Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Prince · S6 E4
Parade
The Parade album and Under the Cherry Moon. A black-and-white film set in Nice, France. Critics dismiss the movie but praise the music
Nice, France, 1986. Prince stands behind a film camera on the set of Under the Cherry Moon, directing himself in black and white, and the Parade album playing in his head is already better than the movie he's making.
"Gett Off" (Prince, 1991). The stripped-down funk and sexual confidence in this video trace a direct line back to "Kiss" and the Parade sessions. When Prince learned that less could be more, everything that followed got leaner and sharper.
The European Album
Parade is Prince's fourth album in three years, and it sounds like nothing he's made before. The production is orchestral, European-influenced, and deliberately sparse compared to Purple Rain's maximalism. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman's contributions push the sound toward jazz and chamber pop, giving the album a sophistication that none of his rivals could touch.
Sources
Per Nilsen, "DanceMusicSexRomance"
Matt Thorne, "Prince"
Rolling Stone
Nice, France
The French Riviera city where Prince filmed Under the Cherry Moon in 1986, a black-and-white romantic comedy that flopped at the box office but produced one of his finest soundtrack albums.
“I wanted to make something European. Something that felt like a French film.”
— Prince, on the Parade era
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to the original director of Under the Cherry Moon?
Gett Off, Prince (1991)
The song is built on almost nothing: a bass line, a drum machine, and Prince's voice delivering the most explicit lyrics of his career over a groove so minimal it's practically a skeleton. There's more silence in this arrangement than sound. Listen for how the guitar only appears in short, sharp stabs between vocal lines rather than playing continuously. The production approach comes directly from the Parade era, where Prince discovered that stripping a song to its bones could make it hit harder.
Sources
Pitchfork
Rolling Stone
Parade
Girls & Boys, Prince and the Revolution
From Parade (1986). One of the catchiest tracks on the album, driven by a horn section and a groove that sounds like it was written for a European dance floor. "Girls & Boys" is Parade at its most playful, a reminder that even when Prince is making his most sophisticated album, the funk never leaves.
Girls & Boys, Prince and the Revolution (1986)
"Girls rule in my world, boys too." In two lines, Prince collapses every gender binary the music industry was built on. The lyrics are simple, the politics are not, and the horn arrangement makes you dance while you think about it.
Who was the original director of Under the Cherry Moon before Prince took over?
Parade has the critics impressed and the film has the Razzies. But one song from this album will outlive everything else. Next: "Kiss," the #1 hit made from almost nothing, and the story of how a demo meant for another artist became the most stripped-down funk song ever recorded.
0 XP earned this session