Dirty Mind earned widespread acclaim from music critics. According to the writer Simon Reynolds, the album's "rave reception [...] saw rock critics anointing [Prince] as the genre-crossing, gender-bending, races-uniting saviour of modern music". Reynolds quotes Barney Hoskyns, who in his New Musical Express review of Dirty Mind described it as "the glam-funk Let's Get It On."

Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone wrote that the album finds Prince shifting from the "doe-eyed romantic" of his first two records to a "liberating lewdness" which "jolts with the unsettling tension that arises from rubbing complex erotic wordplay against clean, simple melodies", all along an "electric surface". Tucker remarked on how Prince casually delivers lyrics with a "graceful quaver" and "exhilarating breathlessness", combining "the sweet romanticism of Smokey Robinson" and "the powerful vulgate poetry of Richard Pryor". He concluded that the album was "cool music dealing with hot emotions", and, "at its best [...] positively filthy".

Retrospective appraisals have also been positive. In The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records (1983), Trouser Press writer Jim Green stated, "If the ultra sex obsession doesn't put you off, Dirty Minds catchy tunes, sly lyrics, and strong production, and Prince's trademark falsetto make for a winning combination." Erlewine described the album as a "stunning, audacious amalgam of funk, new wave, R&B, and pop, fueled by grinningly salacious sex and the desire to shock". while Keith Harris of Blender credited it for setting "confessions of a sex junkie" to the sounds of "new-wave funk". Erlewine credited the album's explicit themes, including oral sex, threesomes and ejaculation, for opening the doors for sexually explicit albums in the following years. while Slant Magazine ranked it 53rd on a similar list. In 2013, NME ranked it number 393 in its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone has ranked it number 326 among the magazine's 500 greatest albums of all time (published in 2020) and 18th among albums from the 1980s. as well as Benoît Clerc and Jon Regen.

Musicians

  • Prince – lead vocals, backing vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums , Yamaha CP-70 electric grand piano , Oberheim OB-X , ARP Omni , clavinet , Polymoog , tambourine , claps
  • Doctor Fink – Oberheim OB-X , ARP Omni
  • Lisa Coleman – spoken vocals

Production

  • Prince – producer, engineer (credited as Jamie Starr), mixing
  • Don Batts – engineer
  • Mick Guzauski – mixing
  • Bob Mockler – mixing (3, 6)
  • Ron Garrett – mixing assistant
  • Bernie Grundman – mastering

Technical

  • Allen Beaulieu – photography

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+1980 weekly chart performance for Dirty Mind

! scope="col"| Chart (1980)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+2016 weekly chart performance for Dirty Mind

! scope="col"| Chart (2016)

! scope="col"| Peak<br /> position

|-

|-

|-

|-

|}

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+Year-end chart performance for Dirty Mind

! scope="col"| Chart (1981)

! scope="col"| Position

|-

! scope="row"| US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard)

| 30

|}

Singles

  • "Uptown" (US) (No. 101, US; No. 5, US R&B; No. 5, US Dance)
  • "Dirty Mind" (US) (No. 65, US R&B)
  • "Do It All Night" (UK)

Certifications

References

Footnotes

Citations

Bibliography