p 30 One Man Band
But Prince's plans for the future were surprisingly different from the expectations of his record company, managers, and even his band members. With the seventies about to end, Prince believed that music was about to change, and he now felt ready to lead the way.

According to the New Rolling Stone Album Guide, "Dirty Mind remains one of the most radical 180-degree turns in pop history."





Dirty Mind
engineered by Jamie Starr 1980 Warner Bros.Produced, arranged composed & performed by Prince

1. Dirty Mind 4:14
chap 3 RUDE: Another new number, the New Wave-influenced "Dirty Mind", emerged from a keyboard riff composed by Matt Fink at rehearsal. Prince added a bridge section during a lengthly session at the Lake Minnetonka home, and by midnight they had completed the instrumentation. Prince told Fink he was free to go, and the keyboardist left for bed. The next day at rehearsal, Prince brought in a cassette of "Dirty Mind," complete with vocals and other overdubs; he had labored on it all night. Prince announced to the band that it would be the title track of the next album.
The lyrics of "Dirty Mind," which recount a sexual encounter in a car, indicated a trend in Prince's work toward graphic imagery. While sex and seduction had been at the forefront of his music since "Soft & Wet," Prince's treatment of these themes now became explicit and at times sensationalistic.

2. When You Were Mine
chapt 3 RUDE p 33 Among the many strong new numbers he taped was "When You Were Mine," a taut pop song with an infectious melody, which had been composed in a hotel room on tour. Prince has described the song as influenced by John Lennon, and the Beatles flavour is apparent. As with Lennon's best love songs, it features lyrics tinged with anger and sarcasm, as Prince laments how he lost a girlfriend by letting her sleep with other men.

3. Do It All Night

4. Gotta Broken Heart Again

5. Uptown
chapt 3 RUDE p 33 "Uptown" is the album's high point, with Prince singing about a utopian paradise where everyone is free to express themselves regardless of age, gender and skin color.
6. Head
chapt 3 RUDE p 33 while the funky workout "Head," told of a bride-2-be who fellates another man on the way to the wedding. These lyrics, reflecting his fascination with 'deviant sexuality', helped imbue the music with a newfound urgency.
Head was also performed on the Prince tour prior to the Dirty Mind recording
7. Sister
chapt 3 RUDE:The hard-rocking "Sister," for example, explored the taboo of incest,

8. Partyup (Prince, Morris Day) – 4:25
I said we don't wanna fight no more (gonna have to fight your own damn war)
Cuz we don't wanna FIGHT NO MORE!



We don't give a damn, we just wanna jam
Partyup (Partyup, got 2 partyup)
That army bag, such a double drag
Partyup (Partyup, got 2, got 2, got 2 partyup)

Party - got 2 party down, baby
Revolutionary rock ‘n' roll
Goin' Uptown, baby (Woo)
How U gonna make me kill somebody I don't even know?

They got the draft, ha ha, I just laugh
Partyup (Partyup, got 2 partyup)
Fightin' war is such a fuckin' bore
Partyup (Partyup, got 2, got 2, got 2 partyup)

Party - uh uh, got 2 party down, baby (Ooh)
It's all about what's in your mind
Goin' Uptown, baby (Woo)
I don't wanna die, I just wanna have a bloody good time

Partyup, got 2 partyup
Because of their half-baked mistakes
We get ice cream, no cake
All lies, no truth
Is it fair 2 kill the youth?
Partyup!

Got 2 partyup, yeah!

U're gonna have 2 fight your own damn war
Cuz we don't wanna fight no more!
U're gonna have 2 fight your own damn war
Cuz we don't wanna fight no more!
U're gonna have 2 fight your own damn war
Cuz we don't wanna fight no more!
I said we don't wanna fight no more
(U're gonna have 2 fight your own damn war)
Cuz we don't wanna fight no more!

Party Up performed February 21.1981 on Saturday Night Live


[Edited 6/25/09 9:15am]
[Edited 6/26/09 5:52am]

Dirty Mind
In my daddy's car... I'm glad he opened with this song, it really set the tone that this is about DOING IT, not about falling in love, but EROS ie Sexual Love. I love the Synth/Organ sound. This is about when a man is 'horny'

When You Were Mine
This is a rock n roll song, a song about woman who has more than one lover, and she must be all that cause he'd rather let her mess around than be without her

Do It All Night
the drive of this songs drives home the point of this song. There is not religious conflict and actually anyone can sing this song married or not.

Gotta Broken Heart Again
I love his unrequited love songs, this songs is him missing the sexual aspect of there relationship, again a big part of what hurts when 2 people break up

I think the first side of the album was tame if I can interpret: young love/lust an early relationship with heavy sex/sexual attraction, and ends with a break up
the 2nd side is a horny dude a bit angry doing his thang Head Uptown Sister Party Up

Uptown
One of his baddest UTOPIA songs from this song and album he began defining a space, a state of mind. This is the REBEL rocker coming out

Head
He's gone uptown, now walking down a street he meets a virgin and has oral sex. His dirty mind wants her, and she is looking for a distraction from getting married to this other person.. One of the 1st more obvious songs about oral sex (remember SWV Downtown?)

Sister
I always try to, I said try to see this song as loosing his/a young mans virginity to an older more sexual free black woman.
I don't think it works,
He is talking about what he is talking about, and it happens, even if we don't want to think about it, even if the siblings aren't blood related.
...funny way of stopping the juice...
...a blow job doesn't mean blow...

Partyup
Intended for Morris Day or written by Morris Day, similar to 1999 in its Party/war theme
I love this song, a real party song, and definately related to Uptown
...Your gonna have to fight your own damn war, cause we don't wanna fight no more, New Wave Hippie, make love not war

the look Prince and the band really work for this theme too, it looks like dirty sex
[Edited 6/26/09 6:10am]

Great album...That one picture makes me wanna go spray paint somethin'

Yes! Nice post.

How can not anyone just get the shock factor of that sleeve, its easily the best album shot of all time. Gives me goosebumps everytime I see it, how could anyone be so bold, yet so totally not give a fuck

Huggiebear said:

There is something about these non polished, taken in an 1 bedroom apt building urban night time photos, I love them. the photos up to Lovesexy all had some similar feel

When Lisa joined the band in 1980 what do you feel her musicianship added to the lineup at that time?

Lisa brought a wonderful sense of harmony and technical prowess to the table when she joined the group. I learned a lot of cool stuff from her and I always felt Prince made an excellent choice bringing her into the group.

How did you feel when Prince made you drive Lisa everywhere when she first moved out to Minneapolis? (question courtesy of Lisa)

I didn't mind it at all because we became fast friends and I really enjoyed her company.


[Edited 6/26/09 6:08am]

There's something about U, baby
It happens every time
Whenever I'm around U, baby
I get a dirty mind
It doesn't matter where we are
It doesn't matter who's around
It doesn't matter
I just wanna lay U down

In my daddy's car
It's U I really wanna drive
But U never go 2 far
I may not be your kind of man
I may not be your style
But honey, all I wanna do
Is just love U 4 a little while

If U got the time
I'll give U some money
2 buy a dirty mind
Don't misunderstand me
I never fool around
But honey, U got me on my knees
Won't U please let me lay U down?
(Down, down, down, down, ...) {fade}

I really get a dirty mind (mind, mind, mind)
Whenever U're around
It happens 2 me every time (time, time, time)
U just gotta let me lay ya, gotta let me lay ya, lay ya!
U just gotta let me lay ya, gotta let me lay U down!

In my daddy's car
It's U I really wanna drive
Underneath the stars
I really get a dirty mind
Whenever U're around

I don't wanna hurt U, baby
I only wanna lay U down




[Edited 6/26/09 6:09am]

Love and lust in Minneapolis

DIRTY MIND
PRINCE
Warner Bros.


By Ken Tucker

Dirty Mind is a pop record of Rabelaisian achievement: entirely, ditheringly obsessed with the body, yet full of sentiments that please and provoke the mind. It also may be the most generous album about sex ever made by a man.

Like the good lovemaking he celebrates, Prince is both subtle and forceful. His voice is a high, tinkling soprano that curls into delicate squeals when he's excited and dips into a scratchy murmur when he's figuring out his next move. As if to offset the ingratiating hesitancy of his vocals and phrasing, Princes comes off like a cocky boy wonder. Just barely twenty, he's written, produced and played all the instruments on each of his three LPs.

Prince's first two collections (For You, Prince) established him as a doe-eyed romantic: i.e., his carnal desires were kept in check. Though the chorus of his first hit single was "Your love is soft and wet," the raunchiest interpretation permitted by its slightly damp melody was that perhaps the object of Prince's love had been caught in a sudden rainstorm. And while the song that made him a star, 1979's "I Wanna Be Your Lover," snuck the line "I wanna be the only one you come for" onto AM radio, the singer delivered it with such coy ignorance, as if feigning ignorance of what the words meant but confident they'd please his lover.

Nothing, therefore, could have prepared us for the liberating lewdness of Dirty Mind. Here, Prince lets it all hang out: the cover photograph depicts our hero, smartly attired in a trench coat and black bikini briefs, staring soberly into the camera. The major tunes are paeans to bisexuality, incest and cunniligual technique, each tucked between such sprightly dance raveups as "Partyup" and the smash single "Uptown." Throughout, Prince's melodies peel back layers of disco rhythm to insert slender, smooth funk grooves and wiggly, hard-rock guitar riffing. In his favorite musical trick, the artist contrasts a pumping, low-toned drum sound with a light, abrupt guitar or keyboard riff pitched as high as his voice (which is often double-tracked to emphasize its airiness). Though Prince is playing everything himself, the result isn't bloodless studio virtuosity. His music attains the warmth and inspiration of a group collaboration because it sounds as if he's constantly competing against himself: Prince the drummer tries to drown out Prince the balladeer, and so forth.

Dirty Mind jolts with the unsettled tension that arises from rubbing complex erotic wordplay against clean, simple melodies. Across this electric surface glides Prince's graceful quaver, tossing off lyrics with an exhilarating breathlessness He takes the sweet romanticism of Smokey Robinson and combines it with the powerful vulgate poetry of Richard Pryor. The result is cool music dealing with hot emotions.

At its best, Dirty Mind is absolutely filthy. Sex, with its lasting urges and temporary satisfactions, holds a fascination that drives the singer to extremes of ribald fantasy. "When I met you, baby/You were on your way to be wed" is how he begins "Head," a jittery rocker about the pleasures of oral sex. In Prince's wet dream, no woman is forced to do anything she doesn't want to do: her lust always matches her cocksman's. As the guitar groove of "Head" winds tighter and tighter, Prince brings off the young bride in a quick interlude en route to join her fiancé at the altar. She is more than eager to return the favor. By the time Prince yelps, "You wouldn't have stopped/But I came on your wedding gown," the entire album has climaxed in more ways than one. This is lewdness cleansed by art, with joy its socially redeeming feature. Dirty Mind may be dirty, but it certainly isn't pornographic.

Somehow Prince manages to be both blunt and ambiguous -- and occasionally just dreamily confusing. "When You Were Mine" (in which the line "I used to let you wear all my clothes" is offered as proof of a man's devotion) blithely condones infidelity of the most brazen sort -- "I never cared.../When he was there/Sleepin' in between the two of us" -- as long as the artist can be sure that the woman continues to love only him. Yet in "Sister," Prince notes that his female sibling is responsible for his bisexuality, a word whose syllables he draws out with a lascivious relish. Little more than a brisk pop-funk riff, "Sister" forces the pace, making it build, until the singer finally blurts out a jabbering confession: "Incest is everything it's said to be." What can you do with a guy like this?

Love him, obviously. If Prince indulges his appetites with a bold and lusty vigor, his pleasure is always dependent upon his partner's satisfaction. In a reversal of the usual pop-song aesthetic, the artist's crisp, artfully constructed compositions are a metaphor for the care and consideration that inform the lovemaking detailed in his lyrics.

Less obviously, Prince deserves our admiration. Though Dirty Mind is an undeniably appositive title, the LP might just as accurately have been called Prince Confronts the Moral Majority: except for "Uptown," "Partyup" and the loping "Gotta Broken Heart Again," none of Dirty Mind could make it onto the most liberal radio-station playlists these days. In a time where Brooke Shields' blue-jeaned backside provokes howls of shock and calls for censorship from mature adults, Prince's sly wit -- intentionally coarse -- amounts to nothing less than an early, prescient call to arms against the elitist puritanism of the Reagan era. Let Prince have the last word: "White, black, Puerto Rican/Everybody's just a-freakin'."

ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 19, 1981