He’d stand there and wave his finger and say, ‘You shouldn’t behave like this.’” In this propulsive Reagan-era funk track with worries about a creeping communist threat, Prince is “issuing a warning,” Rogers adds. “He’s saying we all better start paying close attention.”

53. “Dance 4 Me” (2009)
Recycling the iconic drum-machine beat from “When Doves Cry,” Prince addresses a “funky congregation” in this highlight from the throwback-minded “MPLSound,” which he sold exclusively at Target.

52. “Screwdriver” (2013)
A blistering garage-soul rave-up about life on the road, which he defines adorably as “sharing stories in cool clothes.”

51. “Letitgo” (1994)
Perhaps the sultriest song ever recorded about an artist’s disagreement with his label’s release strategy.

50. “Extraloveable” (2011)
A vintage early-’80s lyric — “Whenever you need someone to take a shower with, call me up, please” — retrieved from the vault and given sparkling new life.

49. “Rock and Roll Love Affair” (2012)
“She believed in fairy tales and princes”; he believed in a swinging horn section.

48. “Musicology” (2004)
“Don’t you hear this old-school joint?” Prince growls near the end, by which point you certainly have. To David Z’s ears, the Grammy-winning “Musicology” combines the lessons Prince learned from James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger. “That’s who he was studying on his way up — their moves and their licks,” says Z, who worked with Prince in his earliest studio sessions. “The guy did nothing but practice.”

47. “Still Waiting” (1980)
Another obvious source of wisdom: Smokey Robinson.

46. “The Work Pt. 1” (2001)
But mostly James Brown.

45. “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold” (1999)

“Tell me that’s not a hit,” Prince dared a New York Times reporter as he showed off a preview of this deliciously slinky slow jam — to which the universe responded: “Can do.” Though it deserved better, “Greatest Romance” stalled out at No. 63 on the Hot 100.

44. “Fallinlove2nite” (2014)
First heard as part of Prince’s appearance on an episode of the Zooey Deschanel sitcom “New Girl” (!?), here’s an endearingly tender Europop jam that rhymes “Underneath the taffeta” with &ld