weird!

Not even my mother is saying the usual prince is gay jokes...
[Edited 9/11/07 11:36am]

That's because it's fantabulous.

It's a masterpiece! Miles better that the overrated Purple rain...

Last time I was singing "girls and boys" at my parents house. I stopped and my mother asked me to sing it again... This album is fabulous.

MikeMatronik said:

Prince at his best! at the time he was slammed by the crytics: mmmmh i think Prince new best!

Ummmm...Parade got good reviews.

Here's one -- from the New York Times:

PRINCE'S 'PARADE' STAKES A CLAIM TO POPULARITY
By JOHN ROCKWELL
Published: March 30, 1986

Prince became a big star with the 1984 release of his first film, ''Purple Rain,'' and its attendant soundtrack LP and hit singles. But it's sometimes easy to forget that he's only 25 years old. Even though he's a practiced pop-music veteran, having released an album a year since 1978, he's still coalescing as an artist. Unlike a student or a garret-dwelling Bohemian, however, his maturation is taking place in the glare of modern celebrity publicity - an exposure likely to distort as much as it reveals.

Now we have the 1986 Prince release, ''Parade'' (Warner Bros. WB25395, LP and cassette due out tomorrow, with the CD scheduled for April 28). It comes in the wake of his guardedly received 1985 album, ''Around the World in a Day,'' which was widely criticized for a false and over-ornate 1960's psychedelic feeling. But more than a corrective for any stylistic misstep - there is plenty of 60's atmosphere in ''Parade,'' too - the new album is an attempt to recoup ground lost by the negative publicity surrounding Prince personally.

It is likely to succeed in that aim for three unrelated reasons. One, it's very good. Two, as the soundtrack for Prince's forthcoming second film, ''Under the Cherry Moon,'' it may win a wider audience in the same way as the ''Purple Rain'' soundtrack. Three, given the increasing volatility of the pop music star-making and star-breaking apparatus, it's about time for public taste to swing back in Prince's favor.

Stars today are rapidly, almost instantaneously inflated into mass phenomena, sell millions of records and appear on every magazine cover. Then, suddenly, grievous character flaws are discovered - which may or may not exist, or may exist in lesser measure than eager exposes imply -and the public mood swings into dismissiveness.

The public perception of Prince swung from a sly charmer to surly misogynist paranoid between 1984 and 1985 - just as, the year before, Michael Jackson had fallen from boy genius to androgynous eccentric. In Prince's case, a few luridly reported incidents of snooty public behavior combined with overzealous body-guards certainly fueled the backlash. He hardly helped his cause with last year's ''Around the World'' album, in which a not very convincing approximation of McCartneyesque Beatles innocence clashed egregiously with his own image of defensive arrogance.

The irony was that his entire early reputation was of an aggressive kid obsessed with explicit sexuality (typical song-themes included incest, fellatio, onanism and bondage). ''Purple Rain,'' aside from being a musically more diverse and assured album than most of his earlier efforts, also represented a softening of that image. Thus the uglier behavior that provoked last year's ''backlash'' might be seen as a reassertion of the ''real'' Prince.

But reality in this case seems considerably more interesting and complex; Prince is a talented, still-evolving musician capable of far more challenging work than a mere facile pop trickster with a dirty mind (the title of his 1980 album, and one of his best).

When he signed with Warner Bros. Records at the age of 17, Prince was a prodigiously gifted provincial loner who created most of his albums by himself in his Minneapolis studio, overdubbing all the instruments. This is a situation conducive to self-aggrandizing fantasies. And the mere presence of striking musical gifts -for composing, singing, instrumental playing and studio manipulation -can cover up an unsure, half-formed sense of artistic direction.

With Prince, sexuality seems to have been both a publicity ploy - one hardly unprecedented in the raunchy world of rock-and-roll - and a genuine reflection of his adolescent interests, or so he's said in interviews. This sexuality, coupled with a less-than-sure gift for lyric writing - his texts are often prosaic and naive -made his other themes, like God, the apocalypse and political injustice, seem hollow.

And yet the outrageousness did serve a musical purpose, aside from its positive and negative marketing aspects. As with David Bowie, with his glitter image and constant ''changes,'' Prince's arresting persona enabled his public to accept (until ''Around the World,'' at least) his restless stylistic experimentation, his often brilliant attempts to blend black and white musical influences and every manner of rock, soul and disco.

Indeed, Prince's success in overcoming musical and racial boundaries has not just directly (through his many proteges) and indirectly (through those he influenced) affected 1980's popular music. He has also done much to lessen the de facto segregation of black artists that had arisen in the early 80's on radio and in the televising of music videos.

''Under the Cherry Moon,'' Prince's second feature film and the first he's directed himself, is scheduled for release July 2, and until then, certain aspects of the lyrics will remain obscure. The new soundtrack album begins with ''Christopher Tracy's Parade'' and ends with ''Sometimes It Snows in April,'' a ballad with a lovely chromatic chorus, maudlin verses and ''sincere'' acoustic instrumentation in which Prince seems to be lamenting the death of ''Tracy'' in an overtly homoerotic manner. When one learns that Prince's character in the film is Tracy himelf, however, homoeroticism turns into narcissism, with Prince lovingly crooning his own valedictory. The film is also set on the Cote d'Azur, with a French female star, which explains the occasional French lyrics, moaning French female love-talk and accordion-flavored chanson arrangements.

Apart from the chanson flavorings, there is psychedelia here, too - most overtly in the ''Sgt. Pepper''-like opening of ''Christopher Tracy's Parade'' - as well as continued examples of Prince's tendency toward busy studio clutter overlaying a dance beat. There are also two songs co-written with his musician/ father, John L. Nelson, who once performed under the name Prince Rogers; Prince's full name is Prince Rogers Nelson, and he has apparently had a complex relationship with his father - depicted in part in ''Purple Rain.'' The two co-written songs are the most psychedelic ones, suggesting that Mr. Nelson, who also co-wrote two songs on ''Around the World,'' may have helped point Prince in that direction.

But the most striking songs here are the tougher ones, those in which Prince chooses to play up the black side of his multifaceted musical sensibility. There's the catchy ''New Position'' and the single, ''Kiss,'' with its stripped-down instrumentation and falsetto vocal. But above all there are two songs, the clear highlights of this album. ''Anotherloverholenyohead'' has an irresistible chorus, as sexy and kinetic and ingratiating as anything in ''Purple Rain.'' ''Girls and Boys'' is even better, full of delicious instrumental touches capped by a grunting, honking baritone saxophone solo.

In the future, such songs may conceivably slip into the minority of Prince's output. From the first, sentimental ballads have seemed closer to his true spirit than the uptempo dance numbers. Prince may turn out to be a latter-day Elvis in more ways than one, renouncing the sexual flamboyance that won him his first success.

No doubt he will take more false steps - there can be no experimentation without them - and no doubt he will continue to annoy people who could, in the short run, help him along. Sometimes, like Stevie Wonder, he'll put out second-rate music, and sometimes he'll seem sentimental and dopey. But as a source of vernacular musical invention and deserving pop hits, he's as good as we have. And ''Parade'' certainly succeeds in another of its intentions: it makes one eager to see the movie.

Yeah its good,
But, "better than purple rain",come on guys.

IWANNABYOURLOVER said:

I think it's a lot better than Purple Rain. If you listen to some live recordings from around that era, the music is just flat-out amazing.

Thank you for that article, very nice read.

I'm goin' ta watch UTCM right now!

favorite Prince record.

eyewishuheaven said:

I love the prophesy in the next-to-last paragraph, about Prince "renouncing the sexual flamboyance that won him his first success." That guy couldn't have been more right -- more's the pity.

Cuz Parade is such a good album... I bought it again cuz I missed it too much. 12 incredible songs ...

Could you please turn the volume down? You're hurting my ears Mike.

Hey guys,

I'm starting to listen to the album myself.
It's on my harddrive (courtesy of one of the boardies )
I've heard through it once and it had me smiling all the way through (well, until Venus de Milo & Sometimes it snows in April).

Should I start a new thread for my review?
Or can I post it here?

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

I urge you strongly. No review. In public. Really.

Plus you should really buy this record; as an official release you won't find much favour here in admitting you've got a pirate copy.

wickyb said:

well, of course I'm still gonna get the album itself. I like checking out all the design art in the cover jackets anyway.

Anyway, I'll probably write something up and post it Monday. Don't get much action on the weekends...

Parade I think is my favourite album also
I seem to remember it getting a 5 star top rating in Smash Hits magazine here in the UK back when it was released
I was only 15 at the time - the reviewer mentioned the great line 'scambled eggs are so boring'....haha!

Joyinrepatition said:

It got great reviews here in the UK. 'Seriously Godlike' said one. It was the movie that it soundtracked that was slammed. And as a schoolboy, it was the first time that Prince was 'cool' and all the in-crowd were askin me to do tapes for them, My favourite album, by the way.

AnthonyUK said:

I was the same age, and remember that review and that line too. I even remember that I was in the kitchen when I read it. Was the accompanying photo from the Controversy era (black suit)?

The boyfriend has a whinge every now and then when I play it...he's treading on very thin ice indeed

This album turned me criminal.

I was 11 years old when that album came out. My father was so anti-Prince since my sister played "Darling Nikki" for him after I got "Purple Rain" as a Christmas gift. He was nice enough to buy me "Around the World in a Day" but only after ranting about how he hates Prince for about half an hour. So, to save myself the trouble of asking my father to buy me Parade, I actually shoplifted the cassette. Got away with it, too!

I was riddled with pangs of guilt for a while, but I'm over it now.