While 1985’s Around the World in a Day is most commonly remembered as Prince’s “psychedelic album,” it was the following year’s Parade that truly cemented psychedelia as a key component of his ever-expanding sonic palette. This presentation will explore the underexamined influence of 1960s psychedelic pop, rock, and soul on Prince’s mid-’80s canon – and how his mastery of the form with Parade set the stage for the increasingly eclectic triumphs of Sign “O” the Times, Lovesexy, and beyond.

Zachary Hoskins is the author of Dance / Music / Sex / Romance, a song-by-song blog examining the music of Prince in chronological order. His essay, “Rude Boy: Prince as Black New Waver,” was published in a special issue of Spectrum, A Journal on Black Men (2020), and will appear in the forthcoming anthology Erotic City and Beyond: Prince, Place, and the Making of an Icon (University Press of Mississippi, 2026). His presentations from the Prince #1plus1plus1is3 virtual symposium (2021) and #EroticCity40 symposium (2024) have both been published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Zach has also presented and appeared on roundtables at other @polishedsolid symposia, #PopLife40 (2025), #Come30 (2024), #TripleThreat40 (2023), #SexyMF30 (2022), and #DM40GB30 (2020), as well as the University of Minnesota’s Prince from Minneapolis symposium (2018). He holds an M.A. in Media Arts from the University of Arizona and B.A.’s in Film & Video Studies and Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Michigan.