No-one plays the clarinet the way you play my heart

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

13/04/86 : Parade - Prince And The Revolution

This is our fifth visit with His Royal Purpliness, although we've not met him in over 3.5 years - how the time flies! I know this has "Kiss" on it, so I'll be happy to hear that but I'm not sure what we're going to get from the rest of it.

And having listened to it, I'm not entirely sure what we were given - it's quite percussive and funky, but there's a whole load of other stuff thrown in there. I wouldn't say it's terrible but I'd suggest it's pretty hard to love, although I did like "Girls & Boys" and "Sometimes It Snows In April". However, none of the album approaches "Kiss" for sheer perfection - it was also very enjoyable listening to that track over headphones for a change because there's an awful of left-right-left stereo nonsense going on.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on his second week of a thirteen week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its debut week - it then disappeared for a month and then came back for another thirteen week run, which has a nice symmetry to it. The top five this week were Hits 4, Dire Straits, A-ha, Pet Shop Boys and Whitney Houston with the highest new entry being The Blow Monkeys (#21) who have the distinction of being one of the very few bands who played Bath Uni whilst I was there.

Wikipedia tells us this is his eighth album and it's the soundtrack to the film Under The Cherry Moon, which it's fair to say did not set the world alight. The album went down better though, with most critics loving it - NME declared it their album of the year (which feels generous to me). It did pretty well commercially, making the top ten in most places you'd expect but somewhat surprisingly the only place it got to #1 was The Netherlands, with it stalling at #3 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" The Time, Sheila E, Morris Day and Jesse Johnson - all of whom are very closely associated with the man himself. I didn't mind this but mostly because it's quite interesting in a "WTF is this?" kinda way and because it's got "Kiss" on it - it's neither his best or worst work imho.

06/04/86 - Too much of a good thing
20/04/86 - Pretty much what you'd expect