DIRTY MIND (1980)

Dirty mind was a game changer. It’s the first time you felt Prince was taking a risk with his music career and it was a total change of direction that would permanently redefine his career as music genius and sexual pervert. Some things were the same, Prince playing all the instruments in the album, same (similar group members and musicians), and the falsetto was as high as ever.

But this was different. Dirty Mind is a more raw, post punk guitar throbbing and more honest than his previous outings. It was also more a guitar album with anthems such as “When you were mine” (would not be out of place in a Springsteen catalog of songs) but there were still catchy dance funk tunes (Head, Uptown) to keep old fans happy. When he does talk about sex, he does so in such an insidious way that it makes the listener uncomfortable (note the song about incest called “Sister”) and when the album closes with “Party Up”, you think your getting a party tune, but your getting a thinly disguised and very angry political message. This album is perhaps TOO honest and it is probably Prince making what he may have though at the time would be his last.

The previous records For You and Prince sold well but were not huge successes, and in those days artists were handed 3 album deals and Dirty Mind was the last of that three album set. In one way it backfired because Dirty Mind wasn’t a huge hit, and there were no discernable hits on the record – but ask Prince fans and they know how important this album was. In one respect it made Prince into the artist he is today by introducing that sexual persona to the world, but in another the album would win critical acclaim simply because it is so consistent, honest and has brilliant and very listenable pop songs.

The album starts with the title track, “Dirty Mind” the pulsating (and slightly out of sync) synth/organ and bass pushing the song along. This is a mid tempo song that really sets the scene for the rest of the adventure. The lyrics are plain as day and it’s honesty appeals – “I really get a dirty mind whenever your around”, nothing else needs to be said. Ok, maybe. There is something insidious about this, but really this song is similar to the opener in the Prince album where Prince wants to do something, but you are thinking that its just him talking to himself. “I want to be your lover” would tell us what he wants, but perhaps by the time we reach Dirty Mind he is fed up “I really want to lay you down in my daddy’s car”. Just in case we didn’t get the message… “I want to do it all night” the second song, he tells us something he wants to do. This song is faster and more synth/organ based than the opener, but perhaps a little more fun. The song hops along quickly with Prince really showcasing his outstanding keyboard skills is a real delight – almost a perfect pop song.

It kind of feels like your in a smoky bar when you listen to “Do it all night”, and when it ends it segues perfectly onto “Gotta Broken Heart again” which you could say is the only real ballad on the album. It’s a short throw away song which is probably only meant to break the album up and it does this perfectly because you spend two minutes listening to it waiting for the album’s opus “When you were mine”.

To me, this is the best song that Prince has made up to this point. The song which was remade by Cyndi Lauper for the second time (after the genius “I feel for you” in “Prince”) is where Prince showcases his amazing song-writing variety. This is an almost like a folk song which is about as catchy as you can get – also it’s not very rude for Dirty Mind (well not unless you listen carefully) – put it this way you could play it to your mum. The opening synth line is mesmerizingly catchy and the 80’s drums and guitar riffs are brilliant and suit the era.

Next up is “Uptown” – this is one of the stand out songs on the album, although it’s very catchy it’s also quite meaningful and describe’s the environment Prince grew up in (which still sounds pretty cool – “our clothes our hair we didn’t care”). The vocal is also louder and more aggressive than before and really demonstrates a growing musical confidence. “Uptown” is also an attempt at a disco sound, but he doesn’t quite pull it off which was a good thing anyway as it makes the song unique and not part of any existing genre. The song also has that raw dark “feel” to it which is really a theme of “Dirty Mind” throughout.

The next song “Head” is even more interesting, it’s a raw funky song about… well you guessed it. Head…. with morals of course. This is Prince here. Prince’s fantasy dirty little mind goes into overdrive as he imagines a woman about to get married and he getting it on, but of course that would be WRONG, so she decides to just give him head. The song is a gem and never grows old. It’s about as funky and dirty as you can get but its also a lot of fun. You just don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny or if he is really that deluded – the line is blurred and you just have to enjoy the ride. There are similar songs to come (for example “Lady Cab Driver”) that take this theme to the next level, but a funkier song you will never hear again.

The fantasy continues “Sister”. This is probably the dirtiest and strangest song he ever made (and he made a few), about.. incest. Probably a song subject matter that no one had ever approached or tried to approach before him. This was (and still is) a real taboo subject and Prince sings with anger and passion throughout, but it’s really a strange song that sits a little uncomfortably. This is why this album is such genius, it makes you think and feel at all sorts of levels.

The final song is mid-tempo funk song “Party Up”, which sounds kind of innocuous compared to the other songs preceding it, but it ends up with an angry athemic song about revolution. It’s almost as if he is getting us ready for the future – The Revolution.

[Edited 3/11/12 8:03am]

[Edited 3/11/12 8:51am]

vinx98 said:

but there were still catchy dance funk tunes (Sexy Dancer, Uptown) to keep old fans happy.

[Edited 3/11/12 8:03am]

Sexy Dancer wasn't on Dirty Mind

this may go against all my "professor critic" that some people call me .... but I never was a huge fan of "dirty mind" ...

while it is important in the history of the CD and Prince "essential" ... I always saw it as Prince growing ... and ... (heaven forbid) too Xrated. I mean as far as growing up I could NEVER play this around my parents ....

Of course .... I was alittle older ... i was more of a "1999" prince fan ... even tho it had its xrated parts you couldnt blast in your parents basement ... it was fun dancey and more listenable.

follow up- after letting the album "grow" some .... I did relisten to it ... and it is damn funky .... still not one of those albums I consider a 5 star essential album (for the common people).

SashaNicole said:

vinx98 said:

but there were still catchy dance funk tunes (Sexy Dancer, Uptown) to keep old fans happy.

[Edited 3/11/12 8:03am]

Sexy Dancer wasn't on Dirty Mind

oh my, you are right! I think I got that confused with Head? Thanks for the spot.

cool project--reviewing all the albums, that is.

i like your thoughts on the song "head."

i believe the lyric in "uptown" is "we don't care" (not "we didn't care" which is what you have). and i'm not sure it's about how prince grew up as much as it is about what he imagined would be an ideal sub-society.

and i never heard that point about the 3 album deal before. is that what prince actually had or is that more a general pattern at that time that may of may not have appplied to prince?

controversy99 said:

cool project--reviewing all the albums, that is.

i like your thoughts on the song "head."

i believe the lyric in "uptown" is "we don't care" (not "we didn't care" which is what you have). and i'm not sure it's about how prince grew up as much as it is about what he imagined would be an ideal sub-society.

and i never heard that point about the 3 album deal before. is that what prince actually had or is that more a general pattern at that time that may of may not have appplied to prince?

thanks, yes and I will be putting up a post for Controvery this week, cant wait.

I beleive WB offered Prince a 3 album deal which was not unusual at the time, but I think his deal was more lucrative than most which is what distinguished it. Dirty Mind was the last of that deal and was such a cult (not really a commercial) success that they soon offerred him another 3 album contraact that spawned Controvery, 1999 and Purple Rain - so they were right to have faith in him!

ColAngus said:

this may go against all my "professor critic" that some people call me .... but I never was a huge fan of "dirty mind" ...

while it is important in the history of the CD and Prince "essential" ... I always saw it as Prince growing ... and ... (heaven forbid) too Xrated. I mean as far as growing up I could NEVER play this around my parents ....

Of course .... I was alittle older ... i was more of a "1999" prince fan ... even tho it had its xrated parts you couldnt blast in your parents basement ... it was fun dancey and more listenable.

follow up- after letting the album "grow" some .... I did relisten to it ... and it is damn funky .... still not one of those albums I consider a 5 star essential album (for the common people).

I think the album is great, maybe not his best but great and in fact it was important in terms of defining his career.

ColAngus said:

this may go against all my "professor critic" that some people call me .... but I never was a huge fan of "dirty mind" ...

while it is important in the history of the CD and Prince "essential" ... I always saw it as Prince growing ... and ... (heaven forbid) too Xrated. I mean as far as growing up I could NEVER play this around my parents ....

Of course .... I was alittle older ... i was more of a "1999" prince fan ... even tho it had its xrated parts you couldnt blast in your parents basement ... it was fun dancey and more listenable.

follow up- after letting the album "grow" some .... I did relisten to it ... and it is damn funky .... still not one of those albums I consider a 5 star essential album (for the common people).

FYI: all those ellipses do not make your post sound deep. Au contraire.

"FYI: all those ellipses do not make your post sound deep. Au contraire. "

thanks, made ya read it !

Classic album, but was it really a "game changer"?

Nice review.

Is it for a magazine (online, print), Amazon, or just for us? Doesn't change anything - I'm just wondering.

Brilliand album.

the "simple" hard sound production to most of the songs,

just excellent.... I can't resist calling DM a soul/rock/funk - masterpiece.

I like all of this very short album, just over 30 minutes of music.

Should have included Extraloveable and a few other outtakes,

But why complain, the music is so fantastic.

smoothcriminal12 said:

Classic album, but was it really a "game changer"?

I think it was, the first two albums were not big commercially, but it was only when Dirty Mind came out that people/fans/reviewers took real notice.

artist76 said:

Nice review.

Is it for a magazine (online, print), Amazon, or just for us? Doesn't change anything - I'm just wondering.

Good question. It is for myself. I wanted to do it for years. A site with reviews, pics, videos, comments etc. You can go to amazon and see reviews, but I wanted to do it my own way with my reviews.

vinx98 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

Classic album, but was it really a "game changer"?

I think it was, the first two albums were not big commercially, but it was only when Dirty Mind came out that people/fans/reviewers took real notice.

Yeah, but it didn't change the music game completely...it might have changed Prince, but it didn't change the game.

smoothcriminal12 said:

vinx98 said:

I think it was, the first two albums were not big commercially, but it was only when Dirty Mind came out that people/fans/reviewers took real notice.

Yeah, but it didn't change the music game completely...it might have changed Prince, but it didn't change the game.

I don’t think there was anything like it at the time (in the music industry). The sound, the images, the style… I think without it you wouldn’t have 1999 and Purple rain. This is just a theory but I think Prince’s first two records were about him doing what the record companies wanted. He had a 3 album deal and he was probably in danger of not getting another contract. With Dirty Mind he decided to completely cut loose and do things his own way – it was a gamble but it worked.

Its a game changer because without it, he may have not had the career we all enjoy today.

vinx98 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

Yeah, but it didn't change the music game completely...it might have changed Prince, but it didn't change the game.

I don’t think there was anything like it at the time (in the music industry). The sound, the images, the style… I think without it you wouldn’t have 1999 and Purple rain. This is just a theory but I think Prince’s first two records were about him doing what the record companies wanted. He had a 3 album deal and he was probably in danger of not getting another contract. With Dirty Mind he decided to completely cut loose and do things his own way – it was a gamble but it worked.

Its a game changer because without it, he may have not had the career we all enjoy today.

But I've always known the definition of game changer to be an album that changes the industry. Dirty Mind definitely was a Prince changer, but the music industry was left unscathed.

geat review !

smoothcriminal12 said:

Classic album, but was it really a "game changer"?

it was a huge game changer when it comes to purple music.

Good work on the review! I think 'Dirty Mind' was P giving up traditional on R&B cooing lines and just speaking his mind. That makes the album more sincere than romantic and therefore (in my mind) more memorable than both 'For You' and 'Prince'.

Looking forward to your next review

[Edited 3/12/12 13:39pm]

I wouldn't think that Warner Brothers would threaten to drop him after the "Prince" album. At least I hope they didn't. I had never heard of the "For You" album and didn't know it existed until the "Controversy" era in 1981 when a DJ did a Prince doubleplay of "Controversy/Soft and Wet", but as for the "Prince" album, "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was a hit and since it was the disco era when it was released, it also crossed over to pop radio. "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad", "Sexy Dancer", and "Still Waiting" were also very popular on R&B radio and were played in heavy rotation. That's pretty good for a sophomore album especially coming from an artist who did everything himself.

As for the review as a whole though, great job.

vainandy said:

I wouldn't think that Warner Brothers would threaten to drop him after the "Prince" album. At least I hope they didn't. I had never heard of the "For You" album and didn't know it existed until the "Controversy" era in 1981 when a DJ did a Prince doubleplay of "Controversy/Soft and Wet", but as for the "Prince" album, "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was a hit and since it was the disco era when it was released, it also crossed over to pop radio. "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad", "Sexy Dancer", and "Still Waiting" were also very popular on R&B radio and were played in heavy rotation. That's pretty good for a sophomore album especially coming from an artist who did everything himself.

As for the review as a whole though, great job.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the comment. I think though that I read somewhere that the sales of Prince were just OK and not enough compared to the investment put into him (ie $1 million 3 album contract + marketing costs). Also, although I wanna be your lover was a hit, disco was dead and Prince would have not been given a contract on the basis of disco/dance in 1979. The new album needed to be a new (wave) direction….

smoothcriminal12 said:

vinx98 said:

I don’t think there was anything like it at the time (in the music industry). The sound, the images, the style… I think without it you wouldn’t have 1999 and Purple rain. This is just a theory but I think Prince’s first two records were about him doing what the record companies wanted. He had a 3 album deal and he was probably in danger of not getting another contract. With Dirty Mind he decided to completely cut loose and do things his own way – it was a gamble but it worked.

Its a game changer because without it, he may have not had the career we all enjoy today.

But I've always known the definition of game changer to be an album that changes the industry. Dirty Mind definitely was a Prince changer, but the music industry was left unscathed.

If you look at the videos, you had a black man, fronting a mainly white (male and female) backing group, playing new wave pop, bordering on punk and very sexualised. For the time, there was nothing like it in the mainstream (ok there was parliament and George Clinton and other funk groups, but they weren’t really doing ROCK and performing oral sex on stage, they weren’t wearing high heels and stockings) and they weren’t singing about incest. The mix of new wave punk and R&B funk was not too big commercially, you could say Rick James pioneered this type of music, but Prince popularised it. Also, the persona of the cool but “horny pervert” was fairly new at the time – you could see it all over the place later in the 80’s look at video clips from Billy Idol, Rockwell or Michael Jackson. He also took the androgyny of David Bowie to new extremes, playing on questions about his sexuality and image. All of this played a part in defining the “80’s” pop star and the likes of Michael Jackson probably would have had different careers if Prince didn’t break the mould (which is what he did in Dirty Mind).

vinx98 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

But I've always known the definition of game changer to be an album that changes the industry. Dirty Mind definitely was a Prince changer, but the music industry was left unscathed.

If you look at the videos, you had a black man, fronting a mainly white (male and female) backing group, playing new wave pop, bordering on punk and very sexualised. For the time, there was nothing like it in the mainstream (ok there was parliament and George Clinton and other funk groups, but they weren’t really doing ROCK and performing oral sex on stage, they weren’t wearing high heels and stockings) and they weren’t singing about incest. The mix of new wave punk and R&B funk was not too big commercially, you could say Rick James pioneered this type of music, but Prince popularised it. Also, the persona of the cool but “horny pervert” was fairly new at the time – you could see it all over the place later in the 80’s look at video clips from Billy Idol, Rockwell or Michael Jackson. He also took the androgyny of David Bowie to new extremes, playing on questions about his sexuality and image. All of this played a part in defining the “80’s” pop star and the likes of Michael Jackson probably would have had different careers if Prince didn’t break the mould (which is what he did in Dirty Mind).



I disagree.

Funkadelic was out there doing their thing.

And I personally think Michael's career would've been exactly the same without Prince.

To be honest really, Prince didn't start to have an impact until end of 1999/beginning of Purple Rain.

I don't think Prince ever thought this album would be his last. WB were reasonably satisfied with the sales of the first two.

Now Prince recorded all that stuff by himself and on the fly, without necessarly thinking of it as his next album. That's where the honesty came from and that method (a continuous recording session instead of recording "an album" in a given length of time, as he did for the first two) became Prince's method afterwards.

smoothcriminal12 said:

vinx98 said:

If you look at the videos, you had a black man, fronting a mainly white (male and female) backing group, playing new wave pop, bordering on punk and very sexualised. For the time, there was nothing like it in the mainstream (ok there was parliament and George Clinton and other funk groups, but they weren’t really doing ROCK and performing oral sex on stage, they weren’t wearing high heels and stockings) and they weren’t singing about incest. The mix of new wave punk and R&B funk was not too big commercially, you could say Rick James pioneered this type of music, but Prince popularised it. Also, the persona of the cool but “horny pervert” was fairly new at the time – you could see it all over the place later in the 80’s look at video clips from Billy Idol, Rockwell or Michael Jackson. He also took the androgyny of David Bowie to new extremes, playing on questions about his sexuality and image. All of this played a part in defining the “80’s” pop star and the likes of Michael Jackson probably would have had different careers if Prince didn’t break the mould (which is what he did in Dirty Mind).



I disagree.

Funkadelic was out there doing their thing.

And I personally think Michael's career would've been exactly the same without Prince.

To be honest really, Prince didn't start to have an impact until end of 1999/beginning of Purple Rain.

Its my opinion, I guess we'll never really know though..

thebanishedone said:

I like you review but one line bothers me very much.yoi said keyboards are out of synch od Dirty Mind song.are u fucking crazy? Prince out of synch haha

no it is, take another listen!