The Culture Corner: Revisiting Prince’s ‘Around the World in a Day’

In 1985, Prince was at the peak of his powers. He’d just won two Grammy Awards and an Oscar for his chart-topping album, Purple Rain.

Then he released the psychedelic Around the World in a Day, an album that World Cafe correspondent John Morrison says was a left turn.

“Around the World in a Day proved that Prince was an artist that couldn’t be tamed by success or the music business or even fans’ expectations,” Morrison says. “He was always gonna do what he wanted to do and go his own way.”

In this episode, Morrison talks about some of the ways Prince defied those expectations, the influences he was drawing on, and he tells the story behind “Raspberry Beret.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.