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Post by Kapitan on Aug 23, 2021 16:18:55 GMT
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.”
Prince Rogers Nelson, who opened his song “Let’s Go Crazy” and the album Purple Rain with a sermonly recitation of those words over an organ synth, has himself already gotten through this thing called life: born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the summer of 1958, he died of a fentanyl overdose in spring 2016.
Since then, one could be forgiven for believing he was beloved across America, even worldwide. That he was topping the charts with each new album. But as is so common in our world, it was his death that fanned the flame of acclaim.
For nearly 20 years before his death, Prince had been remembered fondly mostly as a has-been and live performer: it was the hits of the ‘80s and early ‘90s that people loved, and while his live appearances such as at the Super Bowl in 2007 or to commemorate George Harrison at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, nobody cared much about the albums he kept churning out.
Prince’s last Top 20 single was the 1999 remake of his own “1999.” Prior to that, it was the 1995 single “I Hate U,” from The Gold Experience. For perspective, he had 24 Top 20 singles in his career up through that last one, spanning a period of time roughly equal to the dry spell lacking any afterward. (That's more than one Top 20 single per year for 20 years.) He had many more Top 50 and Top 100 singles, almost all in the first 20 years of his career.
Let that sink in: for all the people online bemoaning the state of modern music, chiming in with cliches about “we need Prince right now!” the fact is nobody seemed to think so while for the second half of his career, the final 20 years or so of his life.
So forget Prince the legend, and especially Prince the modern avatar of the beloved icon of the masses. That’s a combination of nostalgia and (even more) record label hype cashing in on his legacy on the occasion of his death. The fact is, he didn’t like the type of executives one finds behind these posthumous promotions, and they didn’t like him.
And forget Prince the crazy genius, the uber-auteur. It’s not to say he wasn’t crazy, or wasn’t a genius. But letting the strangeness overtake the skill, work, and results is an unfortunate human habit. Just as considering Brian Wilson first as someone who spent three, five, or 10 years in bed wouldn’t be fair or accurate, so, too, would be remembering Prince first as an artist with an unpronounceable symbol for a name and “slave” written across his face.
Who was Prince? One of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. One of the greatest rock singers of all time. One of the greatest rock songwriters of all time. One of the greatest rock producers of all time. A fully (really more-than) capable pianist, bassist, and drummer. An internet music and music business pioneer (if not always a successful one).
This thread won’t go album by album. It won’t drop every detail on the man, as I’m nowhere near as knowledgeable as his serious fans: I’m just someone who has most of his albums, who has seen him live several times. I can go months without thinking of, much less playing, Prince music.
But that said, I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of joy from his music and his live shows. He has amazed me, excited me, and delighted me much more than he has confused me, bored me, or disappointed me. In this thread, I’ll talk about some of those aspects of his work I identify with and have loved the most.
Anyone else who wants to chime in, feel free. This isn’t my thread, and while I may be Kapitan, I’m not the captain.
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Post by kds on Aug 23, 2021 17:09:30 GMT
While I'm no expert on Prince, I really feel like that brief name change in the 1990s to the Symbol (AKA Artist Formerly Known as Prince) seemed to hurt any momentum his career had.
I'm just curious, do you think his music in the decades prior to his death was unnecessarily overlooked, or was there a drop in quality?
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 23, 2021 18:10:13 GMT
While I'm no expert on Prince, I really feel like that brief name change in the 1990s to the Symbol (AKA Artist Formerly Known as Prince) seemed to hurt any momentum his career had. I'm just curious, do you think his music in the decades prior to his death was unnecessarily overlooked, or was there a drop in quality? On your first point, I think it was a massive strike against him. We talk all the time on this board about the aging rock stars' dilemma: stay the course, reinvent yourself, follow trends, ignore trends... At the dawn of the '90s, Prince had already been a massively successful recording artist for a dozen years or so even though he was only in his early 30s.
I remember people saying he had lost it and was out of touch by then.
A few years were an eternity: Purple Rain was a successful album and movie; Parade was a very good album accompanying the awful movie Under the Cherry Moon; and the likes of Graffiti Bridge was awful both as movie and album. He went from a guy who could succeed any anything to a guy uncertain where he fit in. To close out the decade, Lovesexy "only" hit #11 and was a relative failure; Batman was a huge hit, but it was a novelty; Graffiti Bridge, as noted, was a joke.
But then came Diamonds and Pearls! October 1990, it hit #3 and spawned four Top 25 hits including the #3 title track and the #1 "Cream." He had found a successful formula with his new group, New Power Generation. They were using more natural instruments and incorporating a little more adulthood, a little of jazz, a little sophistication. The next couple albums kept the hits coming: "My Name is Prince," "7," "Sexy MF," "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."
That's when things really went south. It was in the mid-90s when his record company squabbles went public. When he stopped using his name. When he started putting out some albums that were seen as (and quite likely were) merely intended to finish off his contract. And so we got Come, or the almost decade-old The Black Album, or Chaos and Disorder alongside the stronger The Gold Experience in the latter half of that decade.
I do think that torpedoed his career, for various reasons. - I don't think he related to modern popular music, and especially "black music" (rap in particular). He had long since said negative things about it, and now it was everything. He began dabbling in it, and was mocked for his late, embarrassing attempts.
- I don't think he was really trying to make great albums at that time. He was still recording like crazy, but it's obvious the releases were not his best. - His name change made his situation go from the sort of famous person/record label squabble you hear about from time to time to an example of a rich, weird guy doing very strange things that normal people don't relate to.
He had what I imagine he expected would be a triumphal reentry to the world with his Emancipation, a triple album released in late '96 when he concluded his deal with Warner Bros. But frankly? This wasn't Sign o' the Times, much less a threefold Purple Rain. It had some cool stuff on it. Great. Certainly one really good album in there.
Then there was another massive set, Crystal Ball released first online only, then in stores but in different versions, and it was again all just a mess. Was it old? How old? It's an acoustic album? No, it's a reissue of a previously unreleased album? What the... then there's The Truth, but wait, that was part of Crystal Ball already? In the midst of it all, Warner Bros. releases another Prince album, the final (pretty good, actually) one he submitted to them to complete his contract, but they held on to it for a few years.
Basically, I think everything in these years was just a mess from many perspectives. Aging artist doesn't know what to do artistically; diva artist takes every opportunity to publicly battle the business (including changing his name to a symbol); and changing audiences more or less move on in his absence.
By the time of his "big return," it's a party very few bother to attend.
I happen to think his final album of the '90s, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, was a reasonable success. He worked with a real label again (Arista, after his past few were self-released). He worked in some capacity with Clive Davis to get it done properly. He collaborated with a handful of then-relevant artists like Sheryl Crow, Ani DiFranco, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Gwen Stefani, and Eve. The album spanned genres, showing Prince to be masterful in a folky acoustic guitar ballad (" Tangerine"), a soulful RnB falsetto-and-piano ballad (" I Love U but I Don't Trust U Anymore"), and power pop (" So Far, So Pleased").
But even there, the only single was the somewhat sleepy " The Greatest Romance Ever Sold," a smoothed-over, somewhat sleepy RnB ballad with already-dated effects like record scratches (in the year '99!) and tiresome cliches of Eastern exotica. He didn't do promotional appearances in the U.S. for the album except a pay-per-view concert.
Whatever Rave was, it was not to be repeated for a while. He followed it up with a confusing, religion-and-jazz dominated album, The Rainbow Children. Then a new mostly solo piano-and-vocal set, then that same thing plus a multidisc live set. Internet-only albums. It just kept coming, and it wasn't clear what you'd get: in these years, he famously stopped singing some old songs, singing about sex, began preaching and lecturing audiences about their looks and behavior.
I think he never got back his momentum of the early-mid 90s. And like a lot of artists, the more things he tried, the more desperate he seemed, which made people probably like him less. Add in his eccentricities and the MASSIVE output that was hard to keep up with if you were a casual fan looking for hits, and there were just other places to get your fix. Why wade through two triple albums (one of which might be online only in an era when that was weird and hard to come by) if you're not likely to find another "Little Red Corvette" anywhere in there?
In that, he was like Frank Zappa. He just kept putting out more and more music.
To answer your other question, yes, I think the quality of his output declined. It was ALWAYS musically (though not lyrically, not by a long shot) brilliant: he was a great player and hired great players. But one album might be mostly extended instrumental jams, another might be piano ballads, another might be corny smooth adult contemporary, another mainstream pop. And of course, there are always the obligatory "back to your roots" efforts in there, too, "this one sounds like it comes from 1984!"
There was still really good stuff in there. But it was much more hit and miss. Record labels have their flaws, but quality control and preventing prolific artists from saturating and oversaturating the market (especially with subpar material) is one thing they do pretty well sometimes. Prince could have benefitted from that in the second half of his career.
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Post by kds on Aug 23, 2021 18:19:41 GMT
Thanks for the summary. I know that it seems like every artist has an "expiration date" when it comes to relevancy. But, I'd always wondered how that coincided with Prince and the name change.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 23, 2021 18:29:10 GMT
One thing that had never really occurred to me before was the near-perfect symmetry of his career, how in the end he spent about as much time as a past-his-prime legend as he did a hit-maker. It's really 1978-1994 and 1995-2016. (Some would probably push back the end of the first era to the late 80s, but I don't think you can discount those early '90s hits, even if some of his "real" fans found them corny or too mainstream.)
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Post by jk on Aug 23, 2021 19:36:38 GMT
Yes, thanks a lot for the crystal-clear explication, Cap'n. As I said, I've only bumped into Prince sporadically, beginning with the magnificent "1999" and a smattering of tracks from the Purple Rain album that my wife's nephew put on tape for me. I'd hear a single from time to time ("Raspberry Beret", "Kiss", "Sign O' The Times", "Get Off", "Sexy MF") and then there was Lovesexy blasting from the '90s band's van stereo on our way to and from gigs.
As for losing his audience, I recall reading a concert review where he was coming out with stuff like "Do you love God? I love God!", which is probably not what they came to hear. But then I wasn't there...
As is my wont, what I would really like is one Prince album to get my teeth into. So I shall be following this topic carefully!
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 23, 2021 19:41:22 GMT
It's so hard to name one, just because there is such a diversity even among his very good albums, where taste might be the deciding factor. I'd hate to turn you off by suggesting X when it turns out Y would have been the perfect pairing.
But I'll try. Stay tuned... But also, I'll link tracks here and there. Give them a shot if they appeal to you, and let me know. That will help me steer you with recommendations.
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Post by jk on Aug 23, 2021 19:43:23 GMT
It's so hard to name one, just because there is such a diversity even among his very good albums, where taste might be the deciding factor. I'd hate to turn you off by suggesting X when it turns out Y would have been the perfect pairing. Yes of course. That's what I mean by following this thread, seeing what appeals and what doesn't and enjoying a good read along the way.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 22, 2021 14:16:45 GMT
To experience the scope of Prince’s musical ability, look no further than to his most famous and best-selling album, Purple Rain. Die-hard fans may not favor it—you know how super-fans are, avoiding the obvious—but for most of the world, it is the Prince album to have. How big a star was Prince at the time? He was the first artist since the Beatles (with their A Hard Day’s Night) to have the #1 movie, single, and album at the same time. Purple Rain sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, including being certified as 13x platinum in the US It topped the charts in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the US, and Zimbabwe and landed in the Top 10 in Austria, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. When it was rereleased in 2016, it landed in the Top 10 again in Australia, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US (where it hit #4). While it holds together as a cohesive album, it is truly an album of singles: six of its nine songs were released among its five singles. (In the US, the first four singles had non-album B-sides; the fifth, “Take Me With U,” included the album track “Baby I’m a Star” as its B-side.) And what singles! In the US, all five A-sides reached the Top 25, and four within the Top 10. Chronologically, they placed at: #1 - “ When Doves Cry” #1 - “ Let’s Go Crazy” #2 - “ Purple Rain” #8 - “ I Would Die 4 U” #25 - “ Take Me With U” The range of styles even in the singles is astounding. “Let’s Go Crazy” is ebullient rock and roll; “Take Me With U” is pure pop; “Purple Rain” is a sort of gospel power ballad; “I Would Die 4 U” is a pop anthem; and “When Doves Cry”—the top-selling single of 1984—is a sort of semi-psychedelic soul tune. The B-side “Baby I’m a Star” is a kind of funky dance anthem. (Lots of anthems here, which is part of what makes this album so memorable: at least half the songs make you want to both sing/shout along and shake your booty.) Beyond the singles, “The Beautiful Ones” is a gorgeous falsetto ballad; “Computer Blue” is an uptempo synth funk tune; and the infamous “Darling Nikki” is the sort Penthouse Letters lyrics meets science-fiction funk-rock that gets senators’ wives in a tizzy. Right, Tipper? Notably, Purple Rain is the first album credited to Prince and the Revolution, not just to Prince as a solo artist. The band comprised Prince as well as Wendy Melvoin (guitar and vocals), Lisa Coleman (keyboards and vocals), Matt Fink (keyboards and vocals), Brown Mark (bass and vocals), and Bobby Z (drums and percussion). By all accounts, Prince allowed his band significant input in the development and arrangements of the songs, though only “Computer Blue” includes songwriting credits to others in the band. He was to release two more albums co-credited to the Revolution, Around the World in a Day (1985) and Parade (1986) before returning to solo billing on Sign o’ the Times in 1987. As with Paul McCartney or Frank Zappa with their bands, it’s hard to tell where Prince’s solo work ends and where his bands begin—he always was something of an auteur in the studio, taking numerous and varied roles upon himself—but it is safe to say the Revolution were his most identifiable backing group, not to mention his most commercially successful. A Personal PostscriptI’m like the legions of fans for whom Purple Rain is indeed Prince’s best album. You’d be hard-pressed to find another album with a more consistently strong set of songs, top to bottom. There is truly no filler, and in fact (as noted above), it’s almost all singles. Most likely, Purple Rain is also where I heard of Prince in the first place. After all, I was a month shy of 8 years old when it was released, so you can’t expect I had been a big fan of his previous work. (I would have been 6 years old when his previous album, 1999, was released. Though I may well have heard “Little Red Corvette,” I certainly wasn’t a connoisseur of the man’s work at that age.) I have fond memories of my few-years-older cousin, now deceased, introducing me to this music. We’d avoid the grown-ups at family gatherings and go into his basement bedroom with the other similar-aged kids and listen to this, to Eddie Murphy’s Raw, to Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry, to AC/DC’s Back in Black, and to Quiet Riot’s Metal Health. (These were all more or less forbidden by our religious and conservative parents, but, well…such is youth. Sorry, mom—but I never bit the head off a bat or sacrificed a baby in the ravine in some satanic ritual, so…) Prince’s virtuosity didn’t appeal to me then; I couldn’t understand such a concept. (I do remember being told he played 18 or 25 or some absurd number of instruments, and finding that quite impressive. I no longer believe it, by the way, unless we count each type of keyboard and guitar as a different instrument. It’s not as if he could play trumpet, clarinet, tuba, and such, but rather acoustic guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, piano, electric piano, clavinet, synthesizer, organ, etc.) What appealed to me then was the charisma and the melody. The music popped, bounced. The melodies were memorable, singable. Prince has been described as a brilliant fusion of “black music” and “white music.” Obviously music has no color, but let’s be honest, populations do. Cultures and subcultures do. Prince, growing up in the black North Side of the white Minneapolis and Minnesota, understood diverse groups of people. What’s more, he knew their musical styles inside and out … and he was the best. At all of them. All these years later, it is probably that complete mastery of diverse musical styles that impresses me the most. Oh yeah, and the fact that he’s one of the best guitarists of the generation, to say nothing of the fact that he was as versatile and talented a singer as anyone, probably peerless except perhaps with Freddie Mercury. If I had to recommend someone start with one Prince album, I suppose I’d struggle to recommend something other than Purple Rain.
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Post by jk on Sept 22, 2021 17:13:04 GMT
Thank you, sir. Much appreciated (if a little over time ). The entire album is here on YouTube, which is nice, as I'm not a Spotify person: Really looking forward to giving this a serious listen!
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 22, 2021 17:24:54 GMT
I think I already have my next album-post in mind. It will be, in the words of the old Monty Python sketches, "and now for something completely different." But that's for another day.
I am curious to hear what you end up thinking of Purple Rain. I suspect you'll find you've heard much of it before, actually.
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Post by jk on Sept 22, 2021 19:49:56 GMT
I think I already have my next album-post in mind. It will be, in the words of the old Monty Python sketches, "and now for something completely different." But that's for another day.
I am curious to hear what you end up thinking of Purple Rain. I suspect you'll find you've heard much of it before, actually.
True. Years ago my wife's nephew gave me a cassette tape that included a few tracks from it. If I recall correctly, they were "Let's Go Crazy", "I Would Die 4 U" and "Purple Rain" (or part of it).
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Post by jk on Oct 5, 2021 19:37:24 GMT
Well, I had some dusting to do today so I played the five tracks I hadn't heard yet this time round. (Actually I'd heard five of the nine tracks already thanks to that cassette tape.) It's bizarre to consider that Purple Rain was Prince's sixth studio album! It's an impressive piece of work, for sure, but it's not an album I'd return to. It didn't have the impact (and staying power) of, say, the first two Culture Club albums, which I also heard in full for the first time at least thirty years after the event and love to this day. Not everyone warms to our friend Mr Beefheart -- I guess that's how it is with me and Mr Nelson. Cap'n, thanks for setting up this topic! I shall certainly be keeping an eye on it.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 5, 2021 19:41:00 GMT
It didn't have the impact (and staying power) of, say, the first two Culture Club albums, which I also heard in full for the first time at least thirty years after the event and love to this day. I think that warrants the caveat "For me, it didn't...," as broadly speaking, it had far, far greater impact and staying power. Just not with you.
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Post by jk on Oct 5, 2021 19:52:16 GMT
It didn't have the impact (and staying power) of, say, the first two Culture Club albums, which I also heard in full for the first time at least thirty years after the event and love to this day. I think that warrants the caveat "For me, it didn't...," as broadly speaking, it had far, far greater impact and staying power. Just not with you. I was hoping that was implicit in the second part of the sentence. So much for my command of the English language.
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