FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Prince – Dirty Mind
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LIKE Madonna and Kate Bush…
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Deborah Feingold
Prince is an artist I cover a lot through various features! I am going to ease off over the coming months, but one of his greatest albums, Dirty Mind, is forty on 8th October. After Prince’s somewhat underrated eponymous album – and before 1981’s Controversy – came this real revelation and forward step from the master. I would urge people to get Dirty Mind on vinyl, as I think it is the first truly brilliant album from Prince. His third studio album, Dirty Mind, was a moment when his genius started to come to the fore! Like all of Prince’s albums to that point – and I think all of his albums in general – he took care of production duties, and Dirty Mind was arranged, and composed entirely by Prince in his home studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota during May to June of 1980. During the spring of 1980, Prince and his backing band spent nine weeks opening for Rick James – James, at this point, was a musical rival of Prince’s; that would not last too long as Prince grew and really started to stand out as an icon-in-the-making. After returning from that tour, Prince set to work on his boldest album at that point. More diverse and confident than anything before, Dirty Mind fuses Funk and Disco, but there is rawness throughout, not just in terms of the sound and performances, but the themes addressed by Prince – his very open and evocative sexual exploration opened the doors for other artists in terms of what could be said.
Because of Prince’s mix of sounds and the themes he touched upon, Dirty Mind inspired a lot of Urban Soul and Funk artists of the early-'80s. Dirty Mind is considered to be one of the greatest albums of the 1980s, and one of the finest in Prince’s cannon – which is no mean feat when you take into account how many genius albums Prince created in his lifetime! Dirty Mind, When You Were Mine, and Uptown are among Prince’s best tracks, and the command he shows through the album is incredible. Considering Prince took care of all the vocals and instruments himself – except Lisa Coleman providing backing vocals on Head, and Doctor Fink played synthesizer on Dirty Mind, and Head – full credit has to be given to him and his insane talent! I am going to end with a few features/reviews that highlight the importance of Dirty Mind – and how it was the start of something truly special. Ultimate Prince talk about the homemade simplicity of the album, and the way it also points to the future:
“Unlike his first two albums, 1978's For You and the following year's self-titled LP, which were recorded at various Minnesota and California studios, Dirty Mind was made in Prince's home studio in Minneapolis. And that distinction made every difference in the world.
Record-company suits weren't exactly breathing down his neck during the actual recording of the first two albums; he was given a substantial, and nearly unprecedented, amount of control over his work when he signed to Warner Bros. But holed away at home, Prince had a relative new freedom to do what and when he wanted. He often recorded marathon sessions late at night in May and June of 1980, working on a batch of new songs that lyrically went further out there as he stripped down the tracks to their barest essentials.
The eight songs that make up the finished Dirty Mind sound like demos because that's almost precisely what they are. Besides Prince's guitars, synths, drums and vocals, there's not much else there. Dr. Fink plays synths on the title track and "Head," and Lisa Coleman sings backup on "Head."
But the songs themselves look forward: Those synths are more rooted in early-'80s New Wave than R&B from any decade, and the lyrical subjects -- basically sex in all its fluid-swapping glory, with a couple of stops along the way for good times that don't involve tongues or penises -- weren't exactly Top 40 standards, not even in the most boundary-pushing and hedonistic music disco and punk had to offer.
But there's also sophistication to the songs. Listen to the way the album's centerpiece, "When You Were Mine," swings from one emotional point ("When you were mine, I gave you all of my money / Time after time, you done me wrong") to another ("You were kinda sorta my best friend") until it moves into more spiteful territory: "You didn't have the decency to change the sheets." By the end of the song, Prince's lovelorn heartbreak has turned him into an obsessive stalker: "Now I spend my time following him whenever he's with you."
But one listen to Dirty Mind, even today, will tell you that legacy begins here.
The album made it to only No. 45 on the chart, but it remains one of his best LPs and his first important one. That part-inviting, part-defiant look Prince shoots us on the cover says more than "I've got something for you, baby." It also says, "Get used to me, because I'm not going away anytime soon." A bold declaration he made good on”.
Not to keep going on about it, but I am fascinated how artists can completely set it up and release an album that is so much stronger than the one before it. From The Beatles, to Nirvana, to Radiohead, to Joni Mitchell, there are so many examples of an enormous creative leap. For Prince, he really found his groove on Dirty Mind! When they reviewed the album, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Neither For You nor Prince was adequate preparation for the full-blown masterpiece of Prince's third album, Dirty Mind. Recorded in his home studio, with Prince playing nearly every instrument, Dirty Mind is a stunning, audacious amalgam of funk, new wave, R&B, and pop, fueled by grinningly salacious sex and the desire to shock. Where other pop musicians suggested sex in lewd double-entendres, Prince left nothing to hide -- before its release, no other rock or funk record was ever quite as explicit as Dirty Mind, with its gleeful tales of oral sex, threesomes, and even incest.
Certainly, it opened the doors for countless sexually explicit albums, but to reduce its impact to mere profanity is too reductive -- the music of Dirty Mind is as shocking as its graphic language, bending styles and breaking rules with little regard for fixed genres. Basing the album on a harder, rock-oriented beat more than before, Prince tries everything -- there's pure new wave pop ("When You Were Mine"), soulful crooning ("Gotta Broken Heart Again"), robotic funk ("Dirty Mind"), rock & roll ("Sister"), sultry funk ("Head," "Do It All Night"), and relentless dance jams ("Uptown," "Partyup"), all in the space of half an hour. It's a breathtaking, visionary album, and its fusion of synthesizers, rock rhythms, and funk set the style for much of the urban soul and funk of the early '80s”.
I am going to wrap up things in a second, but I just want to bring in one more review that makes some interesting points regarding Dirty Mind. When Pitchfork covered the album in 2016, this is what they wrote:
“Dirty Mind’s second side is unquestionably Prince’s most propulsive suite. It begins with “Uptown,” which ranks alongside Vanity 6’s Prince-penned-and-produced “Nasty Girl” among the most daring R&B radio hits of the ’80s. But its topic is even more singular—how homophobia constricts even heterosexuals. The song celebrates a boho utopia where fag-bashing, racism, misogyny, and all other trifling shit doesn’t exist: While minding his own business, a passing hottie asks him point blank, “Are you gay?”
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith
But instead of blowing his cool, Prince reasons, “She’s just a victim of society and all its games.” To school the dame, he takes her to Uptown, a real-life Minneapolis counterculture haven back in 1980 that’s subsequently been gentrified. There, she loses her uptight ways as the track’s grinding disco-funk gains momentum; the overwhelming freedom acts as an aphrodisiac, and the once-scorned weirdo gets “the best night I ever had.” Everybody’s happy.
The tempo downshifts slightly but significantly on “Head,” one of the earliest fully realized manifestations of Prince’s quintessential style. The song features another scenario perfectly archetypal of The Purple One: He meets a virgin (played with drawling deadpan glee by Coleman) on the way to her wedding, and she gives him what the song celebrates. This results in a Bill Clinton maneuver on her gown, so she dumps her plans and marries him instead. As suggested by his thorniest, most authoritative early groove, this isn’t necessarily a wise choice; Prince vows, with not a small amount of matrimonial menace, to “love you till you’re dead”.
I will leave things now, but go and get Dirty Mind on vinyl, as it is the first masterpiece from an artist who would soon rack up many more! Listening to the album now, and it still sound completely mind-blowing and unique! I think it is one of Prince’s finest albums and, whilst not as adventurous and ambitious as some of his records, Dirty Mind remains essential and fantastic. The album inspired so many other artists, and I can hear shades of Dirty Mind in some of the music of today. Such an amazing album from an artist…
WHOSE influence will never fade.