Parade

Sound DNA

• Soul & Funk
• Funk

• brittle
• playful
• theatrical

About

In 1985, less than six months after the end of the Purple Rain Tour and the release of his <i>Around the World in a Day</i> album, Prince began shooting his second movie, <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i>. Released in 1986—and featuring Prince serving as both star <i>and</i> director—the black-and-white film lacked the performance-showcase feel of 1984’s <i>Purple Rain</i> (and didn’t come near <i>Purple</i>’s box office or critical heights). But <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> still had strong musical elements, with Prince playing Christopher Tracy, a piano player and gigolo in 1930s France. And the album it inspired, <i>Parade</i>, is less of a traditional soundtrack and more of a companion album, in both style and structure. The album’s first four tracks—“Christopher’s Tracy Parade,” “New Position,” “I Wonder U,” and “Under the Cherry Moon”—play more like evocative scene-setters than traditionally constructed pop songs, with each clocking in at less than three minutes. The same goes for the piano instrumental “Venus de Milo” and “Do U Lie?”—the latter a bit of jazzy, French-kissed whimsy that perfectly captures the period and Riviera locale. But listeners don’t need to gaze upon the <i>Cherry Moon</i> in order to take part in the <i>Parade</i>: There’s the party jam “Girls & Boys,” which references “the steps of Versailles” and drops some French; the funk-rocker “Anotherloverholenyohead,” which serves as the album’s answer to “When Doves Cry”; and the gorgeous “Sometimes It Snows in April,” a Joni Mitchell-esque elegy for Christopher Tracy that would prove to be even more poignant when Prince himself died in April 2016. But the two biggest hits from <i>Parade</i>—which was released three months before <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> hit theaters—have no connection to the film. First up is “Mountains,” one of two tracks that Prince wrote with guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman of The Revolution (<i>Parade</i> would prove to be the third and final album in which Prince shared billing with his best-known backing band). Then, of course, there’s the stuttering “Kiss,” the smash single that became one of Prince’s several career chart-toppers, and reconfirmed his mid-1980s commercial clout. With a sexy staccato beat that’s as impossible to resist as Prince’s flirty falsetto, “Kiss” proved once again why the singer simply ruled our world.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits