Around the World in a Day

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.