Prince - Around the World in a Day

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Free Music Notes for Around the World in a Day

Free Music Review: Paisley Park should be in everyone's hearts
Hit: 5 Stars

I'm describing the album cover of Around The World In A Day, the psychedelic pop followup to Prince's masterpiece, Purple Rain.

"Raspberry Beret" is an all-time classic that needs no introduction. The video for it is my favorite video period, and it contained elements of the album cover. The girl with the beret is wearing a long black robe and holding a raspberry (or is it an apple?) on the album cover.

"Paisley Park" describes a pleasant utopia as an alternative to all the troubles in the world. It's a place where people are happy, forgive those who have wronged them, There's even a poke at Republicans--"Whoever said that elephants were stronger than mules?" Both girl in the seesaw and the black man who's block is condemned figure on the album cover. Yes, she does look happy, doesn't she? I mean, life SHOULD be this happy, at a place where you want to stay for the rest of your life, where the people are filled with "profound inner peace."

Whenever I hear "Condition Of The Heart" I am filled with a pleasant inner melancholy that sets my mind adrift. It's songs like this that, to reverse the lyric from Nirvana's "Lithium," that provide "the comfort in being sad."

Ditto with "The Ladder" which is about the search for one's soul and personal salvation. I sometimes feel that I am that king who didn't know where he's going, except for me, it's not the land of Sinaplenty--it's Nosoul. The lush string arrangements, backing vocals by Wendy and Susannah Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, and gospel choir of "The Ladder," a song about the search for personal salvation, make it one of my favorite Prince songs.

"America" opens with a blasting chords before launching into a rocking beat from a strong fuzzy guitar. It is the only sociopolitical song here, with verses describing the upper classes and their preoccupation in making money and equating a Democratic or left-of-center change in the government with communism, a woman who barely makes ends meet in the "one room monkey cage" where she lives, and a boy disillusioned with this country to the extent that he sees nothing but an impending apocalypse. The song still seems topical today, as there seems to be little left to be proud of in this country.

"Pop Life" is a song on the way people cope with their miserable life, whether it is someone who didn't get an envelope from Ed McMahon, children staying out of school, or people taking drugs to evade life's harsh realities. I like in particular the lyric "The river of addiction flows... but there won't be no water when the fire blows."

Sometimes, I feel that the only places I want to go exist in fantasy or songs. There's Pepperland, Strawberry Fields, and then there's Paisley Park. I'll say this--if I ever gain entrance to the Park, I ain't never coming back!

"Temptation", with its distorted psychedelic guitar is the closest as Prince will ever get to heavy metal. I assume that the person embodying that song is the red be-wigged man in the black bodysuit eating the ice cream cone.

Anyone else who made an album like Around The World In A Day after a megasmash like Purple Rain would probably see their career come tumbling down due to an alienated audience. Only a genius like Prince can carry such a radical change in musical style to sound perfection.

Around the World in a Day Poster