130. Prince, "1999"

 


Every once in a while on Twitter or a music forum somewhere, someone will ask "Hey, what's the best three song sequence to open an album ever?"  And people will give reasonable answers (Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -> With A Little Help From My Friends -> Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds or Who Loves the Sun -> Sweet Jane -> Rock and Roll) and some people give ridiculous answers (The Changeling -> Love Her Madly -> Been Down So Long [from the Doors' LA Woman, God help us]), but the correct answer just might be the first three songs on this album.  Feast your eyes:

1999

Little Red Corvette

Delirious

I mean, are you kidding me?  Any one of those would be a career-making song for any other artist, and Prince just casually stacks them one after another on this, one of the best albums of all time, somehow here at 130 and not in, say, the top 50.  This album, released in 1982, paved the way for black artists to appear on MTV, a huge deal at the time, and arguably made Prince a household name.  A prodigious talent and musical visionary, Prince played every instrument on the album.  The resulting sound, a mix of funk, synth-pop, what would later be called EDM, and whatever else sprang into his fertile mind, was immediately important and influential.

Kids today don't remember, but in 1982, it really did seem like the end of the world could by any minute.  The US and Soviet Union were constantly needling each other like playground bullies except bullies who had enough firepower to incinerate the entire school and town and state.  We were all trapped in this, and Prince proposed an elegant solution: LET'S FUCKING PARTY.

Everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day, aw
But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away, oh-oh-oh
They say, 2000-00, party over
Oops, out of time
So tonight we gonna party like it's 1999

The irony is, of course, that by the time the actual 1999 arrived, the Soviet Union no longer existed and the worry had mostly fizzled and the biggest concern we had that New Years Eve was whether the compters would all go haywire, certainly a threat but not like being turned into a plasma of vibrating atoms.  

And of course Prince's deep and abiding interest in sexuality runs through the whole album.  "Little Red Corvette" is not actually about the popular sports car, for example.  And, contrary to what you might think, "Let's Pretend We're Married" isn't a song about, say, planning a trip to Disneyland with the kids or arguing about your spouse's mother-in-law staying in the guest room for two whole weeks, it's about fucking:

Excuse me but I need a mouth like yours
2 help me forget the girl that just walked out my door
Let's pretend we're married and do it all night
I won't stop until the morning light
Let's pretend we're married and go all night

Probably should be called "Let's Pretend We're in the First Six Months of Our Relationship" but that doesn't scan as well.  "Automatic" is a nearly 10-minute jam built on a hypnotic synth riff and come to think of it, a lot of the songs here are based on a synth riff.  Like "Delirious," with that little 6-note keyboard lick that's probably playing in your head right now.

This album has probably soundtracked more high school makeout sessions than any other album in history, and I am here to say it still hits as good as it did in that upstairs bedroom when their parents weren't home and you're trying to be smooth and probably failing and who cares anyway.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? It should be in everybody's, and if it's not in yours, you should really ask yourself some difficult questions.

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