Author: Zachary Hoskins
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Roundup: Prince, 1979
Well, here we are: another album’s worth of posts complete. I’d always preferred Prince’s second full-length to its predecessor, For You, but I rediscovered it in a big way while writing about it for this blog. Critical consensus tends to cite 1980’s Dirty Mind as the moment when the pieces all fell into place, but I’d actually argue that
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It’s Gonna Be Lonely
On an album that arguably set the mold for who Prince was as an artist, “It’s Gonna Be Lonely” feels like the most “Prince” of all.
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Still Waiting
Heartbreak is the bread and butter of country and soul music alike; Prince employs these well-worn tropes with lines so note-perfect they seem almost timeless.
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Bambi
“Bambi” was the heaviest thing Prince had recorded, and would remain so until his scrapped album The Undertaker–which just happened to feature an even heavier version.
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When We’re Dancing Close and Slow
“Close and Slow” owes as much of its ambience to folk-infused 1970s soft rock as to any kind of R&B; in particular, it’s another early signal of Prince’s artistic debt to Joni Mitchell.
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Sexy Dancer
Prince’s one-man jams were, at least in part, about showing off. And on his second album, “Sexy Dancer” was the designated show-off track: a loose four-minute jam that gave Prince the drummer, guitarist, bassist, and (especially) keyboard player their respective shots at the spotlight.