Dirty Mind (1980)
1. Dirty Mind
2. When You Were Mine
3. Do It All Night
4. Gotta Broken Heart Again
5. Uptown
6. Head
7. Sister
8. Partyup
Had Prince decided to stick with the slick, polished soul of his first two records, there’s every reason to believe he could have fine-tuned that formula into something close to perfect. But instead of inching forward, he pivoted hard, took a wild left turn, and still landed squarely in masterpiece territory. Dirty Mind is raw, relentless, and unapologetically bold. It’s funk, stripped down to the bone and jacked up with a punkish edge. And it hits like a punch to the chest.
The opening one-two punch—Dirty Mind followed by When You Were Mine—is almost unfair. The title track sets the tone immediately with a spartan groove that somehow manages to sound both filthy and futuristic, while the latter is one of Prince’s most deceptively sweet melodies, paired with lyrics that turn the whole thing on its head. If those were the only two good songs here (they’re not), you’d still be tempted to call the whole record essential.
There’s no filler. Every track counts. The only real knock you could make is that the whole thing barely crosses the thirty-minute mark. But in this case, brevity works in its favor. It’s all over before you want it to be—which only makes you hit “play” again. And anyway, this was the beginning of Prince’s stretch of near-constant output. Short album? Sure. Short on ideas? Not a chance.
In many ways, this album helped write the blueprint for what the 1980s would become. Not just for funk or R&B, but for pop music in general. It sounds like a warning shot for the decade to come—a reminder that music didn’t have to be overproduced or sanitized to be brilliant. Not everything here is razor sharp—Do It All Night doesn’t quite pack the punch of its neighbors—but the overall effect is undeniable.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of the lyrics. This was the moment when Prince stopped flirting with taboo and went full throttle. Head, Sister, Do It All Night—songs that didn’t just push the envelope, they set it on fire. Sex, control, liberation, perversion—it’s all here, front and center. By the time he was finished, you could practically hear the future Parental Advisory sticker printing itself.
Dirty Mind marks the beginning of Prince’s golden age—the start of a run that would dominate the next ten years. It’s fearless, unfiltered, and utterly addictive. There are plenty of great albums in Prince’s catalog. This one might be the most dangerous.
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