ALBUM SPOTLIGHT: Prince | Around the World in a Day

Your (mostly) weekly Spotify embed highlighting a full album worth listening to.

This month (April 22) marks the 40th (seriously?) anniversary of Prince’s Around the World in a Day — the follow-up to his massive Purple Rain movie, album, and tour.

We’re also approaching (April 21) the nine year anniversary of his death and the first since I’ve been on Substack. Since the date coincides with the day my free weekly newsletter drops, expect a tribute and curated playlist. But, since I stumbled across the ATWIAD release date I thought I’d post that too, since it’s such an important album to me.

Like most white, suburban, Gen X kids, my first notice of Prince came with his cross-over breakthrough album 1999 in 1982. I loved it, but wasn’t prepared for Purple Rain just two years later. Purple Rain really is a near perfect album and a giant leap for Prince as an artist. I became an immediate and huge fan when it came out.

But, I didn’t become a lifelong (quasi) fanatic until ATWIAD came out. I still vividly remember putting on the album for the first time and listening to it in its entirety. I was simply blown away, and I knew exactly why. It was a complete and utter departure from Purple Rain and I distinctly remember thinking that this guy is someone completely unique to make such an audacious departure from such a massive hit sound.

Being a big Beatles fan already, I loved the psychedelic influences but also remember thinking that this guy is going to be my Beatles — someone who goes to places you could never predicts and takes his fans along with him, instead of doing the safe and expected. He even seemed to be explicitly saying it. Listen to the title track. Near the end he sings papa, I think I want to dance and the keyboards and entire sound shifts to something that could have been on Purple Rain, And then virtually all signs of that sound disappear for the rest of the album.

It blew me away.

As soon as I listened to it, I put on headphones and listened again — amazed at the hidden layers, like the blazing guitar line nearly buried in Paisley Park. And speaking of guitar, the lead on Temptation is probably the closest he ever got to channeling Jimi Hendrix. And the double tracked lead vocals on Pop Life — one on the right the other in the left — purposefully off in time, giving a blissful pop song a slightly weird edge.

Around the World in a Day isn’t my favorite Prince album, but it means more to me than any other. It’s one of the most revelatory experiences I’ve ever had with music and it started a lifelong love of Prince that survives completely intact to this day.

And yes, he was my Beatles.