Happy 40th Anniversary to Artist’s third studio album Dirty Mind, originally released October 8, 1980.
It’s the spring of 1980. What does a yet-to-be recognized musical genius do when he comes off a tour opening for Rick James?
If said genius is Prince, he rents a house near Lake Minnetonka, builds a studio financed by his record label in the rental, and creates the genre-bending Dirty Mind.
It was his third album and bold in every way you could imagine, from the sexually explicit lyrics to the album cover featuring Prince wearing a bandana, a trench coat, and bikini underwear. Dirty Mind was a pushback against a music industry that was stuck in its ways. In 1980, disco was pretty much dead, and if you were a black artist, your records were only played on black radio stations. Prince did not want to be labeled as just an R&B artist because he wanted to expand his audience and explore other genres.
The music on Dirty Mind is a far cry from “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” the familiar lead single from the album’s precursor, 1979’s Prince. A prime example is “Head,” a song that has Prince interrupting a wedding, convincing the bride-to-be to give him oral sex and returning the favor with the result being her leaving the groom at the altar to be with him. Even Prince’s band was a little shocked when they first heard the lyrics. Guitarist Dez Dickerson recalled that when he first heard it, he said, “OK, I guess we’re going there!”
However, “Head” was not the most controversial track on the album. That honor arguably goes to “Sister,” a bouncy 90-second song about incest. I was 15 years old when I first played the album, and I can, with great certainty, say that it was the first time I heard songs about incest, oral sex, and threesomes all on one album. This hypersexual persona would be the one he would carry with him throughout the 80s.
Prince’s method of recording an album was simply playing all of the instruments, laying down the tracks, and then bringing it to his band. This time around, he got input from his bandmates, particularly keyboardist Matt “Dr.” Fink. During a rehearsal, Fink discovered a riff that would provide the impetus for the album’s title track.
The album’s lead single “Uptown” was Prince’s first song that featured social commentary, with lines like, “What’s up little girl? / I ain’t got time to play / Baby didn’t say too much / She said, ‘Are you gay?’ / Kinda took me by surprise / I didn’t know what to do / I just looked her in her eyes / And I said, ‘No, are you?’ / Said to myself, said / She’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy little mixed up dame / She’s just a victim of society / And all its games.”
“When You Were Mine” sounds like a New Wave song you should have heard on WLIR in New York or KROQ in Los Angeles, but it was ignored by these radio stations. Cyndi Lauper’s ballad-like version, recorded three years later, was better known by the mainstream at the time. Still, its popularity only drew attention to the original, which should have been issued as an official single when Dirty Mind was released.
My favorite song from Dirty Mind, which made its way onto many mixtapes I made back in the day, is the closing track “Partyup.” It’s a protest song about then President Jimmy Carter’s reinstatement of draft registration, which eventually affected many other young men like myself because we had to fill out the paperwork with our local Selective Service Board (How you going to make me kill somebody / I don’t even know? They got the draft, uh uh / I just laugh / Party up / Fighting war / Is such a fucking bore / Party up / Party, uh uh, got to party down, babe / Ooh, it’s all about what’s in your mind Going uptown, baby / I don’t want to die I just want to have a bloody good time).
When I listened to “Partyup” back then, I made no connection to the reinstatement of draft registration. I just thought it was a funky-ass song with a killer bass (thank you, André Cymone). Do yourself a favor and watch Prince’s performance of “Partyup” on Saturday Night Live from February 21, 1981. That’s the night I became sold on the fact that Prince was the future of music.
Even though it spans only eight tracks and clocks in at a little over a half-hour, listening to Dirty Mind remains a half-hour very well spent.
LISTEN: