This would be the only time Janet charted higher in the UK than the US (where it went #4) until the 2000s when her hitmaking days pretty much collapsed while she still had a few top 20 hits there with songs that didn't do so hot in the US.
It's strange how often American R&B acts tend to go on having hits in Britain after their hitmaking days at home are over. That goes back at least to the Drifters.
In general it seemed to apply to a huge number of artists who were able to continue to score hits in the UK 15-20 years in some cases after their last US hit. Though since streaming took over, that seems to have ended because streaming is a very youth-dominated field and teens have more time to listen to their favorite music than people over 30 do, and they're not going to listen to someone older than their mom when they have The Weeknd, Drake and Ariana. But before then, you had acts like Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, a-ha, R.E.M, Erasure, Duran Duran, George Michael just to name a few 80s artists who continued scoring hits in the top 10 in the UK well into the 2000s, in all cases at least 10 years after their last US hit (in PSB and a-ha's case, over 20 years after their last American hit)
I'm gonna repeat what I said over in the R&B chart thread, which this song also topped. What a comeback from the overbaked, underwritten Around The World In A Day. Killer melody, slammin' beat and just enough accompaniment. The video is equally incredible - stripped down, sexy, funny, and some of the finest dancing of any '80s video. All of it is iconic. Probably on my shortlist of the ten best #1 singles of the decade. Lead single from the even more eclectic than Around The World In A Day LP Parade, which unlike its predecessor actually works and is an amazing piece of art. Purple Rain gets all the attention, but this is probably my favorite Prince LP. And after "When Doves Cry" this is probably my favorite Prince single. This guy was so much more talented than Michael Jackson. Sorry MJ fans, but I'd trade this cut for Jackson's entire catalog. This by the way is Prince's second most-streamed cut on Spotify, after "Purple Rain" and with about twice the streams of #3 "When Doves Cry".
Pop Life and Raspberry Beret are two of his best ever singles, that makes up for some other deficiencies in the previous album though. "Kiss" is definitely amazing though.
As a song, it had enough staying power to spawn a cover in a couple years that helped fuel a comeback for a 1960's act, working in tandem with an '80's act. As for Prince, it was the first time since "I Wanna Be On Your Lover," on this side of the chart fence, where he was heard in falsetto, though he had quite a few others where he sang in that form after that earlier number but before "Little Red Corvette" began to put him on the pop map.
Prince - Kiss Breathtakingly brilliant. I'm also in the minority that ranks Parade as my fave Prince album. The video always makes me smile. 5/5
Agreed. I've continued to follow the chart closely....I always listen to the new entries every week. Here in the UK this last 4 years the charts has changed significantly. I would say Grime and it's offshoot genres whatever they are litter the charts with the bulk of new entries every week. Also....even more so than say 40 years ago...songs can take weeks to climb the charts into the top 20. And yes.....totally dominated by electronic computer generated music!!!!!
Universally acclaimed as one of Prince’s greatest singles and...I don’t like it. Sorry. I don’t know why - I don’t like the Tom Jones/Art of Noise version either.
You can't mention "Kiss" without mentioning Bobby Z (Rivkin)-- the song was given to him as an acoustic demo for the Mazerati project (for which Prince wrote some other songs as well.) Rivkin produced it and transformed the ordinary blues song Prince had written into what it became. When Prince heard what Bobby Z had done, he heard a hit. So he took the song back and added some guitar and his lead vocals. The Rivkin-produced backing vocals and backing track by Mazerati were kept. Rivkin produced the lion's share of the track but only received an "arranged by" credit. Rivkin did not begrudge Prince taking the song back, but did think he should have received a co-production credit.
And, for the way the album was recorded on the run, so to speak, it sounds fantastic. It got high audiophile marks, too.
Well for what it was, it was a success. Art Of Noise were more of a critical and hipster darling and Tom Jones hadn't had a stateside hit since the early 70s. It did chart better on other formats than pop though
With "Kiss", it's an irresistible track but I've grown bored from the overplaying. A shame actually that it is the only track 90% of the populace can name off Parade
Kiss - Never was a Prince fan, but this is one of his songs where I can't deny his talent, even if it's not my thing.
I also must disagree with the dislike towards "Around The World In A Day". Song by song, it's a killer album... yea the last 1/3 of Temptation is really cringey but that doesn't sink the album. It was ballsy of Prince, at the top of his career with all eyes on what he was going to do next, to drop this album instead of doing a much safer and commercially successful album that would've been more pleasing to 13 million Purple Rain buyers. ATWIAD was the moment that proved Prince was not a commercially mainstream megastar like Jackson or Madonna but instead a really interesting cult artist who simply happened to be popular with the masses. Take "Kiss" off Parade, and it's more of that as well, neither of those albums were going to spend six months at #1 and sell tens of millions of copies, and Prince didn't design them to be like that either.
