Prince & the Revolution - Around the World in a Day

Paisley park is in your heart...

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R12Y1E8WVBZ7WO My name is Jeremy Gloff. I am a musician (check me out on Amazon!) and retro music enthusiast. If you enjoyed this review make sure to check out my Amazon user profile to check out my other reviews. I am always up for making new friends and discussing the music I love!!! November 25, 2008

My Favorite Prince Album

Thanks to the collaboration with Wendy & Lisa, this album tops my list of Prince releases. It's breezy, funky, and yet deep. Prince's religious bent doesn't interrupt the proceedings as much as in his later albums, but still shows up where appropriate. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman had a strong influence on the music in this album, and it shows.

Again, this is a Prince album that needs to be played from beginning to end without shuffling. It tells a story, builds a narrative, and takes the listener on a musical journey that must be experienced to be understood.

Vastly superior to anything he did in the 90s, Around The World In A Day marks the near-end of Prince as a fun artist, and the beginning of his delving deeper into religious themes. In this album, that helps him. In later albums, the piousness bogs him down.

Along with "Parade", this album also marks the best work he did with the Revolution, his best band to date. September 18, 2008

Two Albums You Shouldn't Sleep On

Around The World in A Day & Lovesexy, that's if you like real music played by real musicians. All the other good things that I could say have already been said. Peace & Love July 31, 2008

This thing is really noisy

In the context of hindsight, there is a reason this one gets overlooked in Prince's catalogue - and that is because it is just not very good. Amazing that this thing is sandwiched right in the middle of "1999" and "Purple Rain" before and "Parade" and "Sign 'O' the Times" after. Amazing because those four albums are so, so good, and this one is so, so bad. I don't think it's because it follows a blockbuster like "Purple Rain" that "Around the World in a Day" gets a bum rap. It really is because it's just not a good album. I do think this was done a bit deliberately, to take some of the pressure off after the mega-success of "Purple Rain". Just get something out to market, to lower expectations and keep the record company from demanding "Purple Rain, Part Two". It obviously worked because the relative failure sales-wise of this one (it hit LP cut-out bins rather quickly) gave him the artistic freedom to then release, back-to-back, two more (really three, because "Sign" was a double) great albums .

There were two killer singles from this album ("Raspberry Beret" and "Pop Life") and those can be found on "hits" compilations. Unlike the aforementioned four other albums, the non-single album tracks on this thing are not all that well constructed, sometimes don't really seem to go anywhere, and are definitely a bit noisy and grating at times. This one has not aged well. I am not really sure how this one is considered "psychadelic". All this album really does is basically take all the worst aspects of Prince's mid-80s signature computerized-electronic-drum sound and stretch it out over the course of a very disjointed album.

The CD packaging also sucks in comparison to that of the 1985 vinyl LP.

Perhaps the original complete album art will be restored SOMEDAY when Prince's catalogue is MAYBE FINALLY REMASTERED (hell, Bananarama's 1980s albums have been remastered (!!!) (was there much demand for that, btw???), why the hell not Prince?). May 6, 2008

Trippy, underrated followup to Purple Rain

This, as it has often been pointed out, is an eccentric, psychedelic album. Of course Prince was always kind of an odd guy, but nobody was expecting something like the calypso-laden title track. Even the funk song "Raspberry Beret" is slightly odd, with psychedelic tinges and violins. The thing is that he actually managed to crank out a very entertaining album in spite (or perhaps because) of all the experimental insanity. It's not all good and fine: "America" is your standard '80s funk song; "Condition of the Heart" is too long and is inaudible for most its length, and "The Ladder" revives the previous album's Messianic tendencies without the melody of "I Would Die 4 U" or the shocking coda found on "The Beautiful Ones". More often though it's either charming and melodic ("Paisley Park"; "Raspberry Beret"; title track) or hard-rocking/free-jazzing and melodic (the long, insanely experimental, multi-part sex jam "Temptation", with a sax that I believe is played by Rogers Nelson himself), and its eccentric, eclectic nature is delightful as well. December 9, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...