Prince's pop life, song by song, in chronological order.
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The Belle of St. Mark
While “Glamorous” sounded tailor-made for Sheila’s particular talents (even if it wasn’t), “Belle” is well-crafted but faceless, embodying the essentialist cynicism of the publishing imprint Prince used for his female side projects: “Girlsongs.”
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Podcast: I am Something That You’ll Never Understand – Chris Aguilar-Garcia and Natalie Clifford on the Salford Purple Reign Conference
After much delay, here is my conversation with Chris Aguilar-Garcia and Natalie Clifford, two presenters from this May’s interdisciplinary Prince conference at the University of Salford. Both Chris and Nat identify as queer, and both have interesting things to say about Prince’s legacy of “revolutionary queerness” and the space he created for less conventional expressions…
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Roundup: Dirty Mind, 1980
It’s been a long six months since my last roundup post, but this time I’m not going to make any promises about picking up the pace: my inherent slothfulness aside, Dirty Mind also marks the beginning of my personal favorite era for Prince, and I want to do it justice. Hopefully, with this latest batch of posts,…
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Do It All Night
Prince had been structuring his shows as a kind of mass seduction since his first “official” live dates in 1979. Now, he had a custom-built vessel for these audience flirtations.