jtfolden said:

thedance said:

The video was good as well, showing the pregnant Mayte at the hospital... if that tragedy had not happened it would had been a good beginning to promote the album, unfortunately they lost their child, sad..

The video was shot AFTER the baby was born, actually...

it was not

Another reason why it "failed" was that he released singles for "Somebody's Somebody" and "The Holy River" in late January 1997....and the videos were NOT ready.

Promo ads were bought in magazines.

He didn't have a video for "Somebody's Somebody" out until the end of Feb. n took clips from Roseland, NY and other spots n quickly threw the video together.

"The Holy River" did not have a video out until close til the end of March and featured new shots mixed in with old shots of Mayte from the "unreleased" "Empty Room" because perhaps he didn't have enough footage?

You can't go that long between a release of single to when a video comes out. He did the same thing with "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" as well.

He learned in future years to have a video ready when the single is ready with "Musicology" and "Te Amo Corazon".....

But, just as quickly as he learned, he forgot again. Having "Box O' Chocolates" before Lotusflower but not servicing it to radio and demanding MTV, VH1, and BET pull all his music videos off the web as his own site was to have all his videos on it. Now, how can you promote a new video that you have to pay $77 to see? I argued with the logic with his site designer before the launch of that.

Also, he missed out big time not having a video for "Dance 4 Me" which some can argue was the closest he had been to a mainstream hit since material from 3121.

"Betcha By Golly Wow" is not the worst single he ever chose to release. That honor goes to "Te Amo Borazon" hands down. My problem with "Betcha By Golly Wow" was that it was the 1st cover that Prince ever did and was promoted that way. I hated it. The reason being is people used to ask me why I like Prince so much. I was like "the dude plays and writes everything on his albums. No covers. That is amazing." The covers took those bragging rights away.

Emancipation should have had, Empty Room, 18 & Over, and vault material to say that Warners couldn't handle and several tracks that ended up on the Crystal Ball set or never released at all.

Plain and simple, if Emancipation was 1 disc instead of his vision of 3, with all the promotion he had done, that album would have hit number 1 easily. The 3 disc set was just too pricey. To top it all off, the stuff he was going through at that time. I would have been "screw the promotion too" with what was going on.

Prince hands down still has the talent despite what many of you think. He is the greatest live act on the planet. He used to be that dominate in the studio. All the cats would be like, "Did, you hear the new Prince record? We have to get back in the studio. He is whoopin' our ass again. Sick beats."

The problem is that he trusts no one. He needs someone to handle promotion and other things so he can just concentrate on the music and his ideas. Doing everything himself is what has hurt him. The problem is that costs money. But Prince, you have to spend money to make money.

jseven said:

Another reason why it "failed" was that he released singles for "Somebody's Somebody" and "The Holy River" in late January 1997....and the videos were NOT ready.

Promo ads were bought in magazines.

He didn't have a video for "Somebody's Somebody" out until the end of Feb. n took clips from Roseland, NY and other spots n quickly threw the video together.

"The Holy River" did not have a video out until close til the end of March and featured new shots mixed in with old shots of Mayte from the "unreleased" "Empty Room" because perhaps he didn't have enough footage?

You can't go that long between a release of single to when a video comes out. He did the same thing with "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" as well.

He learned in future years to have a video ready when the single is ready with "Musicology" and "Te Amo Corazon".....

But, just as quickly as he learned, he forgot again. Having "Box O' Chocolates" before Lotusflower but not servicing it to radio and demanding MTV, VH1, and BET pull all his music videos off the web as his own site was to have all his videos on it. Now, how can you promote a new video that you have to pay $77 to see? I argued with the logic with his site designer before the launch of that.

Also, he missed out big time not having a video for "Dance 4 Me" which some can argue was the closest he had been to a mainstream hit since material from 3121.

"Betcha By Golly Wow" is not the worst single he ever chose to release. That honor goes to "Te Amo Borazon" hands down. My problem with "Betcha By Golly Wow" was that it was the 1st cover that Prince ever did and was promoted that way. I hated it. The reason being is people used to ask me why I like Prince so much. I was like "the dude plays and writes everything on his albums. No covers. That is amazing." The covers took those bragging rights away.

Emancipation should have had, Empty Room, 18 & Over, and vault material to say that Warners couldn't handle and several tracks that ended up on the Crystal Ball set or never released at all.

Plain and simple, if Emancipation was 1 disc instead of his vision of 3, with all the promotion he had done, that album would have hit number 1 easily. The 3 disc set was just too pricey. To top it all off, the stuff he was going through at that time. I would have been "screw the promotion too" with what was going on.

Prince hands down still has the talent despite what many of you think. He is the greatest live act on the planet. He used to be that dominate in the studio. All the cats would be like, "Did, you hear the new Prince record? We have to get back in the studio. He is whoopin' our ass again. Sick beats."

The problem is that he trusts no one. He needs someone to handle promotion and other things so he can just concentrate on the music and his ideas. Doing everything himself is what has hurt him. The problem is that costs money. But Prince, you have to spend money to make money.

At that time, it was not uncomomon for an artist to release a single first, then a few weeks later, have the video premiere. The idea was for the single to gain momentum at radio and then premiere the video. Was the model outdated, yes, but it still wasn't that uncommon.

leonche64 said:

Cerebus said:

Being on every talk show over the period of a month or two is not what I'm talking about. It was a three-disc, thirty song set with no hit singles. He should have worked that album HARD for a couple years. Toured it extensively. Released single after single until something stuck. Gone out of his way to keep it positively in the eye of the public and the press. If he really ever intended it to be huge like some of his previous releases he gave up on it way too soon.

Problem was "thirty song set with no hit singles." What was there to tour on? The thing went double platinum, and in my opinion it was lucky to do that. It most likely turned a profit, so it was time to move on. The Prince climate in the late 90's was not like it is now. There was a lot of put off people.

You do realize that with multi-disc sets EACH DISC counts towards the sales total? So if it went "two times platinum" the set actually sold somewhere around 700,000 copies.

I'm pretty sure that Prince expected people would still be paying attention and interested enough that his releasing 30 tracks free of WB would create a MASSIVE career resurgence WITHOUT him having to work the release hard. That's always the impression I've had, anyway. Because of many of the choices already mentioned and discussed in this thread, it didn't.

Cerebus said:

leonche64 said:

Problem was "thirty song set with no hit singles." What was there to tour on? The thing went double platinum, and in my opinion it was lucky to do that. It most likely turned a profit, so it was time to move on. The Prince climate in the late 90's was not like it is now. There was a lot of put off people.

You do realize that with multi-disc sets EACH DISC counts towards the sales total? So if it went "two times platinum" the set actually sold somewhere around 700,000 copies.

I'm pretty sure that Prince expected people would still be paying attention and interested enough that his releasing 30 tracks free of WB would create a MASSIVE career resurgence WITHOUT him having to work the release hard. That's always the impression I've had, anyway. Because of many of the choices already mentioned and discussed in this thread, it didn't.

That's the way I view it. But Prince forgot the non-hardcore fans wouldn't be as interested. Therefore he needed to have hit single(s) to carry the product further especially with the price of the set. A single CD may have been the best option as his first post WB CD. It would have created more sales from people from the price break in combination with peaked interest with the post WB output via media and such.( But that's a should of-could of thing.)

Ultimately it failed because it's a big shit sandwich on two slices of Wonder Bread.

(Disc two being the big steaming pile, and discs one and three being the snooze-inducing Wonder Bread, in case you missed my analogy.)

Efan said:

Ultimately it failed because it's a big shit sandwich on two slices of Wonder Bread.

(Disc two being the big steaming pile, and discs one and three being the snooze-inducing Wonder Bread, in case you missed my analogy.)

Emancipation failed because it had something to do with Prince. 99% of the time, Prince will go out of his way to find a way to fail.

The compositions are not all bad but the production is boring and predicatble R&B sounds of the time. There was no edge to it and it played down the strength of some songs.

jonylawson said:

jtfolden said:

The video was shot AFTER the baby was born, actually...

it was not

It was shot after.

errant said:

Emancipation failed because it had something to do with Prince. 99% of the time, Prince will go out of his way to find a way to fail.

How many albums have you sold, just out of interest?

The problem is that Prince would consider it a success. I seem to remember the phrase "#1 at the bank" being a favourite for him at this time. The publics opinion or how it's received is irrelevant to him when he figured out how to get paid upfront.

motherfunka said:

jonylawson said:

it was not

It was shot after.

Would they really shoot a video like that,so soon after their tragedy?

tobydavies said:

errant said:

Emancipation failed because it had something to do with Prince. 99% of the time, Prince will go out of his way to find a way to fail.

How many albums have you sold, just out of interest?

I sell albums all the time when they suck or if I'm bored with them or a new, remastered or expanded edition comes out.

daPrettyman said:

jseven said:

Another reason why it "failed" was that he released singles for "Somebody's Somebody" and "The Holy River" in late January 1997....and the videos were NOT ready.

Promo ads were bought in magazines.

He didn't have a video for "Somebody's Somebody" out until the end of Feb. n took clips from Roseland, NY and other spots n quickly threw the video together.

"The Holy River" did not have a video out until close til the end of March and featured new shots mixed in with old shots of Mayte from the "unreleased" "Empty Room" because perhaps he didn't have enough footage?

You can't go that long between a release of single to when a video comes out. He did the same thing with "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" as well.

He learned in future years to have a video ready when the single is ready with "Musicology" and "Te Amo Corazon".....

But, just as quickly as he learned, he forgot again. Having "Box O' Chocolates" before Lotusflower but not servicing it to radio and demanding MTV, VH1, and BET pull all his music videos off the web as his own site was to have all his videos on it. Now, how can you promote a new video that you have to pay $77 to see? I argued with the logic with his site designer before the launch of that.

Also, he missed out big time not having a video for "Dance 4 Me" which some can argue was the closest he had been to a mainstream hit since material from 3121.

"Betcha By Golly Wow" is not the worst single he ever chose to release. That honor goes to "Te Amo Borazon" hands down. My problem with "Betcha By Golly Wow" was that it was the 1st cover that Prince ever did and was promoted that way. I hated it. The reason being is people used to ask me why I like Prince so much. I was like "the dude plays and writes everything on his albums. No covers. That is amazing." The covers took those bragging rights away.

Emancipation should have had, Empty Room, 18 & Over, and vault material to say that Warners couldn't handle and several tracks that ended up on the Crystal Ball set or never released at all.

Plain and simple, if Emancipation was 1 disc instead of his vision of 3, with all the promotion he had done, that album would have hit number 1 easily. The 3 disc set was just too pricey. To top it all off, the stuff he was going through at that time. I would have been "screw the promotion too" with what was going on.

Prince hands down still has the talent despite what many of you think. He is the greatest live act on the planet. He used to be that dominate in the studio. All the cats would be like, "Did, you hear the new Prince record? We have to get back in the studio. He is whoopin' our ass again. Sick beats."

The problem is that he trusts no one. He needs someone to handle promotion and other things so he can just concentrate on the music and his ideas. Doing everything himself is what has hurt him. The problem is that costs money. But Prince, you have to spend money to make money.

At that time, it was not uncomomon for an artist to release a single first, then a few weeks later, have the video premiere. The idea was for the single to gain momentum at radio and then premiere the video. Was the model outdated, yes, but it still wasn't that uncommon.

actually, it was exactly the opposite in the latter half of the 90's. the song would go to radio and the video would premier weeks ahead of the single release, so that it would gain momentem and therefore jump to the top of the charts in its first week.

motherfunka said:

jonylawson said:

it was not

It was shot after.

^

the video to Betcha By Golly Wow was shot before the birth - don't be silly, motherfunka..

Prince and Mayte would never make such a video - after that tragedy..

thedance said:

motherfunka said:

It was shot after.

^

the video to Betcha By Golly Wow was shot before the birth - don't be silly, motherfunka..

Prince and Mayte would never make such a video - after that tragedy..

I also heard it was shot afterwards. Maybe some scenes were done before it, but I thought it was always known that at least some of it was indeed filmed afterwards.

alexnvrmnd777 said:

thedance said:

^

the video to Betcha By Golly Wow was shot before the birth - don't be silly, motherfunka..

Prince and Mayte would never make such a video - after that tragedy..

I also heard it was shot afterwards. Maybe some scenes were done before it, but I thought it was always known that at least some of it was indeed filmed afterwards.

The baby was born Oct 16 and died Oct 23. Prince did 3 concerts at Paisley Park the weekend of Oct 26-Oct 27. The soundstage was NOT painted white at that time. The stage was painted white for the video that was filmed a week before the concert that was broadcast live Nov 12. It is possible that the scenes with Mayte were done before those events, but the entire video was most certainly not. I'm not passing any judgement, but who would have thought Prince would have been doing shows the same week???

whatsurname said:

thedance said:

Beautiful song & lyrics. I don't get why so many dislikes it.

not so much dislike as a bad choice for a first single.

i.e. here's prince celebrating his "freedom" from WB, puts 3 hours of music

together and his first single is.........(drum roll)

a lame ass cover....(sound of album imploding)

i hear you all on the tragedy surrounding Prince's child and his unwillingness to promote

in general. i'm just saying trade those 3 singles with some other choices and that album

wouldn't have ended up in the bargain box for $5.

I agree with this.

then a few years later.. he did just about the same thing with "rave unto the joy.."

leading that "next great 'symbol' album

(produced, of course, by "prince"..)

with none other than that ICONIC "prince hit"

"the greatest romance"..

you'd have thought that he would have learned a lesson from "emancipation" in terms of what the "lead-off" single should be..

but no.

besides, Prince is - & always has been - better & smarter than everybody else..

oh well.

by the time "new power soul" came out in '98, I was done with him.

whatsurname said:

BoySimon said:

It wasn't Prince was bored of the songs and he moved on.

thanks for all that info. and ultimately, your last line probably says it all.

did he play maybe one or two of the songs in the "Jam of the Year' tour?

I rather agree with this too.

the last time I saw (& wanted to see) Prince live was on the JOTY tour (Washington DC, in '97 or '98)..

back then (& still now?) he wanted to have it both ways : like he wanted people to "dig my new music" but would always fall back into the "Prince hits"..

I UNDERSTAND that this must have been a "double-edged sword" for him

(this idea has been put forth many times)

stuck between "giving the fans the hits they know & love" & "getting them into my new stuff"..

still - did he not know (or believe or want to admit?) that a lot/most of his music

after 1987

simply wasn't as good

as 99% of of his music from '78-87???

I don't know.

granted - I have NOT been to a Prince show in now, what

15 YEARS

but I have the distinct impression that - setlist-wise - the shows are more or less the same.

but hey - like he said sometime around then :

"I'm number 1 at the bank!"

motherfunka said:

jonylawson said:

it was not

It was shot after.

That hugging scene in the video tells you it was shot afterwards for sure.

Cerebus said:

leonche64 said:

Problem was "thirty song set with no hit singles." What was there to tour on? The thing went double platinum, and in my opinion it was lucky to do that. It most likely turned a profit, so it was time to move on. The Prince climate in the late 90's was not like it is now. There was a lot of put off people.

You do realize that with multi-disc sets EACH DISC counts towards the sales total? So if it went "two times platinum" the set actually sold somewhere around 700,000 copies.

I'm pretty sure that Prince expected people would still be paying attention and interested enough that his releasing 30 tracks free of WB would create a MASSIVE career resurgence WITHOUT him having to work the release hard. That's always the impression I've had, anyway. Because of many of the choices already mentioned and discussed in this thread, it didn't.

Yes, I do realize that, and it further illustrates my point. I agree that 30 great tracks would have been a revolution that would have reshaped the musical landscape. People didn't care a bit about what record company was releasing what. In the end, the product was out of touch with the rest of the industry.

thedance said:

motherfunka said:

It was shot after.

^

the video to Betcha By Golly Wow was shot before the birth - don't be silly, motherfunka..

Prince and Mayte would never make such a video - after that tragedy..

It's a fact. The video was shot after Mayte delivered. At the time, it was known when the video was being shot (it was only later that it came to light the baby had already died by that time).

You have to remember, this is a guy who went on Oprah after the fact and fibbed about it, as well. The entire protional theme of Emancipation was fatherhood.

Cerebus said:

leonche64 said:

Problem was "thirty song set with no hit singles." What was there to tour on? The thing went double platinum, and in my opinion it was lucky to do that. It most likely turned a profit, so it was time to move on. The Prince climate in the late 90's was not like it is now. There was a lot of put off people.

You do realize that with multi-disc sets EACH DISC counts towards the sales total? So if it went "two times platinum" the set actually sold somewhere around 700,000 copies.

Actually, I believe that the way it works (or worked at the time) is that it counted 3 times toward the RIAA certification of copies shipped, but each set only counted as one Soundscan sale.

I think. I used to know these things, but I don't give a shit any more

Whoever said it failed? I would've liked a couple different singles from the album, but it wouldn't have sold much more than it did. He was on Oprah, Rosie, MTV/VH1/BET, and the Today Show when it was released. You can't get much more exposure than that. It was a lot of music to take in, 3 hours worth.

And I love Emancipation, esp disc II, but I think it would've made a double album even better.

Why it "failed"? Simple, OVERKILL.

two 3-disc CD's in a row (or together wherever you were), I think British journalist Paul Gambaccini once said it best in '91 that Prince releases too much music to make market sense.

FYI the standard of Platinum was already changing by that point...

The promotion for it was phenomenal in Prince terms, but with the name change hype, Crystal Ball and his ancillary NPG releases of Exodus and Goldnigga not too long before, lest we forget WB releasing "Chaos & Disorder" (a SEVERELY underrated album IMHO) not too long before Emancipation,

There was just too much to take in... consumer or mark.

'dre

Easy!

Because it was released at that point when Prince wasn't really the Golden Boy and on the public's radar like that anymore. That happens to every artist - if they're lucky, they become a big mainstream star briefly then after that, if they keep releasing stuff, it doesn't get as much press and attention as their big hits did, even if the work isn't necessarily bad. It's just that everybody only gets so much of the public's time and attention before they collectively move on to someone/something else.

Happened to MJ to some extent with pretty much everything after Thriller...I'm sure others could come in and rattle off tons more.

DreZone said:

Why it "failed"? Simple, OVERKILL.

two 3-disc CD's in a row (or together wherever you were), I think British journalist Paul Gambaccini once said it best in '91 that Prince releases too much music to make market sense.

FYI the standard of Platinum was already changing by that point...

The promotion for it was phenomenal in Prince terms, but with the name change hype, Crystal Ball and his ancillary NPG releases of Exodus and Goldnigga not too long before, lest we forget WB releasing "Chaos & Disorder" (a SEVERELY underrated album IMHO) not too long before Emancipation,

There was just too much to take in... consumer or mark.

'dre

Again - aside from the author of this thread - whoever said it failed?? The premise of this thread is not a given. It sold about 500,000 copies (x3) and it went platinum in RIAA standards. Not bad for a 3 disc album. Even Lotusflower was made up of 3 separate albums.

Anyway, your quote by the British Journalist is partially correct. It didn't make market sense to release so much music in such a short time - but Prince's first thought is not about sales. He wants it to sell, but he's not pursuing 5 to 10 million cd's sold for each album. I think he's content with 500k to a million sold. For 30 plus albums over 30 years, that's quite an accomplishment. Esp considering how many releases were double or triple albums (1999, SOTT, Emancipation, Crystal Ball, ONA Live, and Lotusflower).

With respect to the general public the release of Chaos and Disorder just prior to Emancipation thru WB - to fulfull his contract - absolutely made for overkill. He did it anyway. And I'm happier for it. As a Prince fan who has hundreds of his cd's/vinyl/tapes/dvd's/boots etc -- you really can't have too much Prince music. If that were the case I would've passed that threshhold two decades ago.

...Of course, my wife has a very different view. She finds cd's and dvd's everywhere she goes. The car, the garage, the computer, the entertainment center. My brother-in-law and his family came to our house one time for Xmas and were looking around for something to watch. "I found a lot of Prince albums...", he said. "Where are your movies?" So now I store most of my collection away and put my various movies by the TV.

I remember geting all psyched for "Betcha By Golly Wow"...the FIRST cover by the artist of artists...and then I hear it and...

It was Prince doing karaoke.

I could've done without it. Same with "What If God Was One of Us".

It's hard to say...

I could use this same reason for a lot of his albums as in why they didn't get mainstream success (as in success beyond just the people who love listening to his music)...

in this case, there was a LOT of promotion for this before it came out... I'd only seen Prince selling soap (aka: promoting on press tour & talk shows, etc.) for a couple albums to any sort of extreme: this one and Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, did a lot of press for both of those and well, look how they turned out.

Rave is one of a couple running jokes in the purple community where most people keep saying how horrible it is I'm not inclined to say so much that because I'm not that type of person.

The overall project is kinda weak in production value and song quality, yet I think I'd listen to it more frequently than The Black Album, The Rainbow Children or Controversy... just to give a couple examples. it's a matter of personal taste

Musicology was definitely a success in the time frame, I think. I mean Prince was touring all across America, doing the press tour. The only way he could have failed, if he had at all, was giving the albums away for free with the concert tickets... as if Prince needs money from record sales to begin with

3121 got a bit of press too... I mean, the appearances he did around that time, they alerted me to the fact he was still around, doing stuff (I'd only seen part of Purple Rain a couple years earlier, so I thought he was someone only associated with the 80's)

But yeah, why a lot of his albums... pretty much most of the ones after... phew... whenever... I guess here's a good starting point.

I'm just dying to the use the argument that none of the singles got airtime on the radio. It's something that just sticks with me... I elevate a lot of artists today by what's on the radio, it lets me know what's currently trending and alerts me to who I need to check into.

Pretty much all of the artists I'd ushered into my collection is through that, they're American Idol winners/alumni (only a handful, though. Clay Aiken, Daughtry, Jordin Sparks, Kris Allen among a few others) or older artists like The Beatles, Hall & Oates and The Bangles whose songs I just wanna have in my collection

Plus... the end-all, be-all... it's hard for anyone to sell a three-disc album.