Dance / Music / Sex / Romance

Prince's pop life, song by song, in chronological order.

Tag: new musical express

Free

July 19, 2019

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in 1999, 1982

For all its apparent conservatism, “Free” still carries a mild undercurrent of subversiveness.
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Ronnie, Talk to Russia

October 4, 2018

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Controversy, 1981

It’s difficult to determine just how seriously “Ronnie, Talk to Russia” was meant to be taken.
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Controversy, Part 1: Am I Black or White?

August 10, 2018

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Controversy, 1981

To summarize any artist with a single song is no small feat. To do so for an artist like Prince, who reveled in his ambiguities and contradictions, is even more impressive. The brilliance of “Controversy” is the way it places these ambiguities and contradictions at the center of Prince’s artistic persona: his indeterminacy becomes his…
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Gotta Stop (Messin’ About)

November 30, 2017

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Ephemera, 1979-1981

While most New Wave acts used rigid beats and jagged, nervous arrangements to express a sense of alienation and unease, Prince used them to evoke something closer to his wheelhouse: unbearable sexual tension.
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Partyup

September 20, 2017

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Dirty Mind, 1980

What makes “Partyup” more than just ’60s fan fiction is the music: a lithe, infectious punk-funk groove, branded with the prophetic genre designation of “revolutionary rock and roll.”
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