Track 2: Soft and Wet
Prince, For You

While still in high school, Prince brought his band into a local, eight-track production studio with hopes of cutting a record demo. The owner of the studio, an entrepreneurial British transplant named Christopher Moon, took notice of Prince’s standout skills and pulled him aside with ideas for a partnership. They hatched a deal that gave Prince unlimited access to the rudimentary production setup in return for shared profits on any outcomes. The opportunity meant walking away from his band, and the star-struck teen didn’t look back. Prince spent most of his 18th year practically living in the studio. Holing up alone in the small facility, he often stayed there for entire weekends, catching some brief …show more content…
Driven to do it all himself, he spent exhaustive time in the studio—12 to 14 hours a day—recording and re-recording every instrumental and vocal track. He rabidly embraced the new synthesizer technologies that were available to him and used them to invent a new sound that would be uniquely identifiable as his own. He multi-tracked the synths into full ensemble sounds and used them to create rhythmic accents almost like horns. As it turned out, the keyboard textures he instituted on this first record set the tune for much of pop music in the ‘80s, a style that became known as “the Minneapolis …show more content…
The lead single was Chris Moon’s lyrical brainchild, “Soft and Wet,” and it hit the radio waves on June 7, 1978 – Prince’s 20th birthday. True to its design, the suggestive title caught the wary but titillated eye of deejays and helped to advance the single to #12 on the Soul chart. Beyond that fleeting notice, however, Prince’s first album didn’t see much success. Nonetheless, critics and industry watchers remained upbeat. Although much of the songcraft was uninspiring, it showcased the prodigy’s amazing capabilities. By multi-tracking his own vocals on the album’s intro, he created an almost classical chorale. At the record’s close, he tore up some heavy electric guitar. In between, he shuffled across a bridge of pop, soul, rock and disco. After all was said and done, he was still one of the most exciting events in modern pop history: a 20-year-old prodigy with a one-word name (his real name!) who wrote all his own music and sang, played and produced every note himself on his first LP. It was an uncommon achievement at the