Medialoper

Certain Songs #1655: Prince – “Sign ‘O’ The Times”

October 13, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Sign ‘O’ The Times
Year: 1987

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It is, of course, a sucker’s game to choose Prince’s best album: some folks like the new wave feel and the fucksongs of Dirty Mind, others the dance dance revolution of 1999 or the rock ‘n’ roll of Purple Rain. And hell, I prefer the psychedelic baroque soul of Parade and the gloss of The Gold Experience.

But then again, there’s Sign ‘O’ The Times, his 1987 double album, which may or may not be the best Prince album, but is absolutely the most Prince album, covering everything he did well: hard funk, swirling pop, glossy ballads, and even added gospel indie rock to his canon in the form of “The Cross.”

Certain Songs #1654: Prince & The Revolution – “Mountains”

October 11, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Parade
Year: 1986

. . .

Along with “Let’s Go Crazy” and “The Cross,” “Mountains” is probably my favorite Prince song, such a stellar jam that I’m pissed at myself that I didn’t realize how much I loved it until 2016, but better late than never.

Seamlessly blending funky soul and psychedelic pop, “Mountains” is as big-sounding as its subject, riding on top of a massive four-on-the-floor kickdrum that never lets up for even seconds, even as the song changes all around it.

That kickdrum is surrounded by glistening synths and ringing percussion, giving “Mountains” the feel of a magic carpet flying high in the sky gazing down at the world.

Certain Songs #1653: Prince & The Revolution – “Girls & Boys”

October 10, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Parade
Year: 1986

Please don’t hold it against me that Parade is my favorite Prince album. Sure, I know that objectively, Sign ‘O’ The Times is probably his greatest album and that Purple Rain is his most world-beating, but I love tuneful funky weirdness of Parade.

Sadly, this was a thing that I didn’t realize until after he passed and I started digging into the parts of his catalog I’d missed, and Parade, which doubled as the soundtrack to his film Under The Cherry Moon, the, erm, unsuccessful follow-up to Purple Rain was where I started.

Certain Songs #1652: Prince & The Revolution – “Raspberry Beret”

October 9, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Around The World in A Day
Year: 1985

After the world-beating career-defining multimedia triumph that was Purple Rain, Prince spent years and years worrying about the follow-up, and when it came out, years later, it was crushed under the weight of expectations.

Oh wait, that’s not what happened at all: instead, he went right back into the studio with The Revolution and ended up releasing Around The World in a Day while the singles from Purple Rain were still lighting up the radio. Changing things up again, the songs on Around The World in a Day explored the psychedelic elements that lurked underneath Purple Rain songs like “When Doves Cry” and “Take Me With U” and brought them to the forefront.

Certain Songs #1651: Prince – “Little Red Corvette”

October 8, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: 1999
Year: 1982

Despite the fact that both “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “1999” were strong singles for Prince — landing at #11 and #12 respectively — it was really “Little Red Corvette” that began Prince’s imperial phase: for the next decade Prince singles were far more likely to reach the top 10 than not, an utterly remarkable thing considering how much the scene was changing, and how he was continually mixing things up.

And, of course, in early 1983, “Little Red Corvette” was both inescapable and inevitable, getting ridiculous amounts of airplay on MTV, top 40 radio, and yes, even on college radio, or at least KFSR, where it was obvious to a lot of the DJs that what Prince was doing was as experimental as anything else we were playing.

Certain Songs #1650: Prince – “Partyup”

October 7, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Dirty Mind
Year: 1980

. . .

It’s now been three and one-half years — and over 1100 posts — since Prince Rogers Nelson ascended away from this particular mortal plane (and yeah, I know that it feels like decades), and ever since that time, there hasn’t been a moment where I didn’t have some Prince music in my mix. Obviously, his estate has helped out with that, raiding his infamous vaults for projects like the reissue of Purple Rain, the solo Piano and a Microphone session, the recent Originals comp, and of course the massive upcoming 1999 reissue.

But even beyond that, there where holes in my knowledge of his music — including his 1980s albums, so I’ve spent a lot of time since April 21, 2016 filling as many of those holes as possible, and while I wrote a bunch of posts after he died, I’ve got a few more songs to discuss, if you don’t mind, starting off with the closing funk jam from 1980’s Dirty Mind, “Partyup.”

Certain Songs #1649: The Primitives – “All The Way Down”

October 5, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Pure
Year: 1989

. . .

It’s a pretty cardinal rule that for bands where there a band with a great female lead singer and a dude who is mostly responsible for the music that nobody wants to hear the songs that the dude sings. (See “Kiley, Rilo.)

And so as I listened to the CD of Pure over and over again in the back office of the newly moved Video Zone, I was definitely cognizant of this rule, which made me feel a bit weird when I realized that my favorite song on the record was one of the ones that the dude sang.

Certain Songs #1648: The Primitives – “Dizzy Heights”

October 4, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Pure
Year: 1989

. . .

As the follow-up to an instant indie pop-punk classic, the second Primitives album, Pure, never really stood a chance of being held in the same esteem as their debut, especially as RCA stuck the fine stopgap single, “Way Behind Me,” on both the reissue of Lovely and the initial pressing of Pure.

So kudos to Paul Court and Tracy Tracy for mixing it up, and not even trying to replicate the debut. With producer Paul Sampson filling in for departed bassist Steve Dullaghan, Pure was weirder and more psychedelic, but also featured Court on more lead vocals than was strictly necessary.

Certain Songs #1647: The Primitives – “Ocean Blue”

October 3, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Lovely
Year: 1987

. . .

On the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Indie-Pop Division, “Ocean Blue” in and of itself justified The Primitives calling their debut Lovely. On a record that’s full of short sharp shocks, the lazy hazy vibe of “Ocean Blue” — and the epic length of 3:25! — made it a complete outlier.

And of course, on a record like Lovely, there’s always the danger that the slow epic is going to drag the whole record to a halt, but by making “Ocean Blue” the next to last song, they not only didn’t drag it down, they also pointed the way to their next record, Pure, which would be much slower and weirder.

Certain Songs #1646: The Primitives – “Stop Killing Me”

October 2, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Lovely
Year: 1987

. . .

Of course, The Primitives didn’t form in a vacuum: in the mid-1980s, plenty of bands got their heads rearranged by Psychocandy’s mixture of horrendous noise and gummy pop, and suddenly the English countryside was crawling with bands like the Shop Assistants, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Darlings Bud, Soup Dragons and so on and so forth.

So this was the world in which The Primitives put out their ferocious third single, “Stop Killing Me,” the one that well and truly made their reputation (the story goes that Morrissey being photographed in a Primitives t-shirt helped them as well, believe it or not), and why not? “Stop Killing Me” is two minutes of glorious melodic noise.