may 1985...prince is the biggest music star in the world....purple rain 24 straight weeks at number 1 in the us....number one movie....biggest selling and most critically acclaimed single of 1984, when doves cry....massively successful tour of the us seen by millions of people.
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...prince was as big as it is just about possible to be in the media world.
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...so what did prince do next?...have a break...nope....start work on purple rain 2...nope....go to hollywood and cash in on his movie success...nope
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of course we all know what he did next and it is to his eternal credit that he did...he must have been under massive pressure to follow up the purple rain album with something in the same vein and that would have been so easy for him to do, change the odd chord here and there, no problem.
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...nope, prince released (almost as soon as purple rain fell off the number one spot) a quirky, psychedelic album intitled "around the world in a day" which was a completely different album musicially from "purple rain"...almost devoid of commercial tracks (apart from raspberry beret) it was a bold statment from prince and which still reverberates today.he follows his heart when releasing music, he will make musical left turns when his gut feeling tells him to, regardless of whether it is commercial or not.it is this that makes him (to me) a fascinating musician to follow through the years.
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...sure, sometimes his music is great, sometimes its not but its always interesting...sure, he likes to have good selling albums every now and then(as happened this year) but sales dont rule his world.
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...with prince, you are always wondering what direction he will go in next and every since i first played "around the world in a day" he still has me guessing.

agreed.

No , he definitely has gotten more commercial over the years
with Musicology as the latest example , not saying it's a bad album though

dont know about that..."the rainbow children" and "news" are as uncommercial has he has ever been!!!

yeah,N.E.W.S was pretty damn mainstream.

Yes , but "Diamonds and pearls" , "Symbol" , "Batman" , "Rave"
and so on were commercial

"Sign 'O' the Times" was commercial, in a sense.

I don't see what is wrong with him being commercial every once in a while he has to make his money too.

Let's also not forget that (for the most part), even if he releases a commerical album, the music is still quite good.

funny, you can say this about most any Prince album...

What did Prince release after his platinum selling 2nd release called Prince with it's #1 R&B hit "I Wanna Be Your Lover"?

the sexually-explicit punk-funk rawk of Dirty Mind, which didn't sell as much but has become a classic among critics and hardcore Prince fans alike.

What did Prince release after the sparse funk-rock-pop of Controversy?

His biggest selling album ever, the totally different synth-funk album 1999 which spent more than 2 years in Billboard's Top 100.

How would he be able to top that? A 1999 part 2?

No! Prince changes course once again and releases the heavily rock influenced Purple Rain which becomes, can you believe it, an even bigger seller than 1999, staying on top of the charts for 24 straight weeks!

So... as we can see, doing something different with every other album or so is nothing new for Prince. He has done it all along. This is who Prince is. Some of us need to stop thinking of him as being the Purple Rain Prince. That was just one of many eras & personas he created.

People always praise Prince for changing his style after "Purple Rain" and never going back but I haven't really seen a drastic style change since then. Sure, he may throw in a little house, hip hop, or jazz every now and then, but he always goes back to the same formula...retro 1960s/1970s sounding music.

KillaCal said:

I never said there's anything wrong with it