Tag: moonbeam levels
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Possessed
Like many of Prince’s songs from this period, “Possessed” is the musical monologue of a man afflicted with chronic horniness. The unique selling proposition, in this case, is a dash of Christian demonology, as Prince’s narrator attributes the stirring in his loins to nothing short of infernal influence.
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Roundup: Ephemera, 1981-1982
Like the last roundup post for the 1999 album, this one has been an especially long time coming: I wrote my first “in-sequence” post on 1999-era ephemera way back in November of 2018, when we were all about 50 years younger. It didn’t help, of course, that last fall’s Super Deluxe Edition of 1999 dropped…
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Baby I’m a Star
“Baby I’m a Star” has the familiar air of Prince self-actualizing through music: projecting himself toward a celebrity status he was still years away from achieving.
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Lady Cab Driver (Rearrange)
What keeps “Lady Cab Driver” distinct from 1999’s other transportation-themed erotic fantasies, “Little Red Corvette” and “International Lover,” is its pervasive sense of angst.
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Moonbeam Levels (The New Master)
If the 1999 album sounds like dance music from a cyberpunk future, then “Moonbeam Levels” sounds as if it’s been beamed in from an entirely different solar system: had David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character been a product of the early ‘80s instead of the early ‘70s, this is exactly the kind of song I’d imagine…
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Turn It Up
Prince dives into “Turn It Up” with impressive sincerity and single-minded intensity, as if “horny radio” were the role he’d always dreamed of playing.