Confession: I was never that big of a Prince fan at his peak of popularity in the ‘80s. I watched MTV incessantly, so I had plenty of exposure to most of his big hits. But I was a repressed small-town midwestern Protestant white kid. I thought it was cool when I learned he was from Minneapolis, but I didn’t see that connection as an opportunity to liberate myself from my fear of everything; I was still freaked out by his uninhibited, guiltless sexuality. That’s probably the biggest reason I didn’t pay very much attention to him, if I’m honest with myself about who I was as a 10-year-old.
But even though I didn’t consider myself a fan, and never owned any of his music until I was much (much) older, I still heard his music all the time. Because once MTV realized it was not only OK but necessary for them to play black artists, Prince was on there a lot. Videos like “1999” and “When Doves Cry” are burned into my memory. And honestly, even if I was a little sheepish about it, I liked them. As time went on, my appreciation grew. And so, as my small tribute to the Artist whose music touched so many people, here’s my list of 5 Prince songs. Not necessarily my “top 5” Prince songs, but 5 that have made a big impression on me, in the order that they did.
“1999” from 1999 (1982)
This song was my introduction to Prince. It was probably 1983 when I first saw it, so I would have been 9. I was fascinated by this song and the video. As a kid, I was always interested in the future. I wanted to get there, fast, whether it was a paradise or (as this song suggested) something more ominous. I’ve never paid as much attention to lyrics as to music, but the lyrics of this song definitely got my attention even back then. It was my first exposure to the idea of an apocalypse. And it made a huge impression on me that Prince would sing about confidently, defiantly celebrating in the face of doom. The other thing that impressed me about the video was that it showed Prince’s band performing, and he had women in the band. The music industry is still far too male-dominated today, but back then I didn’t even think to question things like that. So to see a band with both men and women, playing music together, struck me as something unique.
“When Doves Cry” from Purple Rain (1984)
Whoa. This video. The Rorschach-like mirror image effect had me transfixed from the first moment I saw it, but what really struck me was the sound of this song. It was sparse and futuristic and weird. I’d never heard anything like it, and probably still haven’t. As a kid, this was definitely my favorite Prince song. And it was made even better for me as a nerdy college student in the early ‘90s when it was referenced in a Simpsons episode where Milhouse meets his Shelbyville doppelganger.
[Much time passes…]
“Let’s Work” from Controversy (1981)
I spent most of my adult life not really thinking all that much about Prince. As I became more of an accomplished musician myself, my appreciation of his immense skills grew considerably, but I still was not really that engaged with his music. Then, one day in 2010 I was listening to The Current on the radio, and this incredibly funky song came on. I wasn’t really familiar with any of Prince’s pre-1999 work, so I had no idea what it was but I thought, “Oh, that sounds like Prince. I wonder if this is something new.” (Yeah, I’m not proud of that… but I do think it shows how we’ve come full circle that the dry, immediate sound of Prince’s early ‘80s recordings sounds contemporary again today.) I fired up Soundhound on my iPhone to identify the track, and before the song had even finished playing, I’d purchased and downloaded the entire Controversy album. Thus began my exploration of Prince’s early work. I bought all of his first four albums and listened to them — especially Dirty Mind and Controversy — incessantly for the next several weeks. Finally, at the age of 36, I really “got it”. Prince was a visionary genius, virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, and all-around legend. And he was from Minneapolis and stayed here.
“Uptown” from Dirty Mind (1980)
As I delved into the early work of Prince following my “Let’s Work” epiphany, I realized that Dirty Mind was really the album that defined Prince, the Minneapolis sound, 1980s pop music, everything. “Uptown” quickly became one of my favorite tracks on the album. I loved the upbeat funk groove, and the fact that it was a song about a neighborhood I used to live in. In 2011 I decided to record an album as a tribute to Minneapolis, the city where I was born and have spent most of my adult life. I had to include a song about Uptown, and I took inspiration from this Prince track.
“When You Were Mine” from Dirty Mind (1980)
The more I’ve listened to Dirty Mind (which has become my favorite Prince album), the more I’ve grown to love this song. It’s really kind of a weird song. It’s very poppy, with catchy hooks, but it is driven by strummed chords on an electric bass. And the lyrics seem, at first, like a typical pop song about a lost love, but as you listen closely you realize there’s a bizarre undercurrent to the story they tell that can only come from Prince.
I never was the kind to make a fuss
When he was there
Sleeping in between the two of us
Wait, what?
I figured my appreciation of this song was a bit unusual; it wasn’t a single, it was from before he really hit big. But in the days following his death, I discovered on Twitter that a lot of his fans cite it as their favorite Prince song. To me, it kind of symbolizes what Prince was all about: showing us that we’re all a little weird, that’s OK, and we’re not alone.
I’ve always been into electronic gadgets. I’ve also always been into carrying a bunch of crap that I “need” (or perceive that I need) around with me. My dream since I was a kid was always to be able to carry “everything” with me at once, in a convenient way.
In the mid-’80s, the Sony Walkman was the symbol of portable technology. As CDs overtook the popularity of cassettes in the ’90s, and Sony finally figured out how to make a portable CD player that didn’t skip if you so much as breathed on it, the Walkman was gradually replaced by the Discman.
As cool as the Walkman was, you couldn’t actually record with it (at least with most models). You could always lug a 
When I went into writing this post, I really hoped to at least give 1986 the original Game Boy, but my research says it wasn’t actually released until 1989. I never had one, so I didn’t remember. Yes, it’s true… if you wanted a handheld video game device in 1986, the best you could do was one of Nintendo’s single-game “Game & Watch” devices. As rudimentary as they seem today, their design was a clear inspiration for Nintendo’s current line of DS portable game devices.
Calculator watches were so cool (at least, if you weren’t) in the ’80s, it’s hard to believe they would ever fade into laughable irrelevance. They were pretty impressive technology for the time though, and were irresistibly futuristic. It’s no wonder Marty McFly conspicuously sported one on his journey back to 1955… it bolstered his “future boy” cred in a way no nylon vest ever could.
If you were too cool for a nerdy calculator watch back in the ’80s, your only option when traveling was to purchase a dedicated travel alarm clock. Some of these were pretty well-designed, but such a single-purpose device is anathema today. Besides, I’m sure the sight of one of these in a carry-on would raise a TSA eyebrow or two.
Pocket calendars have come in countless variations for almost as long as printing has existed, some more useful than others. Wallet card calendars like the one shown here are about as useless as they get, but that didn’t stop me from having at least one of them in my wallet at all times as a 12-year-old… especially since I didn’t have any money to put in it.
I admit, I’ve never really had much use for a compass. I don’t spend a lot of time out in the wilderness, and I think a compass would only confuse my natural sense of direction in the city. But I recognize the importance of these devices, and thanks to the iPhone’s various internal sensors, all of the capabilities of a real magnetic compass can now live in software.
Ah, the trusty Mead memo book. My dad wrote a thousand grocery lists in these while I was growing up, and the little bits of paper that tore off the spiral binding over repeated openings and closings were everywhere. These days there are 
Sure, there were plenty of pocketable point-and-shoot cameras back in the ’80s, and of course the venerable Polaroid instant camera was still going strong. But no camera — truly, no device of any kind — epitomizes pointless ’80s novelty technology better than the Minolta Talker. I wasn’t able to verify that the Talker existed in 1986 — I think more likely it dates to 1987 or 1988 — but we had one, and I’ll never forget such helpful photographic advice as “Load film” or the classic “Too dark… use flash.”
Ah yes, the JVC VideoMovie. That distinctive red and black camcorder, immortalized by my hero Marty McFly. We owned one of these. It was the stuff of legend. It also, despite its considerable size, used the bizarre VHS-C format tapes. These were about 1/3 the physical size of a regular VHS cassette, but the tape itself was the same width and was compatible with regular VHS VCRs… with the help of a VHS tape-sized adapter that the VHS-C tapes would snap into. Unfortunately, since the cassettes were so small, they only had enough room to hold 20 minutes’ worth of tape. I hope Doc packed a couple of cases of blanks along with his plutonium.
When you look at early cell phones, it’s a wonder the devices ever caught on. Of course, they didn’t really catch on when they were the size of a small refrigerator and emitted enough radiation to make your head glow in the dark. But the fact is, you could own a cell phone back in 1986 and, well, that’s saying a lot right there, isn’t it?
I recently watched the classic 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger, and was amused by the GPS-like device Bond had in his car. (GPS was just becoming available to civilians in the ’80s, and it looked like 
No industry is reeling from the iPhone (and the iPad) the way publishing is. Newspapers, magazines, books… publishers of all kinds are trying to discover viable business models in the world of paperless publishing. (And here I thought we’d already worked all of this stuff out with the web over the past 15 years.)
Yes… a portable LCD TV in the mid-’80s. Don’t believe it? I had one of these, exactly as shown. It had a 2-inch black-and-white screen. And, strangely, the screen was in the top of that flip-up lid. The bottom part had a mirror, which was what you looked at to view your program. Why? Well… backlight technology was feeble and battery-sucking. The lid was translucent, and if you were in a bright enough environment, the ambient light would shine through, illuminating the screen. There was also a bulky snap-on backlight attachment for use in dimmer surroundings, but if this was in one of your pockets, the rest of them better be filled with AAA batteries or you wouldn’t be watching much.
OK, OK. This flashlight is from the 1960s. But my grandparents had one exactly like this when I was a kid in the ’80s. The big black thing on the side had magnets in it, allowing it to stick to the side of the refrigerator, which is where they always kept it.
It’s a bit of a stretch to call the iPhone a portable computer, at least when compared to 
