Prince and The Revolution — Girls & Boys

JUL 01 1986 · 12:00

Prince and The Revolution — Girls & Boys (1986) Director: Prince Era: Mid-80s Art-Pop & New Romantic Apex (1986) - Peak of Prince and The Revolution's imperial phase; video bridges promotional film tie-in with standalone band performance, set against the Parade album cycle and the Under the Cherry Moon film release. High curatorial value as a rare hybrid promotional artifact linking the Parade album cycle directly to Under the Cherry Moon's visual language. The video is one of the few documents where Prince's self-directed cinematic world and his band's performance identity are presented in direct juxtaposition. The near-monochromatic saturation (0.063) and warm amber tone profile create a visually distinctive fingerprint that differentiates this from the brighter, higher-contrast videos of the Purple Rain era, marking a clear aesthetic evolution. Context: Released in the summer of 1986 at the apex of Prince and The Revolution's commercial and artistic peak, 'Girls & Boys' served as a promotional vehicle for both the Parade album and the Under the Cherry Moon film. The video's hybrid structure — interweaving black-and-white film clips with separately shot color performance footage — reflects the era's experimental approach to the music video as cinematic extension. The Parade album and its associated film represented Prince's deliberate pivot away from the hard-rock Purple Rain era toward a more European, art-inflected aesthetic, incorporating French chanson, orchestration by Clare Fischer, and a French Riviera setting. The song peaked at No. 11 in the UK but was not released as a US single, making this video a key document of Prince's stronger European market presence during this period. Director notes: Confirmed directed by Prince (IMVDb, imvdb.com/video/prince/girls-boys). The video is a composite of separately shot performance footage of The Revolution and clips sourced directly from the motion picture Under the Cherry Moon (1986), which Prince also directed. The film was shot in black and white by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Fassbinder, Scorsese). Prince took over direction of the film itself after initial director Mary Lambert departed the production. The single was released in Europe in August 1986 and as a B-side in the US. The song features a party-crashing performance sequence within the film.