Songfacts®:

• Let's jump in our "Time" machine to 1981, Minneapolis. Prince has released three albums and landed a hit with "I Wanna Be Your Lover," but he's far from a household name. Before releasing his fourth album, Controversy, he puts out the self-titled debut by a band he created called The Time, which he brings on the road as the opening act on his Controversy tour. He issues The Time song "Cool" as a single at the start of the tour in November 1981, and near the end of the trek in February 1982 it climbs to #90.
  
  Later that year, Prince makes another album with The Time, puts out his fifth album, 1999, and again hits the road with The Time in tow. The hits get bigger: Prince's "Little Red Corvette" goes to #6 and The Time's "777-9311" makes it to #88.
  
  In 1984, The Time release "Jungle Love," which climbs to #20, and Prince puts out his landmark album Purple Rain. The Time go through various lineup changes as their very talented members try to get out of the shadow of Prince, and two of them do so quite spectacularly: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who leave the group in 1983, become super-producers, breaking new ground at the helm of Janet Jackson's 1986 album Control.
• Prince wrote this song with Dez Dickerson, who wasn't in The Time but was a member of Prince's band. (The Time song "777-9311" is titled after Dickerson's phone number). The song a showcase for The Time's funky sound and serves as character development for their lead singer, Morris Day, a flamboyant and delightfully supercilious frontman who gets all the ladies and elicits jealousy in their boyfriends. It's a part he played to perfection as Prince's nemesis in the 1984 movie Purple Rain, where The Time is one of the established bands Prince tries to upstage.
• Prince was an early adopter of music video, which helped his cause when MTV got on board. He had The Time make a video for this song where the band takes over a classroom and gives the kids a lesson in funk. It was directed by Chuck Statler, one of the few directors making concept videos pre-MTV. He also did Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind" and Devo's early videos.
• Like "Y.M.C.A.," there are gestures that go along with this song. As demonstrated in the video, you spell out each letter of "COOL" when that line hits in the chorus.