1982
5 keepers
keeper avg .454
After four relatively brief one-man albums Prince celebrated his first partnership with backing band The Revolution with the lengthy double-platter 1999. It's still essentially a Prince solo album as he continued his practice of recording nearly all the instruments himself until the next album, Purple Rain, but most of The Revolution contribute backing vocals throughout. Though filled-out with several long, jammy tracks and only containing 11 total, the album's unique synth-heavy sound is cited as being heavily influential and was a commercial breakthrough.
Of course the three top twenty singles that make up the first album side, the legendary title song***** (#12), the funky "Little Red Corvette" (#6), and the energetic "Delirious"**** (#8) had a lot to do with that; the similarly kinetic "Let's Pretend We're Married" continues the streak of charting singles. The combination of deep funk rhythm and prominent synth make "D.M.S.R." the sound that would define dance in the 80's, though eight-minutes- plus overstays a bit. There's a good amount of synth futzing in the lengthy "Automatic"**** (playfully delivered as A-U-T-O-matic) until either Lisa or Jill's matter-of-fact "I can hear you, I'm going to have to torture you now" dunks you face-first into a mesmerizing soup of tasty guitar and female groans that finally succeeds at what "Whole Lotta Love" (1969) had in mind. "Lady Cab Driver" is pretty understated as a tune but meanders down some interesting blocks over eight minutes, like a fiery oratory of shout-outs and a shredding guitar solo.
Despite those last two above-mentioned songs the second disc flags substantially, as "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" and "All the Critics Love U in New York" are weak melodically, and "Free" is a nice but unengaging ballad (up until Prince's fancy guitar flourish at the end). But ending on a high note Prince flexes his vocal range, from bass to screaming falsetto on the album-closing "International Lover"****; the standard R&B proceedings start slow but really take off (pun intended) when the Purple One lyrically changes gears, and transforms air travel into an increasingly hilarious metaphor for sex, introduced thusly:
Good evening
This is your pilot Prince speaking
You are flying aboard the Seduction 747
And this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires
Goofy yes, but fun, and it earned Prince his first Grammy Nomination (for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male).
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