1999 by Prince
1999 is the fifth studio album by American recording artist Prince, released on October 27, 1982 by Warner Bros. Records. It was his first top ten album on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States (peaking at number 9) and became the fifth best-selling album of 1983. 1999 was Prince's breakthrough album, but his next album Purple Rain would become his most successful. The title track was a protest against nuclear proliferation and became his first top ten hit in countries outside the U.S. It was also the first album to feature The Revolution. The band's moniker is written in reverse on the front cover. According to the Rolling Stone Album Guide, "1999 may be Prince's most influential album: Its synth-and-drum machine-heavy arrangements codified the Minneapolis sound that loomed over mid-'80s R&B and pop, not to mention the next two decades' worth of electro, house, and techno." In 2003, the TV network VH1 placed 1999 49th in its list of the greatest albums of all time. The album was also part of Slant Magazine's list "The 50 Most Essential Pop Albums" and the magazine listed the album at #8 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2003, the album was ranked number 163 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
In 1985, less than six months after the end of the Purple Rain Tour and the release of his <i>Around the World in a Day</i> album, Prince began shooting his second movie, <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i>. Released in 1986—and featuring Prince serving as both star <i>and</i> director—the black-and-white film lacked the performance-showcase feel of 1984’s <i>Purple Rain</i> (and didn’t come near <i></i>’s box office or critical heights). But <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> still had strong musical elements, with Prince playing Christopher Tracy, a piano player and gigolo in 1930s France. And the album it inspired, <i>Parade</i>, is less of a traditional soundtrack and more of a companion album, in both style and structure. The album’s first four tracks—“Christopher’s Tracy Parade”, “New Position”, “I Wonder U” and “Under the Cherry Moon”—play more like evocative scene-setters than traditionally constructed pop songs, with each clocking in at less than three minutes. The same goes for the piano instrumental “Venus de Milo” and “Do U Lie?”—the latter a bit of jazzy, French-kissed whimsy that perfectly captures the period and Riviera locale. But listeners don’t need to gaze upon the <i>Cherry Moon</i> in order to take part in the <i>Parade</i>: There’s the party jam “Girls & Boys”, which references “the steps of Versailles” and drops some French; the funk-rocker “Anotherloverholenyohead”, which serves as the album’s answer to “When Doves Cry”; and the gorgeous “Sometimes It Snows in April”, a Joni Mitchell-esque elegy for Christopher Tracy that would prove to be even more poignant when Prince himself died in April 2016. But the two biggest hits from <i>Parade</i>—which was released three months before <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> hit theatres—have no connection to the film. First up is “Mountains”, one of two tracks that Prince wrote with guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman of The Revolution (<i>Parade</i> would prove to be the third and final album in which Prince shared billing with his best-known backing band). Then, of course, there’s the stuttering “Kiss”, the smash single that became one of Prince’s several career chart-toppers, and reconfirmed his mid-1980s commercial clout. With a sexy staccato beat that’s as impossible to resist as Prince’s flirty falsetto, “Kiss” proved once again why the singer simply ruled our world.
