Princely weirdness

As most people probably already know, the artist formerly and currently known as Prince is doing the half time show at the Super Bowl. So this is as good of a time as any to remind people of the straight-up weirdness which is prevalent on his Around the World in a Day album from spring of 1985. Keep in mind that this was my favorite album for a couple of months after its release (my friends just thought it was weird; the very same friends who liked Purple Rain, "Little Red Corvette," etc.). Despite the odd nature, Around the World was considered a landmark album. But still batsh*t crazy. Having crossed over and become a huge mainstream musical act with the phenomenal success of Purple Rain a year earlier, this is the kind of stuff Prince decided he wanted his newfound, much bigger audience to hear!

EXHIBIT A: The quirkiness is announced right from the start with a meandering keyboard flute solo and a decidedly eastern beat -

weird around the world

The very "easterness" seemed odd, yet cool, -

now dig

EXHIBIT B: Side one ended with a funky jam called "Tambourine" that had its strange moments -

tambourine strangeness

EXHIBIT C: But none of this could even begin to compare with the deliberate weirdness of the last song on the album, "Temptation" (and this is just a little bit of it) -

bizarre temptation

That's Dave Chappelle material right there. I like that "shi-ka!!" so much, I made a separate mp3 just for the shi-ka!!.



The video for "Raspberry Beret":

2/8/07 UPDATE: I just noticed YouTube has yanked this video, I'm sure "by request" of someone associated with Prince Inc. Its enforcers no doubt scoured the video sharing website for days looking to find video of Prince's Super Bowl performance. If anyone had their Prince video tagged "Prince," it was no doubt flagged. This was not my video by the way.