Adam and the Ants “Prince Charming” 1981. Today, November 3rd, is Adam Ant’s birthday (b. Stuart Leslie Goddard, 1954) and at 62 he is still going full-pirate.  Prince Charming, his third album and the last one to include “The Ants” in the title, was a major hit, peaking at #2 on the album charts in the UK, with two #1 singles: “Stand and Deliver” and “Prince Charming” (the latter fostered controversy later when it was decided in an out-of-court settlement that the single was musically identical to the 1965 song “War Canoe” by Rolf Harris, who then received a large sum of royalties from Ant). A third single, “Ant Rap,” made it to #3 in the UK.

Prince Charming is a mostly enjoyable new wave pop album, especially the hits (though “Ant Rap” is beyond silly). However there are a couple of real stinkers, including “Five Guns West” which is simply ridiculous, sounding like it belongs on the soundtrack to a spoof spaghetti-western soundtrack. “Mile High Club” is tiresome – its introductory chords sound promising, like a new wave version of “8 Miles High,” but then goes on for another 2:40 of monotony. “Mowhok” similarly drags, with the added, and somewhat offensively, inclusion of Native Americanish traditional beats and chants. The album concludes with a hidden track, “The Lost Hawaiians,” a very brief instrumental that is a remake of “Los Rancheros” from Kings of the Wild Frontier, the Ants’ second album, though to my ears it sounds a lot more like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on ukulele (that song originally recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda, a South African Zulu musician, and it was made popular by the Tokens in 1961 when it became a #1 hit in the US).