Parade (1986)
One of the catchiest songs about scrambled eggs, second only to the theme tune from Frasier. Life Can Be So Nice is a humanist anthem, like What a Wonderful World, but with a message that’s hard not to take as an AM equivalent to Afternoon Delight. It comes crashing into this world with squealing flutes, makes a lot of reverbed noise, then abruptly finishes mid-sentence. If that’s not a tribute to the brevity and wonder of life then I’m Louis Armstrong.
For the past 30 years I’ve kept this song, along with “Synchronicity II”, on the short list of threnodies over dystopian chaos that you could dance to in wild, jerky way. Actually it’s a long list—all of Punk is basically railing against the way things are in this thing called Life. The shared usage of breakfast foods as, I thought, a trope of soulless anomie, along with the frenetic rhythm, had convinced me that Prince was here indulging in a rare case of the humbugs. You casually tossing in “Afternoon Delight” (which, as I see on YouTube, some thought for years was about the joys of a good picnic) tilts the scales radically towards Life (and procreation) and away from Bleak Rejection thereof. How far astray can a misinterpreted fragment of a lyric send us! Venus de Milo, then, is the post-coital cigarette trope? It’s all beginning to make sense now. Thanks, not-Louis!