Around the World in a Day by The Revolution
Around the World in a Day is the seventh studio album by American recording artist Prince and The Revolution. It was released on April 22, 1985 by Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros. Records. In compliance with Prince's wishes, the record company released the album with minimal publicity, not even releasing an accompanying single until almost a full month after the album's release. Prince made the request because he preferred the public to first experience the record in its entirety rather than through any particular song. Despite the low-key promotion and the material on the album being overall not as radio-friendly as Purple Rain, it still had two U.S. top 10 hits, went double platinum and was an important step in Prince's musical evolution, incorporating new instruments and musical styles. This, taken together with the psychedelic vibe that pervades much of the record, drew numerous comparisons to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
After the smash success of 1984’s <i>Purple Rain</i>—both the movie and the soundtrack—Prince was more than just music royalty; baby, he was a <i>star</i>. And just two weeks after wrapping his Purple Rain Tour in the spring of 1985, His Royal Badness dropped his seventh studio album, <i>Around the World in a Day</i>, which he’d begun working on before <i>Purple Rain</i>’s release (to put that in context, Michael Jackson—Prince’s challenger to the King of Pop throne at the time—would take five years between <i>Thriller</i> and <i>Bad</i>). But <i>Around the World in a Day</i> was hardly a <i>Purple Rain</i> sequel. Instead, it boldly defied commercial convention and expectation—to the point that Prince refused to release a single or video from the album before its release. A psychedelic adventure that takes you on a journey through your own mind, <i>Around the World</i> makes its <i>Purple</i>-less purpose clear from the opening title track: “Open your heart, open your mind/A train is leaving all day/A wonderful trip through our time/And laughter is all you pay,” sings Prince, amid the Middle Eastern strains of darbuka, oud and finger cymbals. Meanwhile, the Beatles-esque dreaminess of “Paisley Park”—the name of Prince’s new label, and soon, his massive Minneapolis complex—was worlds away from the First Avenue club of <i>Purple Rain</i>. But sex (“Tamborine”), politics (“America”) and religion (“The Ladder”, “Temptation”) were still in Prince’s mercurial mix. And despite all of the album’s concerted anti-commercialism, the Purple One’s answer to <i>Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band</i> would still manage to top the charts, thanks to a pair of singles—“Raspberry Beret” and “Pop Life”—that were heard around the world for days (and years) on end.
