Every so often, an artist with the world at his feet steps off the stage, shuts the door and starts again. Not because he’s lost the thread, but because he suspects there’s a deeper, stranger one hiding beneath the floorboards. In 1985, Prince Rogers Nelson stood atop the musical world after Purple Rain, a record that didn’t just dominate radio but disrupted the decade’s gravitational pull. Most artists would have doubled down, sharpened the hooks and continued feeding the machine. Prince went the other way. Around the World in a Day is the sound of one of the era’s most brilliant architects pulling the blinds, turning inward and asking what else he might build. It’s a spiritual pause between mountaintops, a creative recalibration that cleared the runway for Sign o’ the Times.
“Open your heart, open your mind.”
To hear Prince in this moment is to hear him loosen the expectations of being Prince. He wasn’t delivering Purple Rain II; he dropped an unpromoted, self-produced record, the first on his own label, total control in hand. Spectacle traded for color, noise for nuance, certainty for curiosity, fire for glitter — all at once, with a grin. This inward turn wasn’t confessional; it was imaginative. He wanted a new mirror, one that reflected every version of himself at once: the Minneapolis kid who inhaled soul, rock, funk, psychedelia, gospel, new wave; the studio scientist who treated drum machines and desire with equal devotion; the restless visionary who understood that even at his most private, he could still make listeners feel something unexpected.
And as the title suggests, Around the World in a Day wasn’t bounded by Minneapolis. Prince stretched his sound toward global textures — psychedelic pop, Middle Eastern flourishes, Beatles-inflected studio dreams. Early critics clutched the Beatles comparison the way some folks clutch a flotation device before purifying themselves in Lake Minnetonka, but Prince wasn’t copying – he was chasing the same impulse to use the studio as a kaleidoscope, where the familiar becomes the fantastical. If Purple Rain was a coronation, this was a pilgrimage.
A huge part of that pilgrimage rested on Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The Revolution was always versatile, but Wendy and Lisa were the beautiful ones who could follow Prince into his more mystical, color-saturated corners. Their harmonies, arrangement ideas and painterly instincts are braided through the album. This was Prince at his most quietly collaborative — trusting two musical partners to wander into the fog with him and help sketch the contours once they got there.
Prince’s lineage is always worth tracing. This record hums with Sly Stone’s daring experimentation, James Brown’s rhythmic rigor, Joni Mitchell’s harmonic wanderlust and Hendrix’s electricity-as-emotion — and yes, the theatrical shape-shifting spirit David Bowie treated as a second language. And from Prince, the influence fans out: the dream-leaning R&B of the 90s, the gender-fluid pop of the 2000s, the freer forms of today’s musical landscape. You can hear his fingerprints in artists as varied as D’Angelo, Outkast, Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino and St. Vincent. Even when they’re cruising in their own little red corvettes of creativity, the road still runs through him — particularly this very album.
The album announces its vision immediately with the title track. “Around the World in a Day” opens in a swirl of flutes, hand drums and voices that feel both earthly and otherworldly. Prince also uses one of his sleights of hand — removing the bass guitar entirely, just as he’d done on “When Doves Cry.” The absence creates a floating, gravity-free sensation, a gentle reminder that this is a record meant for drifting rather than driving.
Then comes “Paisley Park,” a mission statement disguised as a daydream. It’s Prince at his most utopian, sketching a world where inclusion isn’t an aspiration but a baseline, a place where everyone is welcome and no one needs to go crazy to feel free. A lesser artist would’ve made this feel saccharine. Prince makes it feel like a memory from the future.
“Raspberry Beret” is the record’s anchor, the breezy, buoyant storyteller’s gem that became a hit despite the album’s refusal to chase one. Its strings sigh, the harmonies hover and the melody bounces with feather-light confidence. “Pop Life” dives deeper, asking sharper questions about fame with a sly grin. “America” is a burst of Cold War funk, a reminder that Prince’s playfulness never muted his awareness of the world’s darker undercurrents. And the deep cuts add their own eccentric electricity: “The Ladder” climbs toward something sacred, while “Condition of the Heart” drifts through a dreamy, almost delirious kind of longing — the softer, floating cousin of the Dirty Mind daring he’d shown in earlier years.
Themes of renewal run through the record. Prince wanted to shed expectations, to reset, to rediscover his center without abandoning his spark. That idea feels especially sharp today, in a moment when reinvention is often reduced to marketing. Prince wasn’t rebranding. He was re-rooting. And closing out the calendar year, Around the World in a Day feels like the right final chapter for us, too.
Throughout this year’s columns, we’ve frequently traced how great artists periodically purge their past selves — sometimes gently, sometimes with a jolt — to enter a new creative phase. Prince joins that long lineage here. While certainly not every classic “purge record” has passed through this space, the kinship is clear: Neil Young’s detour with the “Ditch Trilogy,” Radiohead’s pivot with Kid A, R.E.M.’s murky reorientation with Fables, Springsteen’s stark turn with Nebraska, Dylan’s multiple left-lane leaps. Albums that risked misunderstanding in their moment but later revealed themselves as essential expressions of their creators.
As expected, the album art underscores the pivot. It’s a hand-painted tapestry where every song gets a visual echo — the park, the beret, the ladder, the swirling faces, the open-sky geography. And the purple is still present, just humbled. It sits in the margins, softened and subdued, no longer the dominant hue. After a year when purple chased Prince like a spotlight he couldn’t dim, he pushed it out of the center. Not erased, simply eased back. A signal that he wasn’t abandoning the crown; he was setting it aside to wander without its weight.
As for when to listen, Around the World in a Day works best when you’re ready to loosen your grip. Early morning, when the daylight is still deciding what kind of day it wants to become. Late night on your Old Fourth Ward porch works too, when the world quiets and the mind turns more porous. It’s a record that rewards soft focus — openness over effort, patience over precision.
Prince didn’t make this album to be understood. He made it to find himself again. And in doing so, he left behind a luminous little guidebook for the rest of us — a reminder that sometimes the truest way forward is to step sideways, breathe deeply and let a new road rise beneath your feet.
Megan’s favorite song on this album is “Paisley Park.” In the first moments of this standout track, Prince counts himself in with Springsteen-like confidence, hits runs like Whitney Houston and slips background vocals in with the ease and style of Michael Jackson.
There’s no mystery why Prince is at the top of the list when it comes to the legends of his league. In “Paisley Park”, Prince paints a colorful image of the unifying theme of love amidst all different walks of life and the moments that define us as human beings. It’s a diary entry written as if Prince did indeed travel around the world in a day and observed everything with new eyes. Someone is mourning deep in their grief while another is laughing — and that is exactly the way the world works. Prince speaks of Paisley Park as if it is reaching the state of Nirvana as he belts, “Admission is easy, just say you believe.”
The theme of self-acceptance and inner peace rings out through a swaying drum beat so giddy it could be the theme song of a Mr. Rogers episode — full of learning, life and moving through the motions that turn into memories.
Megan’s Favorite Ten New Albums for 2025:
- moisturizer (Wet Leg) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Holy Water (Hether) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Snipe Hunter (Tyler Childers) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Bleeds (Wednesday) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Getting Killed (Geese) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- If You Asked for a Picture (Blondshell) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- I Quit (Haim) Spotify | YouTube
- Man’s Best Friend (Sabrina Carpenter) Spotify | YouTube
- Baby (Dijon) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- PAPOTA (CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso) Spotify | YouTube
Wendell’s favorite song on the album is “Raspberry Beret.” And really, it’s hard to argue – some tracks just arrive fully formed, shimmering with a kind of effortless perfection that makes even seasoned listeners sit up straighter. Prince folds charm, color and melodic precision into every bar, reminding us that pop music can be both featherlight and finely engineered. “Raspberry Beret” is, in my view, the perfect pop song, an easy standout even among the other hook-laden beauties we’ve covered this year like “September Gurls,” “pokemon,” “I Will Dare,” “Cannonball,” “Ms. Jackson,” “Elderberry Wine,” “Train in Vain,” and “Everyday People.” It’s playful without triviality, ecstatic without excess and so naturally radiant that its influence still ripples through generations of artists trying to catch a little of that same breeze. If it hits you just right, don’t be surprised. That’s what perfect pop does.
Prince’s work can be found here and his music can be found on all streaming platforms and wherever records are sold. You are likely to find his songs played on SiriusXM Prince Channel (natch), 80’s on 8, The Groove and Silk. A deluxe 40th anniversary edition including the original album plus bonus material like B-sides, remixes, and extended versions was released last month.
Wendell’s Favorite Ten New Albums for 2025:
- Bleeds (Wednesday) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Phonetics On and On (Horsegirl) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Sad And Beautiful World (Mavis Staples) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- New Threats From the Soul (Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Twilight Override (Jeff Tweedy) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Sounds Like… (Florry) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Getting Killed (Geese) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Snocaps (Snocaps) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- Straight Line Was a Lie (The Beths) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
- All That Is Over (SPRINTS) Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
Comment your favorite albums/songs of 2025 below!
That’s a fantastic observation about Prince intentionally stepping away from the massive success of *Purple Rain*. I always found the immediate pivot to *Around the World in a Day* so jarring yet artistically brave. Did the author feel that album ultimately succeeded in finding that “deeper, stranger thread” he was looking for, or was it a necessary detour?
Actually, this author would argue that it did both things at once…it succeeded because it functioned as a detour. Prince absolutely found that deeper, stranger thread he was tugging at, but he didn’t weave it into a tidy tapestry just yet. Instead, he followed it into a room full of mirrors, colors, and questions, some clearer than others.
For me, what matters is that the album reset his instincts. It loosened his grip on arena-sized certainty and let some risk and curiosity back in. After all, he was only four years removed from *Controversy,* when a lot of his edge was still pretty raw, so the move he makes on *Around the World in a Day* feels deliberate in a quiet way. Without that psychedelic sidestep — and the decision not to chase Purple Rain all over again — there’s no straight line to *Sign o’ the Times*. So even if it doesn’t feel like a final stop, it’s far more than a detour. It’s Prince reminding himself how much he still liked wandering, and why that mattered. And he certainly had a lot of wandering left to do post *Sign*!