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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I Don’t Wanna Stop
When Prince demoed “I Don’t Wanna Stop” in 1980, he was deliberately going out on a limb, a mad scientist sequestering himself in his laboratory to invent the future of Black music. It makes sense, then, that two years later, just as the fruits of his labors were starting to break through to the mainstream,…
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Dirty Mind
After two years of butting his head against the music industry’s racial divide, Prince was smuggling himself across the border, with Dirty Mind as his Trojan horse.
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When You Were Mine
“When You Were Mine” wasn’t Prince’s first classic song, but it was his first standard: timeless, durable, and rewarding of endless reinterpretations by other artists.