Something was happening in the rock and roll magazines that I was reading in the early 1980s. The writers were raving about someone named Prince who was dazzling them with these great songs that no one was playing on the FM stations out of New York City. These were the days before YouTube and Spotify, so if it was not on the radio and your friends did not have the album, then you didn't hear it, and that was that. All I knew was that Prince was black and his album 1999 was the album of the year for 1982.
We all found out who Prince was in 1984, when he released the Purple Rain album. This song was not the big hit from that album, but if you did not want to run around the block after hearing this one, something was wrong with you. No song in the 1980s had the excitement of Baby I'm a Star.
Prince was the Jimi Hendrix of the modern age. We did not know this at the time, but he was a fantastic guitarist and knew how to put on a show. He was also the Sly Stone for the modern age. A great frontman who made rock and roll danceable. Except that he did not always make dance music. A year later, Prince released a psychedelic album, Around the World in a Day. And Sign o' the Times (1987) is probably the album of the decade. In all, from 1982 through 1987, Prince released five albums, two of them doubles, which brings us to seven albums in six years. Each album is a five-star classic, placing him in the highest echelon of rock and soul greats. I'd like to see you release seven classic albums in five years. Get started. We got all the time in the world.
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