Parade

About

In 1985, less than six months after the end of the Purple Rain Tour and the release of his <i>Around the World in a Day</i> album, Prince began shooting his second movie, <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i>. Released in 1986—and featuring Prince serving as both star <i>and</i> director—the black-and-white film lacked the performance-showcase feel of 1984’s <i>Purple Rain</i> (and didn’t come near <i>Purple</i>’s box office or critical heights). But <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> still had strong musical element, with Prince playing Christopher Tracy, a piano player and gigolo in 1930s France. And the album it inspired, <i>Parade</i>, is less of a traditional soundtrack and more of a companion album, in both style and structure. The album’s first four tracks—“Christopher’s Tracy Parade,” “New Position,” “I Wonder U,” and “Under the Cherry Moon”—play more like evocative scene-setters than traditionally constructed pop song, with each clocking in at less than three minute. The same goes for the piano instrumental “Venus de Milo” and “Do U Lie?”—the latter a bit of jazzy, French-kissed whimsy that perfectly captures the period and Riviera locale. But listeners don’t need to gaze upon the <i>Cherry Moon</i> in order to take part in the <i>Parade</i>: There’s the party jam “Girls & Boy,” which references “the steps of Versailles” and drops some French; the funk-rocker “Anotherloverholenyohead,” which serves as the album’s answer to “When Doves Cry”; and the gorgeous “Sometimes It Snows in April,” a Joni Mitchell-esque elegy for Christopher Tracy that would prove to be even more poignant when Prince himself died in April 2016. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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