What the hell happened to the the EWF-emulating falsetto disco kid who brought us 'I Wanna Be Your Lover'? It's fascinating to hear Prince arrive in a similar place at roughly the same time. All of this was operating on the margins of R&B / dance music / techno / urban/rap, New Wave and art/pop. See also the incredible string of albums Grace Jones dropped in the early '80s. I think it's this cut more than any other that reminds me of Blondie's similarly off-the-wall, bad-attitudinal, detached and cold, Manhattan-drenched Autoamerican. On top of that it's hypnotic and bizarre and arty and - yet - it remains grounded and humorous and attitudinal.

It's one of the earliest appearances of that click-clacky Linn Drumm sound that would propel him to superstardom on Purple Rain.

Takes it to another stratosphere while managing to feel more organic than the album version.Ĭlick to expand.It's an all-time classic. This is one of the greatest performances of any song I've ever heard from him, and that's a high bar to clear considering how many amazing live renditions we have available. I don't think I've really seen this track heralded as an all time classic the way I see other cuts from 1999 are, so maybe I'm alone in that thinking.Īlso, shoutout to the First Avenue 82' performance/live debut. To me, this is insanely perfect in every way. There's something straight up subversively delicious about both the music and the lyricism, making fun of the type of people he's making fun of in this song could not be done without this exact instrumental backing the vocals, that I'm sure of, they go hand in hand. The guitar feedback comes in so beautifully and everything feels like it's getting more intense and claustrophobic by the second. Don't even get me started on that airy synth line that copies the chorus vocal melody, there's something about that sound in particular that really jumps out to me and makes me feel what he's making fun of or trying to point out in this song. That drum beat coupled with the synth line make the song sound like it's tripping over itself or something, it transports me to a cold and metallic universe. Ok pretty much all the songs on 1999 thus far have been perfect (Free is unfortunately not on that perfection list) and I didn't have much to say about them that others didn't say better, but this is one of my favorite Prince tracks ever, probably one of my favorite songs by anyone ever.

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