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May 20, 2026
Glyn Britton crushes on "Parade" by Prince
Glyn Britton crushes on "Parade" by Prince
00:00
24:22
Transcript
0:00
I know now what it's kinda invoking is, you know, driving down the French Riviera in an open top car with all the, the life and vivacity going on around you, and it, and it perfectly evokes that.
0:15
[gentle music] Hi, and welcome to Creative Crush, an opportunity for CMOs to step from behind the brand and talk about the creative work that they keep coming back to.
0:28
Today we're c- talking about an absolute classic album, one from my youth that I keep going back to again and again. So I'm so pleased today's guest chose it.
0:39
Glyn, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us what your creative crush is? Yeah. Hi, uh, I'm Glyn Brittain.
0:46
I'm currently CMO at SQE, uh, which is a modern energy supplier for very large, uh, industrial and commercial businesses. Uh, and my creative crush is the album Parade by Prince. [upbeat music] I hate rock 'n' roll.
1:03
All right. Enough of that tame shit. Who wants some hits? We're gonna obviously dive very, very, very deep into this album over the next 30 minutes.
1:17
But before we do, can you just give me in one sentence or two why this is your creative crush? I, um,
1:27
I mean, I think I first heard it in 1989, about three years after it came out, when I was, uh, what would I have been? 16 years old. Um, and it just grabbed me in a way that nothing ever had until that point.
1:44
Um, but quite unusually, you know, 40 years on, it still grabs me in the same way today, whereas other stuff from the era has, has waned.
1:54
Uh, but this, I just find it just as, uh, refreshing and invigorating every time I listen to it, and I must have listened to it thousands of times over that last, uh, 40 years, and it, I just...
2:04
It never loses its magic for me. So can you, so can you take me back to that moment in 1989 when you first heard it? First of all, who introduced you to it? How did you stumble across it?
2:16
So I was, I was growing up in a village called Finningley, which is about seven miles outside Doncaster, and life was very gray and standard. Uh, and what I...
2:26
You know, it's hard for younger people, my daughters to, to realize how hard it was to just kind of come across stuff then outside of the kind of ev- every day.
2:35
So I knew about chart pop, and I knew about Doncaster indie rock, uh, bands like Cud and The Wedding Present. Um, and, and that was my, and that was my life.
2:46
And then a friend of mine, Melissa, gave me the cassette of Parade. She'd borrowed it from her older brother, who was a very sophisticated, um, guy, and she said, "You've got to listen to this."
2:58
And within the first 23 seconds of the first track, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. It opened, opened my mind to the fact there was a whole world out there. I di- I didn't know what I was hearing.
3:13
I still don't actually, really. It's got so many bits and bobs in it that add up to something entirely, um, different.
3:22
Um, I can make a bit more sense of it these days, but back then when I was 16, I had no idea what I was listening to. But it just, it just hit me hard immediately.
3:31
You made reference to the opening, the, the very first track, and it is kind of quite a wild opening really. It's quite hard to pin down what it is. Yeah, I mean, what's going, what's going on there?
3:41
It's, it's just 23 seconds of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Uh, but it's got this amazing discordant orchestration, uh, in there. It's got a bit of steel drum in there.
3:53
Uh, and it just, uh, you know, it sounds like a, a carnival.
3:57
I, I know now what it's kinda invoking is, you know, driving down the French Riviera in an open top car with all the, the life and vivacity going on around you, and it, and it perfectly evokes that.
4:09
At the time, I didn't know what the French Riviera was or what it looked like or what it felt like, but a- but again, the track just brings it to life s- so, so, uh, viscerally.
4:19
Uh, and I just thought what, "What on earth is going on here?" Um, but I wanted to, wanted to know [laughs] I wanted to know more about what was going on here. Yeah. And so
4:29
there's, there's something about that discord of that, if I remember, we'll, we'll pick back up on it in a bit. But, um, the...
4:37
I was talking to Chris, our producer, yesterday, the day before about we were both different ages when we both discovered Prince, but there was something about him crossing over so many genres that made him really appealing to people who like guitar music because he was one part Jimi Hendrix, one part Rick James, one part James Brown, one part...
4:57
He was all these incredible artists, and there's just something about that tapestry of, of music that made him really appealing to, to everyone. I was a DJ at the time.
5:06
I was playing like Cud, Wedding Present, Smiths, but I didn't have a problem dropping Prince in on any night whatsoever.
5:13
So yeah, there's some- Well, exactly, and, you know, so some of his earlier stuff was quite, quite new wave influenced as well, kind of...
5:20
He's probably set the template for a couple of eras in the '80s 'cause his, you know, his, his early stuff on Dirty Mind and Controversy was, was really sparse, synth driv- driven.
5:31
He's a pioneer of the LinnDrum drum machine. So that kept... Set a template, and then going through 1999 into Purple Rain, he's go- he's kind of taking on mainstream America, uh, with a more rock sound.
5:43
But as you say, he's, you know, he's channeling Jimi Hendrix, bit of Springsteen in there and, and, and, you know, that's what made him an absolute mega star. But then what, what he does is throw that away on purpose.
5:55
You know, he destroys that 'cause he's bored of it. He does Around the World in a Day, which is basically a psychedelic album.
6:01
Um, but then Parade for me is where he-Uh, he put, he put so many new bits into his, into his palette. You know, it's, it's got that k- it's got, it's got... It's quite funky. It's got soul elements.
6:16
Uh, it's got this kinda, yeah, French jazz chanson-type vibe in there. Um, it's got this kind of discordant, uh, orchestral Debussy-type stuff going on in there. I mean, just amazing.
6:29
This is a 27-year-old kid still from Minneapolis. How, how does he even do this? Where, where does he get all this stuff from? It's just mind-blowing. Do you have a favorite track on the album, by the way? Yeah.
6:41
Mountains. Okay.
6:44
My, uh, this is, this is my, uh, one of my most treasured possessions is my, uh, 10-inch picture disc of Mountains, the extended version, backed with Alexa de Paris extended version, which is my favorite Prince B side.
6:58
What is it about Mountains that you love so much? Why that track? I don't know. [laughs] Honestly, it's, um, it's, uh, it's big, it's celebratory, it's idealistic. It's a little bit silly.
7:13
It's got some kind of cod mystic lyrics going on. R- rationally, it doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny, but emotionally, it just, it, it just lifts me every time. It's absolutely amazing. I, I love Mountains.
7:30
Uh, I love Another Love or A Hole in the Head as well. I think the reason why that always stands out is there's just something about, uh, the title first of all, and the way he sings it. Yeah.
7:40
I remember it catching my attention, his wordplay and all that. It just... Yeah. I think it's great.
7:46
And obviously for, for anyone who's not familiar with the album, the biggest track on the album or the biggest hit off the album, uh, was Kiss. Yeah, Kiss, which still fills wedding dance floors today e- every time.
7:58
It's a, it's a surefire dance floor filler. I, I like Kiss, but, but for me it doesn't quite fit on Parade. It's kind of o- of the era, but it's, it's, it's doing a different job.
8:10
You know, it's really, it's really stripped back, minimal. It's quite hard. In a way, it's kinda quite, it's quite cynical. It hasn't got the dreaminess of lots of the other tracks, uh, o- on Parade.
8:22
Basically, Kiss was a demo that Prince made. He only did one verse, the, the very first verse, and it was just on an acoustic guitar, and he played it and he wasn't feeling it.
8:33
Uh, so he gave it to another band who was on his Paisley Park label at the time. Said, "Yeah, I'm not feeling this, but maybe yous can do something with it."
8:40
So he gave it to them and they did a full version of it, and then they, you know, he had a listen to it and he was like, "Oh, yeah, I think I'm gonna take this back." So he took it back, uh, and he pretty much kept it.
8:53
The only thing he did was remove their bassline. He took their bassline. But everything was there. Everything that they created was in, pretty much in the version that got released.
9:03
All the harmonies, the guitar solo, all the stops, which are kind of quite fundamental. Mm. So effectively, they kind of produced that track and wrote a big chunk of that, that track.
9:15
But it's interesting that he took the bass away because there's no bass in When Doves Cry as well, which is a really unusual thing to do to, to remove the bass.
9:25
So it's got a starkness, which a- as you say, kinda feels out of place with the lushness and the fullness of some of the other tracks on, on that album. Yeah. No, absolutely.
9:36
Uh, uh, one, one thing he did add when he took the track back from Maserati, that was the other band, was the, um, the falsetto. Their, their, their version has the, the, uh, singing in the normal register.
9:46
Uh, and, and you could argue that's a, you know, that's their little spark of genius that again takes it to another level. But it's a really, a really interesting kind of, uh, collaboration. Slightly autocratic one.
9:57
Gonna give them a track and then I'm gonna take it back when I realize how good it is, but, uh... Well, from what I understand, he wasn't an easy person to work with sometimes. No, I don't think [laughs]...
10:06
I don't think he was. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was kind of for... There's quite a few reasons why he wasn't an easy person to work with.
10:15
First of all, because he had his vision and obviously, you know, he wanted to, uh, he wanted things to be done his way. So that made it really difficult.
10:23
He had a strange relationship because he had a band that wasn't his band in a strange way. They kind of felt like session musicians a lot of the time. So that must've been quite, quite difficult to deal with.
10:33
And also, I don't think he was probably a great communicator with the band.
10:37
I saw an interview with The Revolution where they were literally on stage and Prince introduced some other band members to come on stage and they were like, "Wait a minute. What's going on here?"
10:47
And this was, you know, this was just before he actually broke The Revolution up.
10:51
Yeah, this is at the end of the Parade tour, uh, when he was doing that, and Wendy and Lisa looked at each other and said, "We are, we are fucked." That, that's how it, that, that's how he gave them their P45, you know.
11:03
Uh, also he was like i- incredibly hard worker. Never slept.
11:08
Uh, you know, they would, uh, you know, on a, on a show day, there'd be, uh, you know, th- they would punishing three-hour show and then go and do an after party at a club starting at 1:00 in the morning till 3:00 in the morning.
11:21
Then he would go back to the hotel and listen to tapes of that li- ni- night's show so he could bollock the band members the next day about what they did wrong, and then he'd spend the, when they're in his bed in the morning, he's composing his next album or two or three albums worth of material.
11:35
I mean, the guy just never slept, worked constantly, and it was really hard for people to keep pace with that. His, um, his kinda main, uh, producer, engineer, Susan Rogers, you know, she, he just wore her out.
11:48
He had to, he had to have, uh, producers on rotation, backup ones he could call, 'cause if she was just exhausted, he'd need somebody else so he could keep going, keep recording.
11:57
Yeah, he di- he doesn't do, he di- he didn't do many interviews, but there's some really great interviews with Susan Rogers out there that gives you fantastic insight.
12:05
If you're obsessed with craft and that sort of thing, just dig out some of the Susan Rogers interviews because-Yeah, it's really fascinating.
12:13
And just on that, that work ethic that you mentioned, um, [smacks lips] for a little bit of context, Around the World in a Day came out at the end of '84, so almost '85.
12:24
Uh, and he had a relative gap of about 13, 14 months before, um, [smacks lips] before Parade came out. And then so that was '86, and then '87, double album, Sign o' the Times. '88, Lovesexse. '89, Batman.
12:41
Diamonds and Pearls, year after. So every year he was kind of pushing out album after album after album, hit after hit after hit. So, you know, incredibly prolific run. Yeah.
12:53
But also in the, in the Parade era, not only is he working on Parade, he's finishing the Jill Jones album, he's producing the Maserati album, The Family album. Uh, s- he's making the film Under the Cherry Moon.
13:06
Uh, and actually what became Sign o' the Times was or- originally meant to be a triple album, not a double album, called Crystal Ball, so he's generating tracks for that as well. Just incredibly prolific.
13:17
Um, there was a Roadhouse Garden album as well. It was meant to be the Revolution album that got started in that, in that era as well.
13:24
So in that 18, an 18-month gap, he's, he's making seven albums, basically, although only some of that sees the light of day. So just going back to Under the Cherry Moon. Parade is kind of...
13:36
It's the soundtrack to Under the Cherry Moon. Um, were you a fan of the film? No, it's a stinker. [laughs] I, um, I watch it every time I'm home ill.
13:49
If I'm really feverish, I watch Under the Cherry Moon and it's, it's ba- basically the only, um, condition in which I can watch it and it makes any kind of sense. It's, uh...
13:58
from, from a plot and a character point of view, it's, it's pretty awful, but it, but it's got a, it's got a vibe. Um- It's got a vibe.
14:06
Um, interestingly, after Prince died, there was lots of, um, revisiting it and suggesting that it was actually a cult classic and it was much better than it got credit for.
14:18
So I watched it again and, oh, it, you know, it's terrible. It's, it's a real, real stinker. I tried to... You know, I hoped there was something there that was gonna be discoverable. Unfortunately, I couldn't.
14:31
So that's- No, I'm afraid not.
14:35
Uh, it's a, it's a pity really that, that Parade is the soundtrack album to, uh, Under the Cherry Moon, uh, because if you try to relate it too hard to the plot of the film, it, it somehow diminishes the, uh, the tracks.
14:48
I, I prefer, I prefer to de- decouple them and, you know, appraise it as its own work of art. [gentle music] Has your love of it changed, uh, depending on the context in which you've been listening?
14:58
So obviously you discover an album at that age, which is such an incredibly important age to, to discover music. I don't think music can ever feel quite as important as it does then.
15:08
But has your love of it changed in, in any way through the different eras that you've gone through, through, you know, might be from listening on vinyl to digital, through, you know, pre his death, post his death?
15:20
Has it changed in any way at all? It's interesting. I, I don't think it has. And that, and that's not true of other albums. So whether I listen, you know, I listened to it first on cassette and then vinyl and then CD.
15:32
I prob- probably had a mini disc copy then streaming. Um, I think it has the same impact for me regardless of what format I'm listening to it in. And that's not, as I say, that's not true of everything.
15:43
I, I really love Ommadawn by Mike Oldfield, but that is entirely different if you're listening to it on vinyl on a big stereo setup than it is on, uh, AirPods or, or something like that.
15:53
But Parade, for me, uh, is, is bigger than any of those format shifts. As I say, the, the, the change in context has been, um,
16:04
me understanding more about the world and obviously reading a lot about Prince and what he was trying to do with it. So some of the,
16:12
some of the lyrics and some of the, uh, some of the m- musical references now make sense to me, whereas before they just made me feel a bit, a bit funny, a bit woozy.
16:21
Uh, and, and now understand a little bit more about, about why, but that hasn't diminished the magic of it, um, for me. Um, I, I, I kind of think it's, um, it's more akin to a novel for me, I think.
16:35
You know, like a, a great novel relies on the reader to build the world in their, in their head. Um, and Parade is like that for me.
16:43
I, I don't think I'm appraising it on the level, you know, objective level of the music. It's just, it's come to mean a lot more for me.
16:50
And, uh, from, from those first few drum beats, I kind of, I load that world back up, up into my head every time I'm listening to it, uh, regardless of the format. [gentle music] Have you ever seen Prince live? I have.
17:04
I was lucky enough to do that. I, I saw, um, the Nude tour in 1990. Uh, and then when he did the residency at the O2 in, was that 2006? I went to three of the stadium shows and one of the after shows in the, uh, Indigo.
17:21
Um, so that was, uh, pretty amazing. I wish... I, I really wish I'd gone to see the Lovesexy tour in 1989. Uh, I absolutely love watching that on, uh, my bootleg DVD. Um,
17:36
and then, uh, the thing that did change the, the context of listening to Parade for me is getting bootleg, um, CDs of the Parade tour. Absolutely amazing.
17:46
I think that was the ultimate Prince tour, and that's saying something 'cause his, his, his tours were just fabulous. But the Parade show was like a, like a review.
17:55
It's the opposite of a rock band grinding through their tracks. You know, it's, um, it's a fast-moving theatrical spectacle, like snippets of songs, lots of, um, brass and drum interludes.
18:09
He throws a bit of, um, "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window," uh, in the middle of it. He reclaims other tracks from his protege bandsUm, uh, like Mutiny, which is a family track and, uh, uh,
18:23
Love Desire, I think, uh, which is a Sheila E track. Uh, and he's got, you know, dancers and 12 band members on stage.
18:32
I just, I was saying to my daughter last night, um, if I could, uh, travel in time back to, back to one moment, I think it would be, uh, one of those parade shows in Paris. She said, "Isn't that a waste of time?
18:44
Shouldn't you go, kind of go back and, uh, try to, uh, you know, prevent a disaster or something like that?" But my understanding is you're not allowed to mess with history like that when you time travel. No.
18:53
But if I could go back and watch Prince's Parade tour just as an observer, that would be, uh, for me, a fantastic use of that, of that superpower.
19:03
That leads me onto for anyone who maybe isn't a Prince fan or doesn't know a lot or they're just being introduced to Prince listening to you evangelize about it so brilliantly,
19:14
um, talk them into listening to Parade for the first time. I think that's difficult actually, 'cause I think I've tried it in the past and almost as I'm playing it to them, I hear it in a different way.
19:29
I hear it shorn of all that, all those memories and associations and, and the world I build in my head when I'm listening to it. A- and, and I hear it just objectively for the music.
19:40
A- and I think it's probably quite h- pro- quite a difficult entry point, um, for somebody new to Prince. I think you maybe have to kind of w- work up to it,
19:52
um, because it's pr- probably just got too much in it to, to unpack.
19:57
Uh, un- un- unless you've, uh, unless you've kind of been, been primed, uh, with perhaps some of the less rich, less kind of tapestry type- type stuff in his, in his archive first. Does that make sense?
20:11
Kind of does to me, but it's probably not gonna make sense to the man down the pub who's desperate, doesn't wanna listen to Prince even though you want him to.
20:18
[laughs] I'm quite, I'm quite happy for them not to listen to, uh, Parade. Yeah, exactly. It's mine. That's, that's my general... Don't listen then.
20:25
If they wanna go and see the awful new Broadway show inspired by Purple Rain or something, then, then, then fine. But, um, I think you gotta, you gotta earn Parade. You've definitely gotta earn it.
20:37
Um, so one final question. Um, we, we, we try not to talk too much about the work side of being a CMO here. Uh, but if you were forced to, or if someone, if a fellow CMO
20:54
wanted to write a, write one of those LinkedIn posts about, "Here's what I learned from listening to Parade. This is what it means for me as a CMO," what could you take...
21:05
What do you think you could take from it that isn't stretching the point to the most ridiculous extent most of those blog posts are? [laughs] 10, 10 lessons about lead generation from, uh, another r- a hole in your head.
21:21
[laughs] Prince's Parade. Um, I think, uh, I think for me it, it's about, it's about building a world. You know, Prince didn't like the world he was born into. It wasn't a great environment.
21:35
Uh, you know, difficult parental situation, stuff like that. So, so he created his own worlds, a succession of them. And, and you see that in the outside world.
21:43
And by world I mean, you know, uh, music, a band, uh, a, a look. Pr- you know, Parade has an incredibly strong look, which the whole band wore. But there's also kind of codes, in jokes.
21:59
They, they built a whole culture around this era, and he did this four or five times on the bounce.
22:05
You know, Purple Rain was probably the first of those, and then Around the World in a Day, and then Parade, and then Sign o' the Times.
22:11
You know, and there's a, there's a through line between all of those, but also they're, they're all individual eras and fully, fully immersive, I think, for the people who were in it, um, at the time.
22:21
And obviously the best brands do something similar. Uh, they're, you know, they've got their own visual codes, their own language.
22:30
Uh, if, if done well, uh, they increasingly create experiences, uh, which consumers can be, can be part of.
22:39
Uh, and, and I think there's a lot to learn from how, how that 20-year-old kid from Minneapolis intuited to, to do that, that, that brands could learn about making them, uh, you know, a, a, a lot more real and, and, and special, uh, than, uh, the kind of surface level nod we sometimes get to those kind of concepts.
22:58
Yeah. We, we touched on that a little bit earlier as well, a little bit about he kind of built this world. He built this sound rather for those early albums up to, you know, Controversy and, and what.
23:11
And then he kind of dispensed with that sound and moved on to another sound, and there's that kind of leaping from one sound to another, which they all still seem to fit seamlessly into whatever world he was creating.
23:24
But he still managed to experiment within the parameters of those worlds in a way that it's almost like he needed to never rest on his laurels in any way whatsoever.
23:33
He needed to constantly be pushing himself and pushing the, the people that he was working with so that he, he just didn't get comfortable in any way whatsoever.
23:45
Chuck D saying that, you know, Prince lost a lot of his Black audience because of that, and Chuck D could understand it because it's almost like the Black audience wanted, wanted Prince to stay the same, but Prince could never stay the same.
23:58
It just wasn't in his DNA to ever want his music to sound the same. That's right.
24:04
And that kind of, that creative disruption, disbanding the revolution at the height of their popularity, uh, because he just knew he had to move on to the next thing. Could never rest on his laurels, as you say.
24:14
Absolutely, absolutely amazing. [outro music]
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