Songfacts®:

• By 1985, Prince had already conquered the planet with Purple Rain, but instead of doubling down on arena-sized guitar heroics, he pivoted left into psychedelia, Beatlesque color, and introspection with the album Around The World In A Day. "Condition Of The Heart," the third track, is the moment the glitter settles and the lights dim.
• "Condition Of The Heart" is a nearly seven-minute piano ballad that unfolds in three painful vignettes, each a postcard from romantic defeat.
  
  First, our hero writes an unanswered letter to a girl in Paris. This is not the triumphant wooing of a girl with a "Raspberry Beret." This is a man licking stamps and hoping for mercy.
  
  Then comes a woman from London who leaves him for a wealthier "real prince from Arabia," which is the sort of plot twist that could only happen to someone actually named Prince.
  
  By the third verse, we're in the ghetto with a woman who wears the same cologne and has the same giggle as the one he truly loves. Anyone can miss a person; it takes artistry to miss their laugh.
• The chorus turns heartbreak into diagnosis:
  
  Every single day is a yellow day
  I'm blinded by the daisies in your yard
  
  Here, unrequited love is a condition: chronic, recurring, incurable.
• There was a woman from the ghetto who made funny faces
  Just like Clara Bow
  
  The song's reference to Clara Bow, the silent-film actress renowned for her wide eyes and playful expressiveness, is one of Prince's more literary touches, smuggling old Hollywood into a modern Minneapolis lament.
• Although the album is credited to Prince and The Revolution, "Condition of the Heart" is essentially a one-man symphony. The Revolution only appear on three tracks ("America," "Pop Life" and "The Ladder"). On this "Condition Of The Heart," Prince handled everything himself: vocals, piano, guitars, bass, synthesizers, finger cymbals, whistles, kettle drums, and percussion.
• "Condition Of The Heart" was laid down by Prince and recording engineer Susan Rogers at Sunset Sound one Sunday with the lights dimmed and candles lit. "On Sundays we didn't have band rehearsals, so it was usually just the two of us," Rogers old Mojo magazine. "'Condition Of The Heart' was a Sunday song. He moved from instrument to instrument as quietly as possible and blew my mind with his vocal performance and the beauty of that piece."
• Rogers noted that Prince often shelved his most vulnerable material; songs like (shelved outtake) "Moonbeam Levels" or "Another Lonely Christmas" (B-side to "I Would Die 4 U") didn't make the final cut. "On 'Condition Of The Heart,' he's really putting it all out there," she said. "I'm glad he didn't yank it."
• Placed after the title track and "Paisley Park," the song is the album's emotional anchor. While much of Around the World in a Day floats in Technicolor optimism, "Condition Of The Heart" is a confessional ballad where the mask drops entirely. It's what happens after the party from "Let's Go Crazy" ends and everyone has gone home.