Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Prince · S4 E2
1999
Party like it's the end of the world. A seven-minute opener that turns Cold War anxiety into the biggest dance track of the decade
September 1982, the height of the Cold War. Prince releases a seven-minute dance track that opens with a robotic voice talking about nuclear annihilation, then asks the only question that matters: if the world is ending, why not throw a party?
"Automatic" (Prince, 1982). One of the deepest cuts on the 1999 album and a production masterclass. This is Prince at his most machine-like: cold synths, mechanical rhythms, and a vocal that sounds like it's being transmitted from another dimension.
Automatic, Prince (1982)
"Automatic" is nine minutes of hypnotic, mechanical funk that sounds less like a song and more like a transmission. The Linn drum pattern is relentless, the Oberheim bass line pulses without variation, and Prince layers synth textures that phase in and out like radio signals. Lisa Coleman's keyboard work weaves through the mix, adding human warmth to something deliberately inhuman. This is the Minneapolis Sound pushed to its most extreme.
Sources
Thorne, Matt. "Prince: The Man and His Music." Faber & Faber, 2012.
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
The Song That Almost Didn't Work
"1999" is Prince's biggest gamble to date. It runs over six minutes, features three lead vocalists trading lines, and opens with a synthesized voice warning about nuclear destruction. Radio programmers hear it and don't know what to do with it. Prince doesn't care: the song is a dare, disguised as a party invitation.
Sources
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
Nilsen, Per. "DanceMusicSexRomance: Prince, the First Decade." Firefly Publishing, 1999.
TAP TO REVEAL: How many times was "1999" released as a single?
The Apocalypse Party
Reagan is in the White House. The Doomsday Clock is at four minutes to midnight. The world feels like it could end at any moment, and Prince decides the only sane response is to dance. "1999" turns collective anxiety into collective euphoria: the chorus is a countdown to oblivion, and it sounds like the best night of your life.
Sources
Thorne, Matt. "Prince: The Man and His Music." Faber & Faber, 2012.
“The vocal sessions for '1999' were something else. Prince had Lisa and me trading lines with him, and you could feel something happening in the room that hadn't happened before.”
— Dez Dickerson, as recounted in Matt Thorne, "Prince: The Man and His Music" (Faber & Faber, 2012)
1999 (The Song): The File
Free, Prince (1982)
The closing track of the 1999 album, and the polar opposite of its title track. "Free" is a stripped-down piano ballad about liberation, sung with a vulnerability that the rest of the album deliberately hides behind drum machines and synths. After six minutes of apocalypse partying, Prince ends the album alone at a piano, asking to be set free.
Free, Prince (1982)
The lyrics are the simplest Prince has written: he wants to be free, to live his life, to not be held down. No double meanings, no provocation, no games. After an album of Cold War anxiety and explicit funk, these words hit like a deep breath. The last thing you hear on the 1999 album is Prince at his most honest.
What is the closing track of the 1999 album?
The album is finished and "1999" is out, but the song that will actually break Prince through to the mainstream hasn't been released yet. Next episode: a track called "Little Red Corvette" and the moment MTV finally opens the door.
0 XP earned this session