A Confusing Deluxe Reissue of Prince’s ‘Around The World In A Day’

With a lackluster remaster and questionable curation, this 40th anniversary 3LP set feels unnecessary

Sony/Legacy, which in 2021 acquired from Warner the American rights to most of Prince’s imperial 1980s catalog, hasn’t been too active in mining his legendary vault, maybe because of issues over who actually owns what of the unreleased material and for where. (Territorial rights splits between major labels easily become an inefficient nightmare for everyone.) Aside from partnering with Warner on a super deluxe Diamonds and Pearls box set, Sony’s work has been shockingly minimal for such a monumental artist; they’ve merely repressed the standard albums to keep stock flowing, and even cancelled a deluxe edition of 1992’s Love Symbol. When only Warner owned the ‘80s catalog, they actively spoiled fans with exhaustive posthumous super deluxe box sets of 1999 and Sign ‘o’ The Times, which featured all contemporaneously released B-sides and single mixes, complete live recordings, and several discs of highly anticipated vault material that lived up to the mythology.

So it’s surprising that the estate/Sony/Warner (the latter probably least involved) even released this 40th anniversary 3LP or 2CD edition of 1985’s Around The World In A Day, featuring the remastered album and two LPs of single mixes and B-sides. There’s nothing new here, and there aren’t as many unreleased recordings from this album cycle, but it’s a convenient yet confusing package that shines light on this somewhat underrated album.

After the massive success of Purple Rain, Prince encouraged the public to meet him on his terms. Big enough to do whatever he wanted, he didn’t allow any singles until almost a month after the album came out, when “Raspberry Beret” became the enduring lead single. Sgt. Pepper comparisons were abundant, and without a single for the first few weeks, radio stations weren’t quite sure what to do with the album.

Its reputation still feels muted compared to his surrounding works—it wasn’t the all-encompassing cultural phenomenon of Purple Rain or the masterpiece statement of Sign ‘o’ The Times. Yet Around The World In A Day holds up just as well as those albums (I argue that it was the best record he’d released since Dirty Mind) and is the biggest outlier in his ‘80s catalog. Credited to Prince and The Revolution but barely featuring the others, it’s a lush psychedelic pop album based more in texture and melody rather than groove and funk, though naturally there’s still some of that too. It’s the most whimsical LP he ever released through Warner Bros., and while the last two tracks get a bit too preachy, the rest includes some of his most complete, efficient pop songs. As the opening title track proclaims, it’s “a wonderful trip through our time, and laughter is all you pay,” where you journey along through Prince’s vivid portraiture and sometimes biting commentary.

The two bonus LPs in this expanded 40th anniversary reissue compile the extended 12” mixes and their B-sides. A couple of these alternate versions were only available internationally. These remixes are mostly unnecessary, sometimes even exhausting in how they drone on for too long. The only one that really works is the 12” mix of “America,” which has an excellent groove to settle into but probably didn’t need to be 22 minutes long. While the other Prince deluxe editions were complete with both edited 7” and expanded 12” single mixes of all relevant material, the Around The World In A Day set chose to only include the longer 12” versions. The B-sides particularly suffer from this, notably “Raspberry Beret” B-side “She’s Always In My Hair” which in its 6.5-minute 12” “new mix” sounds more like a sketch than a finished song like the 7”. (I don’t mind the 12” version of “Girl,” the best of this album’s single B-sides.) The bonus discs’ sequencing is also questionable; the 6-minute “Fresh Dance Mix” and 9-minute extended version of “Pop Life” take up an entire side, and both are inferior to the album/7” version. The bonus content totals nearly an hour and a half, and most of it isn’t worth pulling out again.

Like Prince’s other records from this era, Around The World In A Day’s mix is bright and very thin on top, though it’s dynamic and punchy and there’s plenty of air so the sizzle isn’t painful. The original American pressing mastered by Bernie Grundman is very good, as is the slightly superior original Japanese pressing, which softens the top a tiny bit and arguably has stronger bass foundation and more fleshed out midrange textures. That said, the differences are subtle, and if you have one or the other, you’re set. Some original European pressings were also cut and plated in the U.S., so if you have one with Sheffield Lab Matrix etchings, you’re also set. (I haven’t heard the 2016 reissue cut from hi-res digital by Kevin Gray, but I have Sign O’ The Times from that series and it’s decent albeit too smooth for my taste.)

Now there’s this 40th anniversary reissue, mastered and cut by Bernie Grundman with “additional mastering by Chris James,” one of Prince’s late-period engineers. What does “additional mastering” mean? File prep? Extra work done on top of Bernie’s master? Mastering for the bonus disc and not the main album? The package and press materials don’t specify. And whether or not the tape returned to Bernie’s mastering suite 40 years later, this is almost certainly cut from digital, of what resolution we also don’t know (the released digital files of this remaster top out at 44.1kHz/24bit).

Many Bernie Grundman remasters easily beat his own original masters; unfortunately, this Around The World In A Day remaster isn’t one of them. It’s compressed and zapped of all its life. Texture is ruined with a certain graininess cast over everything, space is flattened, and while there’s more bass than the original, it doesn’t move. The whole thing is so sluggish that it almost sounds like it’s running too slow. On the original, Prince’s vocals on “Pop Life” exist in a distinct, floating physical space, whereas the new remaster boxes him inside the speaker. The high frequencies no longer have air, so the sharp elements become hard and unpleasant. The bonus material sounds the same as the remastered album. It’s far from the worst remaster I’ve ever heard, but I’m surprised that this result came from an engineer as great and already familiar with these recordings as Bernie Grundman.

MPO pressed the US Sony copies of this reissue, while Optimal pressed the EU Warner edition. All three discs of my MPO pressing are clean, quiet, and centered, though the main album was warped and needed (physical) flattening. Maybe the warpage came from the pressing, but the packaging certainly didn’t help: all three 140g LPs are stuffed into a single pocket of the gatefold jacket. As for that gatefold, it has the perforated wrap-around flap like the original, and is printed on an attractive foil stock. That said, the artwork scan quality is mediocre and additional liner notes would’ve been nice.

Overall, this is a sonically disappointing missed opportunity on all fronts, though for the $50 retail price, it’d be an okay value for money if it sounded better. The reissue production credits say a lot: the producers here are Charles F. Spicer Jr, the court-appointed advisor for Prince’s heirs, and L. Londell McMillan, Prince’s lawyer. How passionate they actually are about Prince’s legacy is irrelevant; they are clearly inexperienced in reissue curation and dealing with the actual music. Previous Prince deluxe sets had actual reissue producers with credible A&R experience or serious Prince scholarship. So that explains it!

Extra info that might be of interest: A couple years ago in Portland, OR, I took audio engineering classes at a well furnished local studio (if you saw Alex Ross Perry’s recent Pavement film, this studio is where the reunion tour rehearsal footage comes from). One week, the in-house engineer leading the program brought in Dave Friedlander, who worked for Prince at Paisley Park in the early-mid 1990s, most notably on Diamonds and Pearls. Friedlander told us several Prince stories, such as when Prince wanted an “underwater” sound and proposed throwing his guitar amp into a big vat of water. Of course, Friedlander couldn’t let his boss fatally electrocute himself, so the solution (if I remember correctly) was something like putting a drum filled with water on top of the guitar amp, covering the mic in a Paisley Park branded unlubricated condom, then running the result through further effects processing.

Anyway, the engineers couldn’t say no to Prince, which presented regular challenges. His method of mixing was to throw the faders all the way up to the point of problematic distortion… but no one could turn anything down, so the engineers devised a trick under the board to limit how far he was actually pushing the levels, while still letting him believe he’d turned everything all the way up. Evidence of this tendency is all over his discography, so that’s a major part of why Prince’s records sound the way they do.