1999

Prince produced the album himself, working at his home studio in Chanhassen and at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. Peggy McCreary, one of its engineers, remembered him moving from instrument to instrument and recording and mixing songs alone in a day. The sound is built on synthesizers and a drum machine: Pitchfork's Maura Johnston named the Oberheim OB-SX and the Linn LM-1. It opens with a slowed-down voice saying "Don't worry, I won't hurt U" and the title track, and runs through the pop of Little Red Corvette, the jittery D.M.S.R., the long Automatic and the piano ballad Free. D.M.S.R. was cut from the first CD pressings so that the album would fit on one disc.

1999 reached number nine on the Billboard 200, his first top-ten album, and ranked fifth on Billboard's 1983 year-end albums chart. The RIAA certified it quadruple platinum on 24 March 1999, and after Prince's death it re-entered the chart at number seven. Delirious reached number eight on the Hot 100, and Let's Pretend We're Married, paired with Irresistible Bitch, number 52.

Michael Hill praised it in Rolling Stone in December 1982. The Rolling Stone Album Guide later wrote that it "may be Prince's most influential album", and Johnston said in 2016 that it "still sounds like a landmark release". Simon Price of the Guardian gave it five stars. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. A Remastered, Deluxe and Super Deluxe reissue came out on 29 November 2019, the largest edition holding 35 previously unreleased songs and live recordings from Detroit and Houston.