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: Am I Straight or Gay – A Conversation with Snax
This episode, I’m taking a little break from the University of Salford Purple Reign conference to talk to musician Paul Bonomo, a.k.a. Snax. We discuss Prince’s professional and personal impact on Paul, of course, but we also speak more broadly to the two-way flow of influence between Prince and gay culture–an area that’s been vastly…
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Lisa
“Lisa” points the way forward to the kind of electronic music we’d later hear on and around the 1999 album… even in the midst of engineering his second big reinvention, Prince already had a third one on deck.
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Partyup
What makes “Partyup” more than just ’60s fan fiction is the music: a lithe, infectious punk-funk groove, branded with the prophetic genre designation of “revolutionary rock and roll.”