RollingStone ranked "1999" number 339 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[5] Following Prince's death, the song re-charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 41, later moving up to number 27, making it the fourth separate time the song had entered the Hot 100 and the third different decade in which the song re-charted (as after its two 1980s entries, it made the chart again on January 16, 1999 at number 40). As of April 30, 2016, it has sold 727,363 copies in the United States.[6]
The inspiration for the song came from a TV documentary Prince watched about Nostradamus. In the film, he predicted that a terror would fall upon the world in 1999. The next day at rehearsals, Prince discussed the documentary with his bandmates, where they imagined a huge party would be thrown knowing this terror was about to happen. As Lisa Coleman said, Prince came to the studio the next day, passing out song lyrics to the band, the song already fully written.
The album version of the song starts with a slowed-down voice stating "Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I only want you to have some fun." Prince shares lead vocals on the track with members of his band the Revolution, namely Dez Dickerson, Lisa Coleman and Jill Jones. Originally conceived to be a three-part harmony, it was later decided to separate out the voices that started each verse. Distinct scratching and explosion noises heard in the track were to cover mistakes during recording of a good take.[7]
Some music critics have suggested Phil Collins' 1985 song "Sussudio" sounds very similar to "1999".[9] Collins confirmed this claim,[10] and remembers listening to "1999" frequently while he was on tour with Genesis.[11]
In January 1985, "1999" was released as a 12" single in the US with "Little Red Corvette" as the B-side, and "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?"/"D.M.S.R." in the UK. The single peaked at number 2 in its second week of release.
"1999" was re-released in the UK and the US in late 1998 to accompany the song's namesake year. It was released on 12" vinyl with the same track listing as the original 12" single: the album version, along with "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?" and "D.M.S.R." A CD single was also issued with the same track listing, except the edit of "1999" was substituted for the album version. It was also re-released again towards the end of its namesake year. The original version re-charted within the top 40 of the US Billboard Hot 100 in December 1998, becoming Prince's last top 40 hit before his death in 2016.
The video, directed by Bruce Gowers, was shot during the last week of rehearsals for the 1999 Tour. It depicts Prince and his band during a live performance. Just in time to take his part after Lisa Coleman, Jill Jones and Dez Dickerson, Prince appears on the stage from above, gliding down on a fireman's pole, wearing a glittery purple long coat.
Something went wrong with shooting Dez's lead vocal line and the footage was actually re-shot by a local camera crew the afternoon prior to the first show of the 1999 Tour in Chattanooga on November 11, 1982.[citation needed]
* All figures used in this report apply to Berkshire's A shares, the successor to the only stock that the company had outstanding before 1996. The B shares have an economic interest equal to 1/30th that of the A.
The numbers on the facing page show just how poor our 1999 record was. We had the worst absolute performance of my tenure and, compared to the S&P, the worst relative performance as well. Relative results are what concern us: Over time, bad relative numbers will produce unsatisfactory absolute results.
Even Inspector Clouseau could find last year's guilty party: your Chairman. My performance reminds me of the quarterback whose report card showed four Fs and a D but who nonetheless had an understanding coach. "Son," he drawled, "I think you're spending too much time on that one subject." My "one subject" is capital allocation, and my grade for 1999 most assuredly is a D. What most hurt us during the year was the inferior performance of Berkshire's equity portfolio -- and responsibility for that portfolio, leaving aside the small piece of it run by Lou Simpson of GEICO, is entirely mine. Several of our largest investees badly lagged the market in 1999 because they've had disappointing operating results. We still like these businesses and are content to have major investments in them. But their stumbles damaged our performance last year, and it's no sure thing that they will quickly regain their stride. The fallout from our weak results in 1999 was a more-than-commensurate drop in our stock price. In 1998, to go back a bit, the stock outperformed the business. Last year the business did much better than the stock, a divergence that has continued to the date of this letter. Over time, of course, the performance of the stock must roughly match the performance of the business. Despite our poor showing last year, Charlie Munger, Berkshire's Vice Chairman and my partner, and I expect that the gain in Berkshire's intrinsic value over the next decade will modestly exceed the gain from owning the S&P. We can't guarantee that, of course. But we are willing to back our conviction with our own money. To repeat a fact you've heard before, well over 99% of my net worth resides in Berkshire. Neither my wife nor I have ever sold a share of Berkshire and -- unless our checks stop clearing -- we have no intention of doing so. Please note that I spoke of hoping to beat the S&P "modestly." For Berkshire, truly large superiorities over that index are a thing of the past. They existed then because we could buy both businesses and stocks at far more attractive prices than we can now, and also because we then had a much smaller capital base, a situation that allowed us to consider a much wider range of investment opportunities than are available to us today. Our optimism about Berkshire's performance is also tempered by the expectation -- indeed, in our minds, the virtual certainty -- that the S&P will do far less well in the next decade or two than it has done since 1982. A recent article in Fortune expressed my views as to why this is inevitable, and I'm enclosing a copy with this report. Our goal is to run our present businesses well -- a task made easy because of the outstanding managers we have in place -- and to acquire additional businesses having economic characteristics and managers comparable to those we already own. We made important progress in this respect during 1999 by acquiring Jordan's Furniture and contracting to buy a major portion of MidAmerican Energy. We will talk more about these companies later in the report but let me emphasize one point here: We bought both for cash, issuing no Berkshire shares. Deals of that kind aren't always possible, but that is the method of acquisition that Charlie and I vastly prefer. Guides to Intrinsic Value I often talk in these pages about intrinsic value, a key, though far from precise, measurement we utilize in our acquisitions of businesses and common stocks. (For an extensive discussion of this, and other investment and accounting terms and concepts, please refer to our Owner's Manual on pages 55 - 62. Intrinsic value is discussed on page 60.) In our last four reports, we have furnished you a table that we regard as useful in estimating Berkshire's intrinsic value. In the updated version of that table, which follows, we trace two key components of value. The first column lists our per-share ownership of investments (including cash and equivalents but excluding assets held in our financial products operation) and the second column shows our per-share earnings from Berkshire's operating businesses before taxes and purchase-accounting adjustments (discussed on page 61), but after all interest and corporate expenses. The second column excludes all dividends, interest and capital gains that we realized from the investments presented in the first column. In effect, the columns show how Berkshire would look if it were split into two parts, with one entity holding our investments and the other operating all of our businesses and bearing all corporate costs. Pre-tax Earnings
(Loss) Per Share Investments With All Income from Year Per Share Investments Excluded 1969 ........................................................................... $ 45 $ 4.39 1979 ........................................................................... 577 13.07 1989 ........................................................................... 7,200 108.86 1999 ........................................................................... 47,339 (458.55) Here are the growth rates of the two segments by decade:
In 1999, our per-share investments changed very little, but our operating earnings, affected by negatives that overwhelmed some strong positives, fell apart. Most of our operating managers deserve a grade of A for delivering fine results and for having widened the difference between the intrinsic value of their businesses and the value at which these are carried on our balance sheet. But, offsetting this, we had a huge -- and, I believe, aberrational -- underwriting loss at General Re. Additionally, GEICO's underwriting profit fell, as we had predicted it would. GEICO's overall performance, though, was terrific, outstripping my ambitious goals. We do not expect our underwriting earnings to improve in any dramatic way this year. Though GEICO's intrinsic value should grow by a highly satisfying amount, its underwriting performance is almost certain to weaken. That's because auto insurers, as a group, will do worse in 2000, and because we will materially increase our marketing expenditures. At General Re, we are raising rates and, if there is no mega-catastrophe in 2000, the company's underwriting loss should fall considerably. It takes some time, however, for the full effect of rate increases to kick in, and General Re is therefore likely to have another unsatisfactory underwriting year. You should be aware that one item regularly working to widen the amount by which intrinsic value exceeds book value is the annual charge against income we take for amortization of goodwill -- an amount now running about $500 million. This charge reduces the amount of goodwill we show as an asset and likewise the amount that is included in our book value. This is an accounting matter having nothing to do with true economic goodwill, which increases in most years. But even if economic goodwill were to remain constant, the annual amortization charge would persistently widen the gap between intrinsic value and book value. Though we can't give you a precise figure for Berkshire's intrinsic value, or even an approximation, Charlie and I can assure you that it far exceeds our $57.8 billion book value. Businesses such as See's and Buffalo News are now worth fifteen to twenty times the value at which they are carried on our books. Our goal is to continually widen this spread at all subsidiaries. A Managerial Story You Will Never Read Elsewhere Berkshire's collection of managers is unusual in several important ways. As one example, a very high percentage of these men and women are independently wealthy, having made fortunes in the businesses that they run. They work neither because they need the money nor because they are contractually obligated to -- we have no contracts at Berkshire. Rather, they work long and hard because they love their businesses. And I use the word "their" advisedly, since these managers are truly in charge -- there are no show-and-tell presentations in Omaha, no budgets to be approved by headquarters, no dictums issued about capital expenditures. We simply ask our managers to run their companies as if these are the sole asset of their families and will remain so for the next century. Charlie and I try to behave with our managers just as we attempt to behave with Berkshire's shareholders, treating both groups as we would wish to be treated if our positions were reversed. Though "working" means nothing to me financially, I love doing it at Berkshire for some simple reasons: It gives me a sense of achievement, a freedom to act as I see fit and an opportunity to interact daily with people I like and trust. Why should our managers -- accomplished artists at what they do -- see things differently? In their relations with Berkshire, our managers often appear to be hewing to President Kennedy's charge, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Here's a remarkable story from last year: It's about R. C. Willey, Utah's dominant home furnishing business, which Berkshire purchased from Bill Child and his family in 1995. Bill and most of his managers are Mormons, and for this reason R. C. Willey's stores have never operated on Sunday. This is a difficult way to do business: Sunday is the favorite shopping day for many customers. Bill, nonetheless, stuck to his principles -- and while doing so built his business from $250,000 of annual sales in 1954, when he took over, to $342 million in 1999. Bill felt that R. C. Willey could operate successfully in markets outside of Utah and in 1997 suggested that we open a store in Boise. I was highly skeptical about taking a no-Sunday policy into a new territory where we would be up against entrenched rivals open seven days a week. Nevertheless, this was Bill's business to run. So, despite my reservations, I told him to follow both his business judgment and his religious convictions. Bill then insisted on a truly extraordinary proposition: He would personally buy the land and build the store -- for about $9 million as it turned out -- and would sell it to us at his cost if it proved to be successful. On the other hand, if sales fell short of his expectations, we could exit the business without paying Bill a cent. This outcome, of course, would leave him with a huge investment in an empty building. I told him that I appreciated his offer but felt that if Berkshire was going to get the upside it should also take the downside. Bill said nothing doing: If there was to be failure because of his religious beliefs, he wanted to take the blow personally. The store opened last August and immediately became a huge success. Bill thereupon turned the property over to us -- including some extra land that had appreciated significantly -- and we wrote him a check for his cost. And get this: Bill refused to take a dime of interest on the capital he had tied up over the two years. If a manager has behaved similarly at some other public corporation, I haven't heard about it. You can understand why the opportunity to partner with people like Bill Child causes me to tap dance to work every morning.
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