The album Prince called a “revelation”
From the moment Prince emerged, it was clear that he radiated star power and had an X factor to his artistry that only occurred once in a generation. However, charisma alone wasn’t enough to ensure that Prince Rogers Nelson would fulfil his sky-high potential, and it took him a while to find his true voice.
Due to his undeniable aura, Prince caught the attention of Warner Bros while he was still a teenager, who signed him to a three-record deal. However, in his first two records, Nelson was inexperienced and had yet to fully unearth the type of artist that he wanted to be. Like many young musicians, Prince fell into the trappings of cosplaying as what he thought a pop musician should be rather than allowing his authenticity to shine.
Most artists who achieve greatness also go through this teething period, and it’s not exclusively unique to the story of Prince. When The Beatles began, their sets would be packed with covers of their favourite blues musicians, whose style bled into their first recorded original work, and it wasn’t until Rubber Soul they began to hit their creative stride.
While Prince enjoyed some success with his first two records, which spawned hits such as ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’, commerciality was at the forefront of his mind during the creative process. With his third album, Dirty Mind, the only person that Prince aimed to please was himself.
In the charts, Dirty Mind was the worst performing of his career to date, but that didn’t matter to Prince, who had unlocked a new dimension to his songwriting. Not only was this a liberating realisation, but it placed him on track to make pioneering albums such as Sign O’ The Times and 1999 that subverted the medium of pop music.
Following the release of Dirty Mind, Prince told Melody Maker: “It was a revelation recording this last album. I realised that I could write just what was on my mind and things that I’d encountered and I didn’t have to hide anything. The lyric on the new album is straight from the heart whereas the other albums were more feelings, more dreams and fantasies and they stuck to the more basic formulas that I’d learned through playing top 40 material in old bands.”
He continued: “That’s probably why they were so big but that’s really upsetting for me because you say to yourself, ‘Well, do I just wanna be real big or do I wanna do something I’ll be proud of and really enjoy playing?'”
In the same interview, Prince also spoke about why Dirty Mind mattered more to him than his biggest song, stating: “‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ was a big hit off the second album but it was hard for me to play that song after, a while. I’ll never get sick of playing the stuff from the Dirty Mind album because I’ll always remember what state of mind I was enduring the time it was recorded.”
While, at the time, Dirty Mind was a step backwards for Prince, it allowed him to take two steps forward by embracing his sexuality on the album. This trait became a permanent part of his artistic identity, making him stand out from the rest of the hit parade and become an iconoclast.
