Prince Album by Album Thread

Dirty Mind is insane. It seems calculated to offend, yet it also features some of his most infectious ear candy and smooth pop/soul balladry. It's Prince's most soulful album ("Do It All Night," "When You Were Mine"), yet one with a distinct New Wave vibe ("Partyup"). "Dirty Mind" and "Uptown" are Prince's first bona-fide pop masterpieces, sharp and focused and much more expansive in terms of their production. You really hear the band dynamic for the first time.

While promoting Dirty Mind on "Saturday Night Live" in early 1981, Prince dropped an F-bomb while performing "Partyup." Any resulting fuss might have destroyed him, or broken him to a larger national audience two years before 1999, but then cast member Charles Rocket went and said the same word not five minutes later. Prince couldn't harness controversy even when he courted it...

 

I'm getting involved with this thread now. As a Prince fan, the classic era starts with Dirty Mind.

This album is ridiculous. 30 minutes of heat. "Head" stands out for me. It sounds like background music, for Shaft to use while he walk around New York City, and into a strip club. "Uptown" is badass. The bass on that song is crazy. "Sister" is a little weird, but who cares?

 

I know this is your opinion, but Dirty Mind is far from his most soulful album. SOTT takes the cake for that.

 

I meant to write "so far." I think it's more soulful than For You or Prince.

 

What a great song When You Were Mine. It showed how he could easily change genres. It is a borderline rock boogie blues and somewhat unexpected. At least to me it was when I heard it. The verses are very stripped down with very little going arrangement wise. The power chords are very different from R and B. That 50s rhythmic guitar arpeggio hook under the synth in the break is cool as can be. One of my favorites by him. The song let everyone know that his influences were off the charts. Ya gotta love those guitar octaves in the outro too.

 

I gotta disagree here. To me, I Wanna Be Your Lover is a pop masterpiece if there ever was one.

 

I've only heard this one a few times. Amazon Prime had it available for streaming for awhile, then it was gone.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Liked the hits alright. The rest?

I just found "Sister" disturbing.

Maybe it'll grow on me...

 

Yeah, that's a major element of the "Minneapolis Sound" - Synths playing horn lines.

It's not my thread, but I say why not go deep with it?

The Rebels - Interesting side-project. The punk version of "You" is in total contrast to the much later Paula Abdul version. I like "Too Long", "Hard To Get" and "Disco Away". "Too Long" is practically a lost Kiss cut.

Indeed. I've just finished a six month long project, putting the ultimate studio outtakes collection together, from numerous sources, to find the best sounding copies. There were some very interesting things made available this year.

So then, Dirty Mind. His first front to back classic album. There isn't a bad cut on it, even "Sister", since blink and you miss it. The Suite on side two is as funky as he got so far. The much covered "When You Were Mine", the great "Gotta Broken Heart Again" (sometimes played back to back in concert with the unreleased "Broken", a rocking piano cut). The "New Wave" starting to invade his music with the title track.

The leftovers from this era (1980-81) are nearly as exciting:
"Broken", mentioned above. My favorite outtake from this era.
"Kiss Me Quick", recently "freed"
"Lisa" - a tongue in cheek ode to his newest band member.
"She's Just a Baby" - a throwback to his earlier ballad style.
"Strange Way Of Saying I Love U" - excellent upgrade out this year, previously buried under tons of hiss.
"Tick Tick Bang #1" - Totally different from the 1990 version, this is a punk-new wave classic!

And of course "Gotta Stop Messin' About" - released as a non-album track. Very Devo.

Like someone said above, this is the beginning of his golden era.

 

Still can´t believe that he nearly recorded this album alone at Lake Minnetonka Home Studio.

A typical Prince habit formed on Dirty Mind: Jamming with other musicians and taking ideas by others and making a song out of it without crediting the inventors of those basic melodies.

From prince vault:

"When U Were Mine" should have been released as a single - period.

 

Indeed. I've also got a live show from '81 or '82 that has "Partyup" with Morris on drums. As a drummer, Day is quite under-rated.

 

Speaking as a HUGE Prince fan, there's a really appealing naivety in the first two albums. We also see in "I Wanna Be Your Lover" a particular habit of Prince's - pretty much using the same melody for the chorus as the verse (this can also be heard in "When Doves Cry", "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World", "Let's Go Crazy", "Let's Pretend We're Married" and "Raspberry Beret" amongst many others) . He's certainly an environmentally friendly songwriter.

 

Great posts above by piijii and smoke verbs. Thank you for sharing your insights!

And, it should be noted that while “When You Were Mine” wasn't one of Dirty Mind’s singles, it would be thrust into the spotlight when Cyndi Lauper’s cover of “When You Were Mine” was released as the seventh single from her debut smash, She’s So Unusual.



Her interpretation is a pale, red-haired imitation of the original, but another example of what a beast Prince was in those days.

 

here are a couple great passages from the well-penned tribute to Dirty Mind's greatness bu Noel Murray:
http://www.avclub.com/article/dirty-mind-prince-dropped-double-entendres-215681

There would’ve been no 1999 or Purple Rain without Dirty Mind, the album that established the baseline for Prince’s marvelously perverse imagination. Even the album’s cover is like a dare. There’s Prince, standing in front of what looks like a wall of exposed bedsprings, pulling his studded trench-coat aside to reveal a sporty little bandana around his neck and a pair of bikini briefs. Sexy album covers had become fairly common in the previous decade—see the collected work of the Ohio Players, a funk act that got the jump on Prince in turning kinky sex into groovy songs—but the naked skin on those records tended to be smoother, shinier, and idealized. On the front of Dirty Mind, Prince’s body hair makes him look more human and more tactile.

And then the music starts: Eight songs in 30 brisk minutes—practically an EP—performed almost entirely by Prince, aside from synths by his bandmate Matthew Robert “Doctor” Fink on two songs and Lisa Coleman softly cooing, “I’m just a virgin and I’m on my way to be wed” in “Head.” In 1980, Prince was still mostly singing in a fragile falsetto, but his instrumentation and arrangements weren’t so boyish anymore. Dirty Mind’s lineage runs through the sophistication of Stevie Wonder and the freaky world-building of Parliament-Funkadelic, but it’s also meant to challenge fans of the cutting-edge rock and pop of the day. In The Village Voice’s 1980 “Pazz N Jop” poll, Dirty Mind finished ninth, just behind Wonder’s Hotter Than July and just ahead of Gang Of Four’s Entertainment!, and playing those three albums consecutively wouldn’t have been all that jarring. (Other albums on the Voice’s critics poll that year included The Clash’s London Calling, Bruce Springsteen’s The River, Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, Pretenders’ Pretenders, Public Image Ltd.’s Second Edition, Captain Beefheart’s Doc At The Radar Station, Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!!, Steely Dan’s Gaucho, X’s Los Angeles, and The Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms. It was a great time to be a music lover, in other words.)

 

Where do you guys think "When You Were Mine" would have charted? I'll guess #42 pop #5 R&B.

 

An album to dance in front of several mirrors while you´re tightening your next lover lycra suit. It simply defines part of my personality and it´s an admission ticket to my inner circle.
It´s Prince best Saturday night album. It´s so hot, it made Rick James to look conservative.
And I wanna do it all night

 

Love, LOVE this album, this is where Prince really became PRINCE. Seriously, the hop, skip and quantum leap development of his first three albums is ridiculous. The self-titled second was a fine album with three strong singles, but this was a truly innovative, groundbreaking masterpiece. It really sets a blueprint that so many would follow in the '80s, and possibly the first truly great organic fusion of New Wave and R&B (i.e. white and black music).

 

The fact that I've listened to those songs so many times without being conscious of this device (similar tune for verse and chorus) I think speaks to how brilliant he is.

 

Good point. Using the same chords/riff as well as the melody. Using the same chords for the verse and chorus is a Rhythm and Blues signature.

 

Good point. Dirty Mind and Purple Rain could be considered as crossover masterpieces of Modern Sounds in Country & Western stature.

 

I think that it wouldn't have charted in 1989/1981.
I do think that it would have been a huge hit in 1985. Pretty much like Bowie did with Life On Mars?, releasing a killer song once he's popular enough to be noticed.

But, I agree with you that it's an really really awesome song. The best song from Dirty Mind!

 

Dirty Mind is the first album from his first golden era (Dirty Mind - Lovesexy), the first album many people consider as the first real Prince album.
For me, this album is Prince's punk album. It's raw and bold and risquee. Just look at the cover or check out the song titles. After that, check out the lyrics of Head or Sister or Dirty Mind.
Don't forget the music...

He recorded these songs as demo's with the intention to work on them later on in the studio (or keep them for himself). His new managent convinced him to release it as is. With a record company like Warner he succeeded in releasing it (thank you WB), realizing that Warner was more into a I Wanna Be Your Lover part 2.

I really love this album. I learned so many dirty words from this album ;-) Some of them way after I sang the songs out loud in public...

Actually, the album was suppossed to have 2 more songs: Gotta Stop Messin' About and Lisa.

Prince did a short European tour with this album. Those concerts are legendary. The show from Amsterdam must have been performed in a large arena... Thousands of people claimed afterwards that that had seen it. Actually the show had been seen by maybe 200 people in a small club (mainly fromthe music business or lucky passengers). But that's not bad for an unknown artist like Prince at the time.
Gotta Stop was released as a seperate 7" and 12" to promote the short tour, making it his first non-album song release.

 

You can all feel free to discuss side projects going on around the time of each album. Won't bother me at all.

 

I wouldn't mind to, but may I suggest you post ️️them as time goes by.? This might not be relevant at this stage, but once we enter 1984 it might go insane without someone in command.

 

Did the Rebels ever release anything commercially? Or is it all in the vault?

 

Dirty Mind is perfect. That is all.