On Finding the Original Mix of Color of Success

Morris Day released Color of Success as part of the Color of Success album in 1988 through Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros. It's a solid funk-pop track, one of the few solo releases he did outside of The Time's later reunion work. If you're looking for it, the straightforward answer is that it's available on most major streaming platforms and digital stores. The song itself runs about five minutes on the original album version. You can pull it from Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, or Tidal at the standard CD-quality resolution. If you want a download rather than streaming access, Bandcamp doesn't carry Morris Day catalog material, and the iTunes Store remains the most reliable option for purchasing individual tracks or the full album outright. I ran into a problem a while back when trying to compile a DJ set that included this track alongside some other late-eighties Minneapolis sound records. The streaming quality on Spotify compresses the audio enough that the low end gets muddy during crossfades. I ended up purchasing the WAV file directly from the iTunes Store at 256 kbps AAC, which is the closest you can legally get to the original master without hunting down a vinyl pressing. The dynamic range on that source is noticeably better than the Spotify version, especially in the bass drum and synth bass lines that define this track.

One thing people don't always realize about Morris Day's solo work from this era is that the production carries a lot of Prince's fingerprints. The drum programming, the layered vocal harmonies, the way the synth stabs sit in the mix — it all points back to the Paisley Park house sound. That's not a criticism. It's just context that matters if you're trying to understand the sonic character you're working with. There's also the single edit of Color of Success that runs shorter than the album version. Radio edits from this period tend to dip and burn the transients more aggressively than the album cut, so if you care about dynamic integrity, stick with the album version. The single edit saves about forty seconds but at the cost of perceived loudness that becomes more fatiguing the longer you listen. If you're looking for live performances or alternate takes, those are considerably harder to track down. Morris Day didn't do extensive touring for the Color of Success album cycle, and what footage exists tends to surface only on bootleg markets or fan-uploaded concert clips. The official release catalog from this period is fairly tight, so don't expect to find hidden B-sides or demo versions sitting around.