PurpleLove7 said:

MrLee192 said:

http://www.rollingstone.c...sts/prince

ranked pretty low

... one bad or 'so so' review does not seal the deal for me on if the albums is good or not. Point taken though

It received pretty mixed reviews in general. In fact, it didn't even make the top 40 in Village Voice's music poll for '85 (PR was #2 the prior year, & SOTT was #1 in '87).

http://www.robertchristga...jres85.php

That's not meant to suggest that any critic or a comprehensive poll is the final authority on the album's value. However, I think that does reflect that a lot of people saw it as a rather muddled & unsatisfying record. That's certainly my view. I've never liked it much. Strip away the splashy sounds and I think you're left with a pretty minor, tepid batch of songs.

it just isn't very strong, in my opinion. it's got a few great tracks, and mostly decent ones. it just kind of sounds half-assed and cobbled-together, despite the experimental nature of some of it. and The Ladder is just a complete waste of time. it's barely even b-side material. odd, considering how much great material he was working on during the late Purple Rain sessions that could have been carried over, or the other stuff he was working on in PR's aftermath. it could have filled the remit of not being "Purple Rain Part II but still kinda-sorta sounding like it" with a few carefully selected substitutions.

who cares.

The general public may not have much awareness of the album as a whole, but they certainly remember "Raspberry Beret." It's the only Prince song my sister-in-law has on her iPod, for example.

these are top 6 Prince albums imo:

01. Purple Rain (10)
02. Sign "O" The Times (10)
03. 1999 (10)
04. Lovesexy (10)
05. Parade (10)
06. Around The World In A Day (10)

^ don't hate me Vitriol, once again

mblevels said:

I think almost every Prince album is overlooked, at least by the general public.

naw I doubt that, at least his 1980's stuff got serious attention by the general public

OldFriends4Sale said:

mblevels said:

I think almost every Prince album is overlooked, at least by the general public.

naw I doubt that, at least his 1980's stuff got serious attention by the general public

that's a nice fantasy.

electricberet said:

The general public may not have much awareness of the album as a whole, but they certainly remember "Raspberry Beret." It's the only Prince song my sister-in-law has on her iPod, for example.

And the video for Raspberry Beret was voted #1 video of something (Prince academians help me out)

While this song reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US

AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY
PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION

Paisley Park/Warner Bros.

BY JOHN PARELES

PRINCE IS UP TO SOMETHING, no doubt about it, on Around the World in a Day. The packaging will pass for psychedelic, as will the name of Prince's recording studio and custom label, Paisley Park. And audio embellishments like finger cymbals and lost-in-space synthesizers -- not to mention the album's first lines, "Open your heart, open your mind" -- would have been right at home in lysergic times.

Let's not take Prince's psychedelic trappings too seriously, however. His new album is about anything but diving into a mind-altered substance. On Around the World -- as on Purple Rain, which it barely resembles otherwise -- Prince takes another step toward cleaning up his act.

Prince deserves credit for making an album at all -- especially an album the breaks ranks with the previous six. He could cruise for years on the sales of the Purple Rain LP, the movie's boffo box office and the truckloads of nickels in cover-version royalties. Instead, he holed up in the studio, as he usually does, to make Around the World virtually by himself. It's easy to forget, listening to the ping-pong of parts, that Prince puts his music together overdub by overdub -- a triumph of planning as well as virtuoso execution. He lets friends in for background vocals and percussion and hires specialists for saxophone, cello, and oud (the North African lute), but all the essentials -- guitars, synthesizers, drums, wolf whistles -- are played by Prince alone. Only God, who makes a cameo appearance, knows when he had time to lay down the tracks.

Prince has apparently decided he's tired of being a bedroom-eyed, bikini-briefed, pansexual sex symbol. In the album-cover illustration it's difficult to tell who's who; I think Prince is the pious-looking, white-robed guy in the upper right who's ignoring a half-clad cutie and the nipple-shaped peak in a voluptuous mountain range. More importantly, his new lyrics are PG rated, not even the soft R of "Darling Nikki" on Purple Rain. It's hard to believe this is the same Prince who made Dirty Mind in 1980 or who, on 1981's Controversy, claimed "Sexuality is all you'll ever need."

Now Prince has come out of the bedroom. Only three of the nine songs on Around the World -- Prince's lowest proportion by a long shot -- aim below the waist. "Raspberry Beret" is a sweetly wistful seduction song, and "Tamborine," marching along like the Lemon Pipers' 1968 hit "Green Tambourine," makes masturbation seem more innocent than Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop." After the bluesy bump and grind of "Temptation," with one of the lewdest fuzz-tone guitars this side of Buddy Guy, God declares, "You have to want it for the right reasons" -- and Prince promises to be good.

The lyrics on the rest of the album suggest the spacey, out-of-it benevolence one might expect from Stevie Wonder ("The Ladder" and the title cut, both co-written by Prince's father, John L. Nelson), but underscored by Prince's own apocalyptic vision. With its lilting, nursery-rhyme-like melody, "Paisley Park" blithely describes a carefree refuge, which may be death; "America," a mock-Slavic rewrite of the tune we all know, plus a funk beat, threatens a boy who doesn't pledge allegiance with permanent residence on a "mushroom cloud." Prince gets more mileage than Alice Walker from the color purple, his shorthand symbol for the end of the world, which shows up in the first song of the album and in the last.

Where Prince has taken the sweat and other bodily fluids out of his lyrics, he's also reformulated the music. Now that everyone else is making funk tracks out of staccato keyboards, Prince has started to use sustained sounds: flutelike synthesizer on the Nubian-flavored title cut; quasi-calliope toots and what sounds like dozens of quivering vocals on "Condition of the Heart"; strings on "Raspberry Beret" and "Pop Life"; and Pink Floydian stateliness on the gospel-tinged "The Ladder."

Although it's not a ballad album, Around the World only summons Prince's dance-your-thang-off keyboard blips and James Brown guitar scratches for special events. You can call it psychedelic, but don't forget that Prince has always had an ear for floating tempos, from "When We're Dancing Close and Slow" on Prince to "The Beautiful Ones" on Purple Rain.

For all I know, Around the World in a Day may represent the afterglow following the commercial orgasm of Purple Rain. Or it may suggest that Prince's long of session with s-e-x is beginning to make way for other concerns -- we'll doubtless be hearing that in getting away from that adolescent humpa-hump stuff, Prince has grown up. Maybe it's my hormones, but to me Around the World is if anything more childish sounding than any of its predecessors. Prince has traded what he does know for wide-eyed, goofy philosophizing that can be ugly -- as with the wacko anti-Communism of "America" -- as well as lovable. I'm not going along if Prince drifts off, with Earth, Wind, and Fire and Stevie Wonder, into a grit-free never-never land, but at the moment he's still odd enough to be fascinating.

At the end of "Temptation" Prince, ever the cheerful enigma, announces, "I have 2 go now. I don't know when I'll return." The paranoids among us might think that having borrowed mightily from Little Richard, Prince is about to follow Reverend Penniman into the church. Whether the album is an aberration or a new direction, one thing is sure: Around the World in a Day is the Prince album you can bring home to your parents. Even, I guess, if they're ex-hippies.

Indepth discussion can be found here:

http://prince.org/msg/7/344091

DETROIT FREE PRESS

Published: Sunday, April 28, 1985
Section: FTR
Page: 7E

Prince makes a bid for respect with a '60s-style album

Around the World in a Day
Prince & the Revolution
(Paisley Park)

It has taken longer than a day, but Prince has done a musical full-circle. He has gone from making state-of-the-art dance-hall funk to prancing through a work with roots in every psychedelic band that made a record in the '60s. And his salacious "Dirty Mind" has given way to the conclusion -- on this album's "Temptation" -- that "love is more important than sex."

This is Prince's bid for artistic respect, much like the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Todd Rundgren's "A Wizard, A True Star" earned that status for their creators.

The influences are definitely there, from the cover -- a mix of "Yellow Submarine" cartooning, Jefferson Airplane graphics and Jimi Hendrix symbolism -- to the marriage of strings, Indian flutes, timpani, sound experiments and multi- tracked vocals with spare elements of the high-tech pioneering Prince on "1999" and "Purple Rain." And that's not to mention the latter-day flower-power lyrics. What we get is a period album that re-creates a certain sound of the '60s without many personal stamps from Prince. The Beatles, and John Lennon in particular, bear heavily on "Paisley Park" ("Penny Lane") and "The Ladder" (an "Instant Karma" for the '80s). But the album works best on up-tempo numbers including "Raspberry Beret," "Pop Life" and "America," the latter a funk-rocker that would have done Sly & the Family Stone proud.

There are also moments of indulgence, such as the title track, the manic "Tamborine," the Rundgren-esqe "Condition of the Heart" and a stilted dialogue with God on "Temptation." And in case you're wondering, "The Ladder" is just what Prince was talking about finding when he announced his retirement from touring last month, so the Kid hasn't lost his marketing savvy.

* Gary Graff

lol rolling stone rates c&d and mplsound higher than atwiad?

dont go by ratings

I agree its a little underrated and certainly a very bold move

Then again Rolling stone rated Kurt Cobain #12 and George Harrison #21 on their list of greatest guitarists ever. And Prince did not make the top 100. With all due respect to Harrison and Cobain, Prince could play circles around both of them

Around The World In A Day is only overlooked by "casual" fans and critics.

If you like it that's great, you didn't overlook it. Why give a f**k what a critic or anyone else thinks?

MrLee192 said:

Of all the Prince albums that get mentioned, reviewed, talked about. I find this album doesnt really get much mention. I think this is one of Princes most different albums, totally different to Purple Rain...which is good as a follow up.

I love the title track, Paisely Park and well all of it lol. The album artwork is great too, real psychedelic and hippy.

Because the album before it and after it were very very good albums. I think it got lost in translation. Plus...Condotion Of The Heart, Temptation kind of ruined some of the trippy fun on the album itself. However it DID have some awesome b-sides...which I believe with a remaster, would be an awesome add on.

Full Lenth album featuring the extended version of (AWTWIAD) plus the full versions of She's Always In My Hair, Girl, Another Lonely Christmas and Hello. That is another classic.

paisleypark4 said:

MrLee192 said:

Of all the Prince albums that get mentioned, reviewed, talked about. I find this album doesnt really get much mention. I think this is one of Princes most different albums, totally different to Purple Rain...which is good as a follow up.

I love the title track, Paisely Park and well all of it lol. The album artwork is great too, real psychedelic and hippy.

Because the album before it and after it were very very good albums. I think it got lost in translation. Plus...Condotion Of The Heart, Temptation kind of ruined some of the trippy fun on the album itself. However it DID have some awesome b-sides...which I believe with a remaster, would be an awesome add on.

Full Lenth album featuring the extended version of (AWTWIAD) plus the full versions of She's Always In My Hair, Girl, Another Lonely Christmas and Hello. That is another classic.

Another Lonely Christmas is a Purple Rain B side, and sounds it too

OldFriends4Sale said:

paisleypark4 said:

Because the album before it and after it were very very good albums. I think it got lost in translation. Plus...Condotion Of The Heart, Temptation kind of ruined some of the trippy fun on the album itself. However it DID have some awesome b-sides...which I believe with a remaster, would be an awesome add on.

Full Lenth album featuring the extended version of (AWTWIAD) plus the full versions of She's Always In My Hair, Girl, Another Lonely Christmas and Hello. That is another classic.

Another Lonely Christmas is a Purple Rain B side, and sounds it too

My favorite Prince album ever. Still spin it about once or twice a month.

MIInsane said:

My favorite Prince album ever. Still spin it about once or twice a month.

paisleypark4 said:

MIInsane said:

My favorite Prince album ever. Still spin it about once or twice a month.

I still cant stand condition of the heart though......replaced by Girl on my ipod

I absolutely LOVE Condition Of The Heart. I hated it when the album first came out and would always fast forward through it. But as I got older and actually had a few failed relationships I began to understand the song......and the beauty of it. This song, along with Question Of U are two songs I love to play when I'm heartbroken or just in a down mood.......in simulated surround........EXTREMELY loud.

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

paisleypark4 said:

I still cant stand condition of the heart though......replaced by Girl on my ipod

I absolutely LOVE Condition Of The Heart. I hated it when the album first came out and would always fast forward through it. But as I got older and actually had a few failed relationships I began to understand the song......and the beauty of it. This song, along with Question Of U are two songs I love to play when I'm heartbroken or just in a down mood.......in simulated surround........EXTREMELY loud.

Hmmm, well maybe it has not sunk in yet. It is just too much for me at a song that comes in at #3 after two medium tempo tracks...takes too long to build. Maybe it will grow on me like it took years for Sometimes It Snows....

paisleypark4 said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

I absolutely LOVE Condition Of The Heart. I hated it when the album first came out and would always fast forward through it. But as I got older and actually had a few failed relationships I began to understand the song......and the beauty of it. This song, along with Question Of U are two songs I love to play when I'm heartbroken or just in a down mood.......in simulated surround........EXTREMELY loud.

Hmmm, well maybe it has not sunk in yet. It is just too much for me at a song that comes in at #3 after two medium tempo tracks...takes too long to build. Maybe it will grow on me like it took years for Sometimes It Snows....

Perhaps......but I do agree that Girl is awesome. Quirky yet atmospheric. Love it!

paisleypark4 said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

I absolutely LOVE Condition Of The Heart. I hated it when the album first came out and would always fast forward through it. But as I got older and actually had a few failed relationships I began to understand the song......and the beauty of it. This song, along with Question Of U are two songs I love to play when I'm heartbroken or just in a down mood.......in simulated surround........EXTREMELY loud.

Hmmm, well maybe it has not sunk in yet. It is just too much for me at a song that comes in at #3 after two medium tempo tracks...takes too long to build. Maybe it will grow on me like it took years for Sometimes It Snows....

You got just chill and enjoy the journey through paisley park,

forget speeds and tempo

On Condition of the Heart his piano playing opening takes you 2 a personal space

It's a very strong song, and shows his piano and vocal range with all the tasty new sound he's exploring, love the finger cymbals

errant said:

it just isn't very strong, in my opinion. it's got a few great tracks, and mostly decent ones. it just kind of sounds half-assed and cobbled-together, despite the experimental nature of some of it. and The Ladder is just a complete waste of time. it's barely even b-side material. odd, considering how much great material he was working on during the late Purple Rain sessions that could have been carried over, or the other stuff he was working on in PR's aftermath. it could have filled the remit of not being "Purple Rain Part II but still kinda-sorta sounding like it" with a few carefully selected substitutions.

I think it's a very strong album, and the concept works for me

When I heard the Ladder performed live that's when I really fell for the album version

It is probably my least favorite to listen to

Go has a sound/feel that could have been on this album too,

paisleypark4 said:

MrLee192 said:

Of all the Prince albums that get mentioned, reviewed, talked about. I find this album doesnt really get much mention. I think this is one of Princes most different albums, totally different to Purple Rain...which is good as a follow up.

I love the title track, Paisely Park and well all of it lol. The album artwork is great too, real psychedelic and hippy.

Because the album before it and after it were very very good albums. I think it got lost in translation. Plus...Condotion Of The Heart, Temptation kind of ruined some of the trippy fun on the album itself. However it DID have some awesome b-sides...which I believe with a remaster, would be an awesome add on.

Full Lenth album featuring the extended version of (AWTWIAD) plus the full versions of She's Always In My Hair, Girl, Another Lonely Christmas and Hello. That is another classic.

Just listening to International Lover from the Purple Rain tour

and how he goes into a similar ending 2 Temptation

Am I qualified?

thunder

ahhh What's happenin Brotha?

thunder

Man give me a break I'm just trying to have fun with these people

thunder

I know I said I'd be good but they dig it when I'm bad

thunder

Alright Alright!!

I seriously appreciate the bridges and interplay with this album and Purple Rain & Parade/Under the Cherry Moon

Condition of the Heart was supposed to ba a lyrical script to the Under the Cherry Moon movie concept

xlr8r said:

ATWIAD gets a lot of love even though its derivative of PR.

The Ladder=PR, America = Baby Im A Star, R Beret = Take Me With U, Condition-The Beautiful Ones...

all the little babies..sing around the world

Exactly - it's one of those things that seemed so different at first, but was actually more like PR than it was different.

Great album though.

Se7en said:

xlr8r said:

ATWIAD gets a lot of love even though its derivative of PR.

The Ladder=PR, America = Baby Im A Star, R Beret = Take Me With U, Condition-The Beautiful Ones...

all the little babies..sing around the world

Exactly - it's one of those things that seemed so different at first, but was actually more like PR than it was different.

Great album though.

Actually I don't think Condition of the Heart is anything like the Beautiful Ones. For some reason is feels more like God the Dance Electic, and the Temptation ending feels like God the dance electric too

Genesia said:

gusfrancesco said:

OMG They gave The Rainbow Children 1 star!

Sometimes they get it right.

I agree.

I love ATWIAD but for the last two songs. I think The Ladder and Temptation pointed to the cringe-worthy excesses that was to come in his 90's work. Well mostly Tempatation.

[Edited 3/31/11 16:47pm]