Pop Life
By Prince
“It was clear from a young age that Prince Rogers Nelson wanted to do nothing but music. ”
He had sat down and carefully thought to himself the question of what type of work he could do while he was pursuing music, you know, on the side. His verdict: after some consideration, was resounding "no" - that is, even to a 'side hustle' as we popularly refer to it.
That's pretty bold and even heroic. Prince had come to be known as a risk-taker by the legions of artists that professed to be his disciples. But what made Prince particularly commendable was that the risk would shake up even those who thought they were the few who understood him. Expecting someone to be unpredictable may be antithetical to the latter and actually second-guessing them.
That was the gospel of Prince. 'True artists anger people,' they say. Prince had been responsible for some head-scratching, and people left dumbfounded. He was ever-changing things up, even when the timing just annoyed his most fervent of followers. However, the type of change was not the mercurial kind; he did not flip flop back and forth. His was a change that constantly moved forward, and forward, and forward.
Around the World in a Day, Prince's seventh studio album was a time when his fans had hoped to make his creative decisions for him. Released right after Purple Rain in 1985, the unexpected - and apparently unceremonious - a departure from the streak that followed 1999 to Purple Rain did not sit well with his biggest fans.
“One of the singles on Around the World in a Day was “Pop Life,” a groovy synth and electric guitar-driven tune.”
Prince's longtime friend and collaborator, Sheila E., offers a window into that period. This was before DAWs, and the practice was extremely tedious, "Cutting up tape, and cutting up the pieces and taping them to the wall, marking them with what part it was."
The song had been produced and recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood, California. Sheila E. says that they had virtually "lived there." Prince resorted to flying back and forth between that and another studio, and when away, would call Sheila to work out the song's progress.
"Pop Life" employed a drum machine to program the clap. Prince was a pioneer in music technology, relying on drum machines at a time when they were disregarded and thought of as mere novelties. Whatever Prince produced was an amalgamation of different elements, sometimes polarities, including old and new, traditional and futuristic. Listening to "Pop Life," it is sometimes hard to believe this was decades ago.
“Prince has influenced many called the ‘founders’ of House and Techno music. ”
He experiments on Around the World in a Day with a more psychedelic style and generally relies on unconventional instruments than his previous albums.
EDM faithfuls hold Prince in high regard. They are mystified by the man's techniques and even the synthesizers he had specially picked for songs. Jason Heffler, a figure in today's electronic dance music, describes Princes as "one of the most venerated and subversive artists of all-time, who was instrumental in shaping contemporary music as we know it."
Prince is an icon to many across the board simply because, at some point, he had ventured musically into this genre or that. Heffler reflects Prince "dabbled in many genres," and a significant portion of his music catalog "was rooted in electronic music."
