Prince: The Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon

The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his music. Best known for his racial ambiguity and extravagant sexual persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince' the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed, interdisciplinary analysis is the first to critically examine Prince's popular music, with its accompanying plethora of visual material such as album covers, posters, promotional videos and feature films. Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.The authors examine Prince's subjectivity - through his sounds, his lyrics, his fashions, his performances and his overall identity as a contradiction in terms. How does a 5ft 2ins African American male from inauspicious origins in Minneapolis come to represent the epitome of musical virtuosity and male sexuality? He has achieved this global superstar status despite an uninhibited media backlash, especially in Britain, a much-publicized feud with the world-dominating media corporation Warner Brothers and despite the ebbs and flows of cultural taste. Only a few books have attempted to chart his biography. But none have so far provided a thorough critical analysis of the Prince phenomenon. The authors not only illuminate a rich array of insights into the making of this enigmatic superstar - much of which seems of go against the grain of popular music convention - but also extend some of the current debates in the study of popular music that have to do with subjectivity, gender and male complicity.