Prince had been to the mountaintop, and he didn’t like what he saw. He had spent a full year fine-tuning his sound, his band, his look, and his story for Purple Rain, with the explicit goal of conquering the world. And it had worked perfectly—repositioning himself as a badass guitar hero and fronting a band which included multiple genders and races had opened up new audiences for him, and made him the biggest rock star in the universe.
But as soon as he reached that peak, that rarefied altitude so few artists get to see, Prince realized what being a superstar required. He knew that to meet the demand for his music, to feed the beast of the celebrity he had attained, he would be expected to keep pushing Purple Rain for all it was worth—to tour the U.S., then go to Europe, maybe to Australia, then back for a bigger U.S. victory lap. But Prince was too restless for that. And so he did the only thing he always knew how to do: He made more music, which sounded different from anything he had done or anything his new fans might have expected.
Around the World in a Day was completed on Christmas Eve of 1984 and released in April 1985, just two weeks after the final date on the Purple Rain tour—which Prince cut short abruptly, after just six months. His breakthrough album was still riding high on the charts.
He had quietly been working on the new album in scattered sessions that had actually started prior to Purple Rain’s release, without the knowledge of his label, Warner Bros.; even members of his band, the Revolution, didn’t know that a new project was underway, much less completed. “I wasn’t totally aware that he had been tracking that album,” said keyboardist Matt Fink. “I was not involved in it…I was okay with it, but at the same time, you always want to be in there if you can.”
The most noticeable thing about Around the World in a Day was what it wasn’t: It wasn’t remotely a sequel to Purple Rain. On first listen, it was instantly clear that the album was a dramatic left-turn, with none of the flashy guitar and few of the pop hooks. The sound was bright and sweet, as opposed to low-end raunch. If Prince had streamlined and rocked up his approach for global domination, now he was creating something more intimate, cerebral, and challenging.
Though Around the World was released with no radio single or advance promotion—“This has got to be the easiest album I’ve ever worked on,” Warner Bros. creative marketing chief Jeff Ayeroff said—the first taste for most listeners wasn’t too shocking. The irresistibly playful “Raspberry Beret” was in fact the most pure pop Prince had ever delivered. (I clearly remember hearing him play the song alone at the piano during the Purple Rain show I attended that spring, and the crowd went nuts, singing along by the second chorus.)