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#PrinceTwitterThread: “All the Critics Love U in New York”

Last Friday night, I broke my self-imposed hiatus to contribute to the latest #PrinceTwitterThread series on 1999. I used this opportunity to expand on one of my favorite posts I’ve written, “All the Critics Love U in New York,” zeroing in on the themes of Prince’s reciprocal relationship with Detroit DJ the Electrifying Mojo and, by extension, the early techno scene. I’ve been wanting to do a project around the Detroit-Prince connection for years, and to be honest, when I decided to do this thread, I didn’t think it would fill that gap for me; but I’m actually very happy with how it turned out, so if this ends up being my last word on Prince and Detroit, then I’m surprisingly okay with that.

In fact, I’m so happy with this thread that a part of me wishes I’d centered my paper at next (!) weekend’s #TripleThreat40 symposium around it, so I could already be mostly done with my personal projects this month instead of only half done. But that’s Burnout Zach talking; I have every confidence that by the time the symposium runs around, I’ll be glad I decided to pursue two cool ideas instead of just one. For now, please enjoy Cool Idea #1; hopefully I’ll see some of you when it’s time to unveil Cool Idea #2.

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Ephemera, 1984

Love and Sex (1984)

"The Garden of Earthly Delights," Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1495–1505.

The Purple Rain era marked a subtle, yet perceptible shift in Prince’s attitudes toward sex. On 1999 less than two years earlier, he’d reveled in his libertinish “Rude Boy” persona: promising to “fuck the taste out of your mouth” on “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” then actually demonstrating his technique on “Lady Cab Driver.” But by the follow-up album, his pendulum was beginning to swing away from the raw mechanics of lust, toward something approaching more conventional romance. “The Beautiful Ones” found him not just pretending he’s married, but considering it as a real possibility; “When Doves Cry” and the title track earnestly grappled with the dissolution of a relationship. Even “Darling Nikki”–the closest the album came to vintage, “dirty” Prince–treated its sexual encounter as a quasi-Satanic temptation, before ending with a palate-cleansing gospel coda.

It’s easy to assume that this shift was motivated by commercial calculus: Purple Rain was designed to be Prince’s entrée into the mainstream, and heteronormative monogamy plays better to “mainstream” tastes than unfettered promiscuity. There is doubtless some truth to that interpretation; but there’s also ample evidence to suggest that he felt a genuine conflict between his spiritual convictions and his carnal appetites. A song like “Possessed” (written during the 1999 sessions, and revisited in multiple iterations for Purple Rain) depicts the repentant “Rude Boy” as an unwilling vessel for “demonic lust.” “Love and Sex,” recorded at Sunset Sound on February 27-28, takes a different approach: envisioning an afterlife where the spirit and the flesh could exist in harmony.

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Ephemera, 1984

Another Lonely Christmas

© Warner Bros.

After assembling the Apollonia 6 album on February 6, 1984, Prince stayed at Sunset Sound, working on incidental music for the Purple Rain film and a handful of songs that would end up on Sheila E’s The Glamorous Life. On February 18, he shifted gears yet again: recording what would become his first–and last–holiday-themed song.

“Another Lonely Christmas” appears to have come out of nowhere–and not just because it was a Christmas tune recorded less than a week after Valentine’s Day. While the track would eventually find its way onto the B-side of “I Would Die 4 U”–released on the seasonally appropriate date of November 28–it seems unlikely that Prince had that placement in mind nine months earlier. There’s no indication that he intended it for either the movie soundtrack or Sheila’s album; for that matter–aside from a penchant for decorating his studio with string lights, according to sessionographer Duane Tudahl–there’s little indication that he was especially observant of the holiday season. For whatever reason, “Another Lonely Christmas” was just something he had to get out of his system.

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Ephemera, 1984

Manic Monday

Yvonne Marquis in Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 1949); © Fantoma Films, photo stolen from Filmgrab.

Sometimes, the uncanny ease of Prince’s creative process can make it tempting to presume that his songs simply sprang forth from him, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. This is doubly true when one considers that, in at least a few cases, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Engineer Peggy McCreary likes to tell the story of when Prince called her back into Sunset Sound on the morning of February 4, 1984, after a typical marathon session the previous night: “I remember going to bed at six in the morning and he called and said, ‘Can you be at the studio at noon?’ because he had dreamed a song,” she told sessionographer Duane Tudahl. “He said if he dreamed a chorus he’d call me, and he did, and it was ‘Manic Monday’” (Tudahl 2018 253).

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Apollonia 6, 1984

In a Spanish Villa

"To the Water," Joaquín Sorolla, 1902.

Prince’s Sunset Sound session on February 3, 1984 was highly productive, even by his lofty standards: After taking “A Million Miles (I Love You)” from jam session to finished track, he still had time to complete a second number for Apollonia 6. To date, his efforts to write for the group’s namesake had been dogged by her limited range as a singer. “In a Spanish Villa” was his most ingenious solution to the problem yet: Rather than spending another long night building Apollonia’s confidence in the vocal booth, he’d craft a song around one of the bilingual actress’ existing strengths–sounding sexy in Spanish.

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