Sheila E. on the drums, and a question aimed at the nose
Pop Life was the first song recorded for Around the World in a Day. On 19 February 1984 Prince started it at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, Studio 2, after finishing overdubs on Another Lonely Christmas. The session ran until about 6:15 the next morning. Susan Rogers and Peggy McCreary engineered. Band overdubs, strings included, went down later the same day. The album, credited to Prince and the Revolution, came out on 22 April 1985 on Paisley Park and Warner Bros. Pop Life is track seven.
Sheila E. played drums. Brown Mark played bass and sang. Wendy Melvoin played guitar and sang. Lisa Coleman played keyboards and sang. Dr. Fink played keyboards. Jonathan Melvoin added tambourine. Prince sang the lead and played piano and an Oberheim. The single followed in the US on 10 July 1985, with Hello on the B-side, a non-album reply to the rock press. It peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week of 21 September 1985, his eighth top ten in a two-year span, and spent 14 weeks on that chart. It also reached number 8 on the Hot Black Singles chart. Britain received it on 14 October. It reached number 60 and lasted two weeks.
The lyric is a lecture, and it does not wink. “What you putting in your nose? Is that where all your money goes?” Rogers later told Uncut the song was aimed at self-pity, at the idea that drugs were a reasonable answer to pain. At that point in his life, she said, he had no sympathy for it. The psychedelic sleeve of Around the World in a Day had been read as a retreat from Purple Rain. Pop Life was the track on the album that still behaved like a crossover single.
It was a bright, sharp, funky elbow in the ribs to anybody who regarded their cup as being half empty. He really despised self-pity.
(Susan Rogers, Uncut)
The 12-inch split by country. On 22 and 23 June 1985, Sheila E. mixed a Fresh Dance Mix at Sunset Sound, 6 minutes and 16 seconds, for the US and Europe. She also added vocals that stayed uncredited. The UK, Australia and New Zealand got Prince’s own extended version, 9 minutes and 7 seconds, instead of her remix. The clip that carries the song on his official channel is an animated video, not a stage performance from the Revolution tour. The hit did the public work. The picture did not.
In 1993 he placed Pop Life second on The Hits 1. The overnight session at Sunset Sound is still the recording that counts: Sheila E. on the drums, a line about cocaine that names the habit without a metaphor, and a number 7 that showed the morning after Purple Rain could still cross over. The psychedelic album had its lecture, and the lecture had a chart position.
