After skipping an entire calendar year working on Purple Rain, Prince got back on track with Around The World In A Day. It’s considered, famously, a psychedelic retreat from the big freaky tent of the previous record, and a lot of that is due to the one-two salvo of the jangly, joss-stick-studded title track and the achingly empathetic stroll of “Paisley Park.” Together, it’s Prince pulling his people to a heavenly enclave: specifically, the place where, as the prophecy held, Hey Man… Smell My Finger would be tracked. But mostly, the palette was condensed, not swirled around. His piano figures prominently, especially on the set pieces “Condition Of The Heart” and “Temptation.” Where his instinct might previously have led him to the ol’ six-iron, here he makes his dramatics the old-fashioned way, with talking and the space between. The latter begins as a sludgy blooz, but his repeated invocation of temptation gets you worrying. For good reason, it turns out: the throb subsides, the garish sax joins the keys, and God commands His subject to death for choosing sex over love.

Even the political stuff is more muted. “America” has the expected martial backbeat, but it’s more of an in-the-pocket funk jam than a lacerating statement. (It’s got a tasty, high-pitched guitar figure, though.) “The Ladder” aims for universal allegory but ends up as a soul-roots casualty, puffed with the empty air of pop saxophone and the rote backing vocals, which make one long for the disconcerting flatness of Wendy and Lisa’s dialogue on “Computer Blue.” Elsewhere, though, his veer towards the basics pays off. “Tambourine” is a dry, percussion-heavy workout — it’s practically a tone poem. He was too smart to make “Pop Life” a standard fame lament, instead stringing it up on fusion chords, shooting it through with meandering synthwind, and spending most of his time sympathizing with the struggling.

The record’s pop claim comes, of course, from “Raspberry Beret,” the man’s peak as a classical songwriter, rendering a wrong-side-of-the-tracks story with economy and wry humor. The aching string arrangement puts this over the top, but the whole cut’s riddled with finely realized lyrical details; musically, his best choice might have been to let his backing singers send the chorus home. It’s just one more perfect single from Prince Nelson. He relegated another one to b-side status: “She’s Always In My Hair,” a blown-out funk-pop number that switches from dread to infatuation and back again. Twelve years later, for the Scream 2 soundtrack, D’Angelo would boost the guitars and cut possibly the finest nu-rock song of the decade.