Ok, so this is mostly for pre-internet years fans, back when you couldn't download a single song and had little choice but to buy full albums (unless you had a friend to make you a tape)... Back then Prince used to write a lot of songs for a lot of people and I chased them all and well...

It allowed me to discover some artists and albums that I really fell in love with, and many others were just alright but enjoyable at some level (all these silly dance-synthpop singers come to mind), but on the other hand they were a coiple of really awful albums that I had to buy back then, and it really broke my heart to spend money on them and to have these pieces of junk in my record collection.

Please keep in mind thay we may not all have the same musical tastes so let's accept our differences

Here's what comes to mind for me anyway...

Kenny Rogers' They Don't Make Them Like They Used To. Had to buy a really expensive imported CD. That whole shit is like music for your mid-80's 45 years old Midwest housewife. Kenny friggin' Rogers for chrissakes! And on top of it all the Prince song sucks (at least arranged as it is, I'd be curious to hear P's recording). I just couldn't believe I was buying a Kenny Rogers album anyway.

Sheena Easton's Nothing But A Heart. Same shit as above, exactly! I really loved A Private Heaven and I was cool with The Lover In Me. But Nothing But A Heart was just exactly as bad, as commercially pathetic, as They Don't Make Them... Only good thing was Eternity, which in this case ended-up being a fave of mine. But everything else on it OMG!!! This one too was a quite expensive imported shit too, but a cassette this time.

Patti Labelle's Be Yourself and Burnin'. These ones were hardcore too. To think that such a great singer would get so low and record such crap! I don't know who was targeted exactly, as it was too white for black audiences and too black for white ones, but it was nothing but unbearable radio-friendly ballads and shit.

Céline Dion's Céline Dion. I never had the guts to buy it. For one thing in France Céline Dion really is the laughing stock of my generation, so having a record of her would really have made my high school pals from back then laugh at me until the end of time. So I've never heard the song until the early 00's when I was able to download it. I'd be curious to get the rest of the album just to see if it's as bad as I think it is, but I never cared to download it so far.

Howard Hewitt's Allegience. That shit left me so cold as well. Yet another soulless radio-friendly commercial shit like the others above... Left me cold as a stone everytime I'd listen to it.

Louie Louie's Let's Get Started. Now THAT was an odd piece of shit. It sucked on so many levels! It was kind of ambitious in its odd ways, you could hear that Louie Louie was trying to get somewhere, to accomplish something that would be original. But that whole dance-oriented thing was clumsy as hell, and it sounded more like a bad joke or a parody or something.

I've never heard the Van Gogh album because I never saw anywhere it in my life, but from the snippets I could hear on their website it's really heavy country rock shit. I know some people dig it so I ain't gonna disrespect because I think this band is honest in what they do, but it sounded terrible to my delicate ears.

So these are the miserable episodes of my life as a Prince fan, back when Prince gave songs to everyone and his cousin. What are yours?

The songs in the post above, I never thought were worth getting otherwise they would have been singles which I would have then bought--like Patti Labelle's "Yo Mister". I have the 12" of that.

The only album I bought for one Prince song was the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack. I don't think I ever even played the rest of it.

sexton said:

The songs in the post above, I never thought were worth getting otherwise they would have been singles which I would have then bought--like Patti Labelle's "Yo Mister". I have the 12" of that.

The only album I bought for one Prince song was the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack. I don't think I ever even played the rest of it.

I also bought the Bright Lights, Big City soundtrack for Prince's "Good Love", but was pleasantly surprised to find many other treasures on it that I probably would never have discovered otherwise. Some of it sounds a little dated now (the soundtrack was released in 1988), but still holds up pretty well. Definitely worth checking out if you can find it.....

ADKAVON said:

sexton said:

The songs in the post above, I never thought were worth getting otherwise they would have been singles which I would have then bought--like Patti Labelle's "Yo Mister". I have the 12" of that.

The only album I bought for one Prince song was the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack. I don't think I ever even played the rest of it.

I also bought the Bright Lights, Big City soundtrack for Prince's "Good Love", but was pleasantly surprised to find many other treasures on it that I probably would never have discovered otherwise. Some of it sounds a little dated now (the soundtrack was released in 1988), but still holds up pretty well. Definitely worth checking out if you can find it.....

It's a wonderful collection if you like mid-80's cosmopolitan, somewhat snobbish, synthpop. The movie is also a real gem: it reminds me so much of my life in my early 20's

stevefraser67 said:

I've lost count of how many bad albums I bought just cos Prince penned a song. There's some doozies! Thankfully I was able to offload most of them on eBay. [Edited 10/5/12 21:33pm]

I resold those above and a couple of others when I was able to digitalize the Prince songs into ùy computer. The funny thing is that I ended-up re-downloading some of the full albums, just for the sake of silly nostalgia

whenever i've bought an album with a prince song on it - i just rip the prince song and forget the rest, although i do like Love Is Contagious and Sitting In The Lap of Luxury (to name 2 non prince songs that i liked after getting the album). plus i always get them second hand (cheap).

T.C Ellis

Dale Bozzio

ADKAVON said:

sexton said:

The songs in the post above, I never thought were worth getting otherwise they would have been singles which I would have then bought--like Patti Labelle's "Yo Mister". I have the 12" of that.

The only album I bought for one Prince song was the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack. I don't think I ever even played the rest of it.

I also bought the Bright Lights, Big City soundtrack for Prince's "Good Love", but was pleasantly surprised to find many other treasures on it that I probably would never have discovered otherwise. Some of it sounds a little dated now (the soundtrack was released in 1988), but still holds up pretty well. Definitely worth checking out if you can find it.....

I still have the vinyl copy I bought 24 years ago. At the time I already had the New Order and Depeche Mode songs on 12". And I later bought Bryan Ferry's "Kiss and Tell" on 12" too. "Pump Up the Volume" and Narada Michael Walden's "Divine Emotions" I know because those were singles. But the remaining songs I could not tell you what they sound like.

mask said:

T.C Ellis

There are many bad Paisley Park albums I bought because they were on Paisley Park (Carmen Electra), but I drew the line with T.C. Ellis.

The Three O'clock album on P.Park!

I have to admit that I like T.C. Ellis, Dale Bozzio and Tony LeMans' albums. The first is definitely not a landmark in the history of hip-hop but there's something cute to it, and I like the way it sounds. As for Dale and Tony, well I'm a huge fan of synthpop, and the silliest and more romantic the songs the better, so obviously I had to fall in love with these 2

I never bought Night Calls because my best friend 's mom had it, so I could listen to it at his place and copy Five Woman on a cassette. I haven't listened to the album in almost 20 years but I remember that it sounded like something good in that specific genre (which wasn't a genre I enjoyed personnally). I'd be curious to hear it again.

As for Carmen Electra it's not an album with Prince songs on it: it's a Prince album. A bad one i'll give you that, but difficult to avoid if you're a Prince fan. It has a couple of really cool moments, though.

databank said:

As for Carmen Electra it's not an album with Prince songs on it: it's a Prince album. A bad one i'll give you that, but difficult to avoid if you're a Prince fan. It has a couple of really cool moments, though.

When they were released, I bought every Paisley Park album whether they were secretly Prince albums or not. And I still refused to buy T.C. Ellis.

As for Carmen Electra it's not an album with Prince songs on it: it's a Prince album. A bad one i'll give you that, but difficult to avoid if you're a Prince fan. It has a couple of really cool moments, though.

Oddly, some of the best songs recorded for it were left off it, such as Powerline, The Juice and Power From Above....its strange as I would have used them and vaulted many of the album tracks instead.

[Edited 10/7/12 15:15pm]

SONNYT said:

The Three O'clock album on P.Park!

I love this one

Fury said:

Howard Hewitt's Allegience. That shit left me so cold as well. Yet another soulless radio-friendly commercial shit like the others above... Left me cold as a stone everytime I'd listen to it. One of the best solo H.Hewett cd's [Edited 10/7/12 14:19pm]

Amazing!!! I never heard any of his other albums so I can't compare.

I'll download it one of these days. Maybe I'll appreciate it more than back then.

i love this thread!.

100% worst was 3 0' Clock for Neon Telephone. That was torture!!

back in the day,I used to buy all the albums that were released on Paisley Park Records,just because of the Prince connection.I bought stuff like Good Question (which doesn't even contain any Prince involvement),Carmen Elektra,Taja Sevelle and Ingrid Chavez (which is surprisingly very good).

sexton said:

The only album I bought for one Prince song was the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack. I don't think I ever even played the rest of it.

I found this album for $1 a few years ago,so I bought it I never listened to the other tracks,either.

databank said:

As for Carmen Electra it's not an album with Prince songs on it: it's a Prince album. A bad one i'll give you that, but difficult to avoid if you're a Prince fan. It has a couple of really cool moments, though.

the music on this album is superb.It's almost worth it just for the funky grooves throughout

I begrudgingly bought the Kenny Rogers album too. That certainly tested my loyalty to the 'P' at the time! lol.

Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, 21 Nights, Lotus/MPLS, 20Ten and... the next one (if we are ever punished with such a thing).

vitriol said:

Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, 21 Nights, Lotus/MPLS, 20Ten and... the next one (if we are ever punished with such a thing).

Now, we always have hope for the next thing. I'm always hoping he opens his next collection of songs with "Hey Mother Fuckers, I'm back!" And then gives us the album we have been waiting for for a long time.

^I've grown tired of waiting for that.

Ain't gonna happen.

vitriol said:

Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, 21 Nights, Lotus/MPLS, 20Ten and... the next one (if we are ever punished with such a thing).

I waited days for someone to post something like this.

Glad you didn't disappoint

^I never do!

sexton said:

mask said:

T.C Ellis

There are many bad Paisley Park albums I bought because they were on Paisley Park (Carmen Electra), but I drew the line with T.C. Ellis.

But, but, but....

It had Prince AND George Clinton!

yeah, I bought that shit.