Album title: Dirty Mind
Artiste: Prince
Genre: Funk/Soul/Pop
Year: 1980
Label: Warner Bros
Producer: Prince
Chronological position: Third album
Notes:
Album chart position: 45 (US) 61 (UK)
Singles: “Uptown”, “Dirty mind”, “Do it all night”
Lineup: Prince: Everything except
Lisa Coleman – Vocals on “Head”
Doctor Fink – Synth on “Head” and “Dirty mind”
The album that suddenly revealed Prince as the steamy, erotic, downright filthy poet of the nation's – the world's – desires, both forbidden and dreamed, and which began to redraw the parameters that had already been assigned to him, stretch and flex and burst right out of that box with a triumphant gasp and the squeal of the sexual release of a thousand young women, spraying talent, dripping sticky music and oozing creamy lyrics down the sides of his .. well, you get the idea. If this had been released five years later it would have been plastered with
Parental Advisory stickers, and probably burned in ceremonial denouncements of its filth, lewdness and pornography disguised as pop music. Sound like your scene? Enter, if ye dare...
Review begins
Thumping bass and thrumming synth opens the title track, with a real pop sensibility in the keys, very AOR meets new wave, the vocal sort of buried at first though it rises slowly through the music. Despite the title it's not really that, well, dirty; in fact, it sounds pretty ordinary, and the new wave idea continues in “When you were mine”, with a sort of Springsteen/Mellencamp flavour in the guitar riff. So far I'm not as impressed as I was with the first two albums, I must say. “Do it all night” takes things back to funk, but again I don't see a whole lot to be excited about. A sort of soul half-ballad for “Gotta broken heart again” which, to be completely fair, sounds like something Michael Jackson would even reject. I'm amazed, but this is poor.
A fast uptempo funker then for “Uptown”, but man is it boring! The big one then is “Head”, and this is apparently where Prince starts annoying the Concerned Parents of American or whomever with his slutty, filthy lyrics, and about fu
cking time too. Lyricwise, yes, I can see it, but musicwise it's just another relatively boring funk/disco tune with a lot of handclaps. Where are those searing guitars that peppered the first two albums? Where's the piano? Yawn. “Sister” has too much rockabilly nonsense in it for my liking. Again, controversial lyric but pretty staid song, real disappointment. At least there are guitars in this. “Partyup” is a kind of okay disco song but nothing like anything on either of the first two albums. Interesting anti-war message at the end. About the only thing about this track that is interesting.
Track listing and ratings
Dirty mind
When you were mine
Do it all night
Gotta broken heart again
Uptown
Head
Sister
Partyup
Afterword:
Considering what I read about it, and that the late great Urban declared this Prince's best album, I'm disappointed to a factor of infinity. I much prefer the two other albums. Maybe Prince was trying too hard to have hit singles and not concentrating enough on writing good songs. I guess I'm a lone voice in the wilderness, as everyone else seems to love this album, and my introductory paragraph is kind of irrelevant now, but I was hugely let down by this. Expectations high, result really really low. Boo.
Rating: 
