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.”
A co-write with Morris Day, “Partyup” — like nearly all of the other songs on Dirty Mind, was entirely performed by Prince, who was somehow able to piece together a sweaty funk workout that would puzzle a full band, expertly weaving a solid beat, driving bassline, interlocking guitars, keyboard flourishes, as well as lead and backing vocals, most of which were singing the following:
Got to party up, yeah
Got to party up, babe, ooh
Got to party up yeah
Got to party up babe, ooh
Got to party up yeah, oh oh
Got to party up babe, ooh
Got to party up, yeah
Got to party up, babe, yeah, yeah-yeah
But that wasn’t all, as the capper of the sex-drenched, “Partyup” is a bit of precursor to “1999” in that it extolled the virtues of partying in the face of potential death. Unlike “1999,” which was about the apocalypse, “Partyup” seems to have been inspired by Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Proclamation that required young men to at least register for the Draft, which had effectively ended in 1973.
I vividly remember having to do this, and also remember being happy that they misspelled the name of my street on my draft card, for reasons that now escape me. Cos technically, they couldn’t find me if they needed me?
In any event, this happened around the time Prince recorded Dirty Mind, and it seems to have influenced lyrics like this:
Party, uh, uh, got to party down, babe
Oh, it’s all about what’s in your mind
Goin’ uptown, baby, ooh
I don’t want to die I just want to have a bloody good time
Party up, got to party up
Party up, got to party up
Because of their half-baked mistakes
We get ice cream, no cake, all lies, no truth
Is it fair to kill the youth?
Of course the genius of “Partyup” is that you didn’t have to listen to the lyrics to enjoy it; and in fact, you probably got more dancefloor enjoyment out of it if you didn’t know what it was about and just enjoyed the killer groove. Which is why it’s kind of ironic that the very end of “Partyup” makes his anger about this explicit — and foreshadows his next record, the far more political Controversy — by breaking the song down and shoving his, um, fear in our faces.
You gonna have to fight your own damn war
(Party up, got to party up)
‘Cause we don’t wanna fight no more
(Party up, got to party up)
You gonna have to fight your own damn war
(Party up, got to party up)
‘Cause we don’t wanna fight no more
(Party up, got to party up)
In any event, obviously the Draft was never reinstated, and neither Prince nor I had anything to worry about on that score, though he did end up performing it on SNL in February of 1981, a performance that I don’t think I watched, because it was in that weird period where Lorne Michaels and all of the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players had left and Eddie Murphy yet hadn’t single-handedly resurrected it. I’m sure it was smoking.
“Partyup”
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