Roundup: Dirty Mind, 1980

(Featured Image: Outtake from the Dirty Mind cover photo sessions, 1980; photo by Allen Beaulieu.)

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, I’m off to a good start; as always, I’m looking forward to the rest!

Here’s my ranking of the songs from Dirty Mind:

8. “Do It All Night” First, let me be clear: I consider Dirty Mind to be Prince’s first set of wall-to-wall classics, so when I say “Do It All Night” is my least favorite track, it’s barely a criticism. It’s just that on an album that introduced a bolder, rawer Prince, this was one of the few tracks that sounded like it could have been held over from his previous record. It’s still a jam, though–and, as I noted in the post, it really came to life in concert.

7. “Sister” Again, no disrespect intended to what remains Prince’s most literal interpretation of the punk aesthetic. It’s just that “Sister” is less a great song than it is a great segue: doubling down on “Head”’s gleeful vulgarity, before getting political with “Partyup.” I never really listen to “Sister” on its own, but I can’t imagine the album without it.

6. “Gotta Broken Heart Again” I’ve already confessed my love for Prince’s early, simple R&B ballads, and this is one of the simplest and purest of the bunch. Sometimes I think I might even like it more than “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” (don’t tell anyone I said that, though).

5. “Uptown” This might be blasphemy, but for me this song is significant mostly for what it represents: the first of Prince’s grand utopian visions, an idealized multicultural Minneapolis invented out of sheer willpower, and an early example of the intersectional identity-fucking he’d perfect in the years to come. As a song, it doesn’t do much for me that “Controversy” wouldn’t improve upon later; but that doesn’t stop me from singing along when it comes on in the car.

4. “Dirty Mind” Like “Do It All Night,” this isn’t breaking as much new ground as you might expect, subject matter-wise; but in this case, the sound is pure throbbing future erotica, pointing the way to even deeper New Wave and electronic indulgences to come.

3. “When You Were Mine” Prince’s best pop song to date, and one of his catchiest ever; plus, it’s the one track on Dirty Mind I can (somewhat) comfortably listen to with my five-year-old, so that scores it a few bonus points.

2. “Head” Yeah, it’s “just” a funky song about blowjobs, but it’s hard to overstate the importance of this song to Prince’s oeuvre. So much of the rest of his 1980s, from the literal and musical miscegenation to the “Filthy Fifteen” explicit lyrics, can be traced directly back to “Head.” In its own way, this is Prince’s “Brown Sugar”: an unfiltered, borderline obscene id dump that nevertheless says something deeply significant about rock and roll.

1. “Partyup” My favorite track on Dirty Mind is also quite possibly the least “dirty”; in my opinion, though, this sudden album-closing pivot toward conventional politics gives the other songs an even more liberatory charge. On his next album, of course, Prince would deal even more explicitly with current events, but not with anywhere near this level of ease, concision, or panache.

Now let’s take a look at those tags:

Obviously things are skewed a bit by the podcast, but there are some interesting trends to be observed: old collaborators (Owen Husney, Pepé Willie) are beginning to recede, while new ones (Dez Dickerson, Lisa Coleman) are starting to emerge. In case anyone had any doubts, this was also the longest series of posts I’ve done so far: 1,653 words on average, vs. 1,383 for Prince and 1,379 for For You.

I’m hoping to jump into the brave new post-Dirty Mind world next week; first, though, I need to deliver that podcast episode that was supposed to come out today. New ETA is Monday. In the meantime, here’s the Spotify playlist!

One Year of dance / music / sex / romance

(Featured Image: Side 2 of 1999; Warner Bros.)

One year ago today, I launched dance / music / sex / romance on what should have been Prince’s 58th birthday. I had no real expectations: I knew, of course, that it would appeal to a wider audience than my usual content, but that’s a low bar to clear. The response, however, has been beyond anything I dared to hope. I’ve met some great people through this blog, and their/your excitement is infectious; it’s carried me through a few lean periods already, and is sure to carry me through plenty more in the future of this insane task I’ve given myself. In the past, I’ve sustained long-term projects through a combination of obstinance and a deep, insular commitment to taking inside jokes to their ultimate conclusions; this will be the first long-term project I’ll have sustained with a genuine sense of community.

So, yeah, about that whole “long-term” thing. As of this writing, I’ve completed two albums, and am about (seriously, I promise!) to begin a third. Projecting purely from this number, we’re in for a long ride: Prince had 39 “official” studio albums to his name, so at two albums a year, you can expect me to wrap up in about 2036. Of course, it isn’t that simple: I’ve actually covered about 45 songs, released and unreleased, in this first year of operation, and for a month or so in there I was barely writing at all. I’m confident that I’ll be more productive in my second year–though after that, who knows. And of course there’s always the possibility that I’ll give up, or be shut down by the estate, or otherwise rendered unable to continue. For now, I’m taking it one year at a time, and I’m very excited about the year to come.

In the meantime, if you’re new and wondering where to start, here’s a roundup of the territory we’ve covered so far:

Ephemera, 1975-1976
***For You*, 1978
Ephemera, 1977-1978
Prince, 1979**

Or, if you prefer to read in purely chronological order, there’s always this option:

The Story So Far

Finally, you are probably already aware that I recently launched a podcast. Our first series is over, but it’s still an ongoing project! I have a lot of stuff lined up in the next few months that I’m excited about. For now, you can check out the first four episodes that I recorded with professional philosopher and amateur Prince scholar Jane Clare Jones:

Part 1: A Year Without Prince
Part 2: Dig If U Will
Part 3: The Most Beautiful
Part 4: Empty Room

Remember, you can also check out the podcast feeds at iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play if you’re so inclined (Stitcher recommended over Google), or stream the episodes on Mixcloud.

I think that’s all for now. Again, I’ll be back by the end of the week with that monster post I’ve been working on. In the meantime, happy Prince Day, and thanks for reading!

Roundup: Prince, 1979

(Featured Image: Back cover of Prince, 1979; photo by Chris Callis, © Warner Bros.)

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 it happened here first: whatever it is you like about Prince, you can find it on his self-titled 1979 album. Unless what you like about Prince is Tony M’s raps, I guess. You’ll have to wait about 12 years for those.

Anyway, here’s how I rank the songs, at least at the moment. Feel free to let me know your own rankings in the comments:

9. “With You” The one weak spot on an otherwise pretty damn stellar album. If he’d replaced this with, say, “Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me?,” we’d have nothing but hits on our hands.

8. “When We’re Dancing Close and Slow” For the record, there’s a big gap between this and “With You”; I gave other songs an edge just because I prefer burners to ballads. A gorgeous, dreamy, arty slow jam, brimming with potential for even better things to come.

7. “Still Waiting” Prince at his most R&B-classicist. Like I said in the original post, it doesn’t hold up quite as well against later songs in this vein, like “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?”; but it’s heartfelt and expertly crafted, and it really came alive in concert.

6. “Sexy Dancer” I used to think this song was dated because “disco”; now I listen to it and it just feels ahead of its time. Early electronic music, from Frankie Knuckles to the Egyptian Lover, owes a lot to “Sexy Dancer.”

5. “Bambi” Yes, yes, the lyrics are so un-P.C., but the headbanger in me can’t resist that sledgehammer of a riff. Prince’s Grand Funk worship has never been so gloriously evident.

4. “I Feel for You” Maybe the most head-slappingly obvious shoulda-been-a-single in Prince’s discography. Chaka’s version is great, of course, but “I Feel for You” was pure pop-soul perfection from the start.

3. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” Speaking of shoulda-beens, the fact that this wasn’t a hit in early 1980 blows my mind, and is a testament to the absurd level of segregation (not to mention homophobia) in the music industry at the time. It’s arena-level power pop that out-Bostons Boston, but it missed the Hot 100 because the guy wailing on his guitar looked “ethnic” and dressed “queer.” Disco Sucks sucked.

2. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” Predictable choice, I know, but it’s just so goddamn good. Prince’s first major hit, and his first absolute classic song. That’s worth celebrating.

1. “It’s Gonna Be Lonely” Now, for a less conventional choice: I know I said I prefer burners to ballads, but I fucking adore this song. I don’t even have that much to say about it, specifically; it’s just so wonderfully Prince. One day, I want to listen to this song the way it was meant to be listened to: in a bubble bath, surrounded by caged doves.

As you can see, the tag cloud has shifted significantly from last time:

André Cymone is still Prince’s most important collaborator, but L.A. is starting to catch up with Minneapolis as the center of his universe. That, of course, will change very soon. And hey, here’s a piece of data that might only be interesting to me. I was worried I was writing less about the tracks on Prince than I was about For You, so I went ahead and ran the numbers: average post length was 1,383 words for the former, 1,379 words for the latter. Guess we have ourselves a sweet spot.

I have to say, I’m super excited about the coming weeks, and if you’re reading this now, I hope you’ll stay on board. Next week, as I mentioned yesterday, we pick up with the Rebels side project; then it’s on to one of my all-time favorite records, the aforementioned Dirty Mind. And somewhere in there, I’ll be working in another experiment in alternate history, plus reviews of the new books by Ben Greenman and Mayte Garcia. This April, for obvious reasons, is a sad month for Prince fans; but we’re also lucky, because he’s left us such a wealth of material to remember him by.

I’ll see you next week for a new, “proper” post. In the meantime, here’s the Spotify playlist, if that’s your kind of thing:

Roundup: Ephemera, 1977-1978

(Featured Image: Prince by Robert Whitman, 1977.)

I’m not gonna lie, folks: this “chapter” of the blog wasn’t always easy to get through. I mentioned before that For You is my least favorite album of Prince’s “classic period,” and his outtakes from that time are, well, outtakes. If nothing else, however, this was valuable training for when I have to trudge through the parts of his discography I like even less; the other day I realized that at some point I’m going to need to spend a couple of months on Carmen Electra’s album, and I promptly broke into a cold sweat.

So, in addition to my usual “thank-yous” for reading, I’d like to also thank my readers for being so patient in the five months (!) between this and the last roundup post. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I feel some burnout on a project that, I’m well aware, will be a part of my life for the next several years. All I can do is continue to do my best and try to do the material justice, even when it doesn’t especially excite me.

And hey, in case you were wondering what songs excited me least, here’s the ranking:

11. 1978 Instrumentals No surprise here: like his home recordings of 1976, Prince’s France Avenue instrumentals are For Devotees Only. But man, what a treat that we get to hear them at all.

10. “Baby, Baby, Baby” Another one for the Devotees Only list: basically just a couple minutes’ worth of Prince strumming and scatting, and yet here I am writing about it 40 years later like it’s the Holy Fucking Grail. If this was just some guy in a coffee shop, it would be unbearable; but it’s Prince, and somehow that makes all the difference.

9. “Donna” A cute, if clearly unfinished little ditty. Also gave me an excuse to share a pretty dope photo of Donna Summer.

8. “Down a Long Lonely Road” The fact that this is ranked so high is proof that I’m being as subjective as possible: it’s barely a song, but what can I say, I like the pure and simple gospel feel. Would have loved to hear this develop into something more.

7. “Make It Through the Storm” I know this is a popular outtake, but it’s not my favorite. Still, an interesting reminder that even in the For You era, Prince didn’t sound quite like anyone else: this is the exception that proves the rule.

6. “Nadeara” I bet he writes songs like this for all the girls.

5. “Miss You” My favorite of the post-For You demos by default: it’s the only one that really holds up as a complete song. Well, with one exception…

4. “Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me?” This is low-key one of Prince’s best early pop cuts, and it dates back all the way to 1976. Would love to hear the Sue Ann Carwell version one of these days.

3. Loring Park Sessions Would I care about this if it wasn’t by Prince? Probably not; like I said in the original post, it’s perfectly good jazz-funk in the Herbie Hancock vein, but nothing earth-shattering on its own merits. The fact that it is by Prince, though–recorded before his first album!–makes it a fascinating listen. I also feel like I’ve seen someone on the Internet share a link to Prince’s “mind-blowing early jazz sessions” at least once a week since last April, so if nothing else these should be easy to track down.

2. “Just Another Sucker” I never really bothered digging into 94 East before I wrote this blog, so “Just Another Sucker” is one of my favorite new discoveries. It’s no masterpiece, but it would have fit Prince’s self-titled second album like a glove.

1. “We Can Work It Out” As a blogger used to toiling in obscurity, I can appreciate an idea like this: a superbly-crafted disco-funk-pop-rock opus only meant to be heard by a handful of people; an elaborate private joke that could have been a legitimate hit. Oh, and check out the handwritten lyrics! These were acquired late last year by the Minnesota Historical Society; I hope they don’t mind me sharing the image below. I’ve also added it to the original post for posterity’s sake. Gotta love that racy doodle.

I Hope We Work It Out, 1977. — Photo stolen from the Minnesota Historical Society

In case you missed it, I also just wrote a rather lengthy post discussing Prince’s first band and his live debut as a solo artist:

I am You: Capri Theatre, January 5-6, 1979

Finally, here’s a song without a home for the time being. I wanted to write about “Moonbeam Levels,” the first officially-released outtake since Prince’s passing, while it was still relevant. I’m sure I will revise this post by the time we get to 1982 in our official chronology, but here it is for now:

“Moonbeam Levels”

And of course, it wouldn’t be a roundup post without a snapshot of the ol’ tag cloud:

Next week, we’re finally making the leap into 1979 with a post on one of Prince’s early classics: “I Feel for You.” I’m looking forward to it! In the meantime, remember that you can always see the full chronological index of songs right here.

dance / music / sex / romance

The Prince oeuvre, song by song, in chronological order

Category: Roundup Posts