yankem said:

Yes, it was shot during the UTCM filming. It was for a group of school kids, or something. He performed a few other songs as well after the video shoot.

yankem said:

It was the lead single in the UK, there was no US release.

"Raspberry Beret" and "Pop Life" both had US and UK releases.

Not so oddly, "America" had a US release, but no UK release.

He should have released "Tambourine" in the UK while "America" took over for the US.

LinnLM1 said:

Considering Prince started recording the album in 1984, and had probably even started working on its conception in late 1983, the refrain comes as no surprise. Back in those days WHO could have figured that less than 6 years later the Berlin wall would come tumbling down, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would eventually become a "democracy"? Except for the tip top USSR specialists of the day, NOBODY! The first half of that decade had been rocked by huge tensions between the Soviet Block and the Western World. In the USSR, those years had been under the successive rules of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko who were not inclined to look towards the West in a friendly manner, that's the least that can be said. Those years were the heyday of the deployment of nuclear missiles on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Europe being taken hostage between the two super-powers. Many people thought the outcome would be yet another war. All that put back into context, yes the refrain has a pronounced patriotic flavour to it, but only normal for that particular decade.

HOWEVER

If one honestly removes their pink-shaded glasses to look at the reality of things, the Reagan era, among other things, accentuated the discrepancy between the rich population and the others. The number of homeless people exploded and so did unemployment rates (same goes for M. Thatcher in GB).

Aristocrats on a mountain climb
Making money, losing time
Communism is just a word
BUT if the government turn over
It'll be the only word that's heard

This is how I read the introduction to the song: the description of an idle well-off careless portion of the population. Freedom is something one must work for.

America, America
God shed his grace on thee --- You're lucky enough God chose you
America, America
Keep the children free ----- Don't blow everything through carelessness

Little sister making minimum wage
Living in a 1-room jungle-monkey cage
Can't get over, she's almost dead
She may not be in the black
But she's happy she ain't in the red

The first three verses speak for themselves about the precarious conditions in which many people had to live (still true today). I always thought the last verse was VERY IRONIC

As for Jimmy Nothing, well he's just the average American teenager who's revolting against a system that is not suited to him. I remember back in the early 80s, a few young adults I knew were smoking pot or shoving needles up their veins... and cocain was hip...

To me, this song never depicted a pretty picture of America. I may be wrong...

But it rocks whichever way you look at it!
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[Edited 1/31/10 9:53am]

I never thought much of America....til I saw the vid 4 it.

ernestsewell said:

Yes! And I was there too! We got our tickets either from the Victorine Studios (my case) or thanks to relations... That (short) show was insane. So much fun and free!

Isabell said:

Nobody, not even Prince. Prince didn't have any more foresight than anyone else who paid attention to politics and the social and political climate of the world at the time. Prince wasn't the only one singing about the cold war and nuclear war. By the time the wall came down, people knew that the cold war had run its course. There just wasn't a place for that sort of thing anymore. Leaders had been chipping away for years to get Germany as one country again, as well as Russia in good graces to some extent.

Prince did not start the concept for the album in 1983. There was no real concept, other than the opposite of what he'd done with Purple Rain. He was squarely in the middle of writing music for his band, plus two other bands, and doing a little film called Purple Rain. But once he had completed that, new music started coming. He was recording songs that would eventually end up on ATWIAD as early as February 1984. However, that early song, "Pop Life", was directly inspired by Morris Day's drug habit and leaving The Time. So that's a given. "Paisley Park" was recorded in March, while most everything else was recorded in the mid-late summer, and through the end of the year, completing with "The Ladder" in December 1984, while on tour (ironically recorded in St. Paul at the Civic Center on the Purple Rain Tour). It's no secret, or news, that Prince gets tired quickly of one project, and I think even Prince had had enough of all things Purple Rain to some extent before it even came out. He was immersed in it, and although the fame of it was great, it's safe to say he was ready to put something else out. He even performed "Under The Cherry Moon" (instrumental only), "Condition of the Heart", "Raspberry Beret" and "4 The Tears In Your Eyes" in the piano segment near the end of the tour.


You are wrong. It's not meant to be anti-American. In fact, high lighting the ills of a society usually pushes that segment of the populous to do something about it and change it. If anything, it's a rally cry, and a cheer leading for a better place to live; that being America.

ernestsewell said:

When I said he'd probably started working on that album in late 1983, it was a wild guess, I'll take what you have to say about chronology to be true, since I have no knowledge on the subject. I used the word "conception" as in "birth" but not as "idea, design or plan".

Of course Prince could not have foreseen the fall of the Soviet Union, that was my point, I may have expressed it poorly. In those days the USSR was considered a real threat, that idea was present not only in music (Prince for instance), but also in cinema etc. Do you remember the TV movie "The Day After"? Thinking of it today makes me laugh, but nobody was laughing back then. The notion that the USSR could take over Western democracies was somthing that was considered a possibility. I wanted to put the song back into context.

I never thought it was anti-American, just that it gave a very dark picture of the USA that nobody really likes, myself included. But a rather acurate picture nonetheless. I'll have to listen to it again, because I don't really hear the "cheer leading for a better place to live".

It's only in 1985 that Gorbachev became General Secretary, the song had already been written and recorded.
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[Edited 1/31/10 11:02am]

Isabell said:

Lucky you !!!!

yankem said:

I know! But after that I never saw him in concert again! When he was touring in the US, I was in Europe, and when he was touring Europe I was in the US, or living in Africa. I just recently moved to Europe and tried to get tickets to his Paris concerts but was unlucky... What a bummer!

LinnLM1 said:

Efan said:

Yep, it's Reaganite Prince. Communism's lurking, ready to turn the government over; those like "Jimmy", who don't get fired up with patriotic fervour, are set to lead us all to nuclear war.

The most brainless, flag-waving bit of it, though, is:

Little sister making minimum wage
Living in a 1-room jungle-monkey cage
Can't get over, she's almost dead
She may not be in the black
But she's happy she ain't in the red

So, she's living in poverty and squalor at the arse-end of the capitalist system, but her abiding sentiment is at least she's not in a communist country (i.e. "in the red"). If that's not hollow, patriotic delusion at its purest, I don't know what is.

Has anyone noticed the strong bass line (LP version, I have no idea about the 12') on this song? I never really gave it a thought until just recently.

Isabell said:

Were you in the Zenith, that same year, in august 86? I was there, it was crazy !!!!

yankem said:

Lucky you this time!
I heard the 1986 show in Paris was excellent.
Unfortunately Prince and the Revolution had been programmed to give a concert in Nice the summer of 86, but Muammar el-Qaddafi had menaced to bomb the south of France and Italy in retaliation to US bombings against Lybia earlier that year (he did fire scuds against the Italian island of Lampedusa), therefore, to my dismay, the concert was cancelled. And I was too young to travel to and stay in Paris on my own...
But I'm still hoping I'll be able to see P. in concert, even if it's not a crazy concert like he used to do them.
PS: the recording of the America video clip was done in Oct. 1985, not 86
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[Edited 2/1/10 9:40am]

yankem said:

That show at Le Zenith was crazy! It was one of the first boots I ever bought, called Funky Party 2Nite. I was crazy over that disk. I knew that "1999" was some how edited short, but I never knew why. Years later, and thanks to Napster, I realized that the last 4 songs of the show were audience recordings (opposed to the rest being soundboard), and were never really put out there. It's also the show where "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night" was originally recorded, and later used on the Sign O The Times album.

I still have an affection for that bootleg. It's just so fun.

ernestsewell said:

I always thought that song had been recorded in Paris in 1986, about 1 min into the song he calls out "Paris are you ready?". The way the audience cheers and responds to Prince sounds like everybody was having a great time. I would have loved to have been there. Oh well... I'm looking forward to a future performance in Europe... or in the US but only if I'm there at the same time, haha

Prince referred to is a straightforwardly patriotic.

But I do not see it as overly political or any more conservative as liberal or any more pro-democrat or pro-republican.

I took its meaning as we got things pretty good in the USA that even if things are hard at least we have freedoms that some people that would appear at a glance to be in a better situation do not have.


As far as the "mushroom cloud" i always wondered if its other meaning was drug use. (shroms?)

Isabell said:

that and the kl liner notes say it was recorded in paris and even credits some thousand screaming Parisians.

Isabell said:[quote]

ernestsewell said:

It was. Even the liner notes on SOTT note that it was recorded at Le Zenith. The basic track is the same, but when you hear the original recording, you realize how many overdubs Prince did once he put it on SOTT.

ernestsewell said:

1. My CD is a happy retiree living its life on a shelf in my former teenager room in the south of France. I've only got the music on my computer, no liner notes
2. Interesting, I'll try to get my hands on it. Actually, I don't own a single boot! Pathetic, I know
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[Edited 2/1/10 11:07am]

Yes it was recorded during that night (I was there). First time I saw Prince live, we, Europeans were expecting him as the Purple Rain tour didn't came to us. In fact, It's Gonna Be A BN was like a long instrumental during which they were asking the crowd to sing Awe o ooooo (well, you know, something like that..)We didn't know that instrumental but it was good !!! The next year, we discovered that he used it (with a lot of overdubs like Ernest stated) on his masterpiece !!!! He thanked the wonderful Parisians in the liner notes. I tell everybody since then that I did some background vocals for Prince...just kidding !!!!
Isabell, you're right about the Kadhafi threat at the time, I do remember now...

OnlyNDaUsa said:

mushroom cloud aka nuclear bomb

sexxydancer said:

America was being performed on the end of the Purple Rain tour

OldFriends4Sale said:

I said "its other meaning"