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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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.
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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.