The way I see it, The Rainbow Children was a return to form, but this does not
make it a classic. It only appeared to be great because the previous few albums
had been fairly lacklustre by comparison.

The way I see it, The Rainbow Children was a return to form, but this does not
make it a classic. It only appeared to be great because the previous few albums
had been fairly lacklustre by comparison.

BorisFishpaw said:

I don't think it's all that people make it out to be. Yeah, strip away the distracting narration and lame lyrics and you have an interesting album. But ultimately the songs are poor, imo. He favoured the concept over the songwriting and that's where he went wrong. There's not a single track on it that I would consider a Prince classic. However, I do understand why people like. It showed signs of adventure which had been largely lacking in his work for some time. But I just don't think it's a very good album.

Musically I think the album's very strong but it has flaws. Each song is complex in terms of arrangement and musicianship, but the compositions themselves aren't as great. If there was ever an album to make the argument that prince songs have to be listened to all the way through to appreciate them it's this album, but I think he overdoes it a little in the "song mutation" department; often times it seems a little too forced as if he's trying to make an otherwise lame tune more interesting and I think it's unnecessary to have nearly EVERY song morph in some way. A lot of the songs are just plain derivative and seem like self-conscious tributes to Prince's musical heroes: title track= miles davis, the work=james brown, family name=sly stone, she loves me 4 me=stevie wonder and 1+1+1 is 3 is just an inferior rehash of Erotic City. I don't usually pay much attention to the lyrics, but they certainly are a flaw as they are relentlessly pretentious and preachy and the music does not support the message, and all those altered vocals are also annoying, especially on the first couple minutes of Family Name. All that being said, I think it's definitely his best attempt at seamless tying together funk, rock and fusion and in terms of arrangement complexity/internal variation, these songs are all among his best, and his proficiency on his instruments is rarely displayed better than on this album.
[Edited 6/16/05 0:17am]

Your take on the album is a good example of what knowing too much about an artist can do to the musical experience. Granted "The Work" is a blatant, but still good, J.B. ripoff, 1+1+1 is 3 is similar to Erotic City and the end of the title track sounds like a Miles Davis fusion piece, but the other comparisons are a stretch and probably wouldn't come to mind without any knowledge of his influences. I'm not gonna lie to you and say I don't do the same thing though when I hear the slightest of similarities between songs.

Morphing the songs is his way of transitioning from one song to the next the way a writer constructs paragraphs. Again it's a musical story not a collection of songs. All of the talk of the vocals and the preachiness is really just nitpicking. Prince has been doing these things for years. You can find something to dislike about anything if you want to.
[Edited 6/16/05 1:45am]

That's just the point. This isn't a traditional album made of a collection of songs. It's an experience, a musical story if you will-- hence the narration and the idea of not tracking it. It's not one of those feel-good pop albums most Prince fans seem to love. In some ways it's a musical equivalent to Schindler's List (for lack of a better example). Not many would dispute the quality of this movie, yet not many could watch it repeatedly. TRC is not an easy listen.

This album isn't mindless entertainment and for once he doesn't play down to his fans. Knowing he would lose some of us he went ahead and did what he truly felt, reached down deep into his soul and TRC is the result. You aren't going to get a much truer statement from the man.

This isn't my favorite Prince album but I can recognize it as one of his best. It's certainly a stronger work than the likes of ATWIAD, Dirty Mind, and Lovesexy. Artistically, there's no comparison. Hopefully, others will learn to appreciate it some day.

The songs arent all lame!

What about The work pt.1, Muse2thePharoh, THE EVERLASTING NOW, 1+1+1=3?!?!?!?

Cloudbuster said:

That's just the point. This isn't a traditional album made of a collection of songs. It's an experience, a musical story if you will-- hence the narration and the idea of not tracking it. It's not one of those feel-good pop albums most Prince fans seem to love. In some ways it's a musical equivalent to Schindler's List (for lack of a better example). Not many would dispute the quality of this movie, yet not many could watch it repeatedly. TRC is not an easy listen.

This album isn't mindless entertainment and for once he doesn't play down to his fans. Knowing he would lose some of us he went ahead and did what he truly felt, reached down deep into his soul and TRC is the result. You aren't going to get a much truer statement from the man.

This isn't my favorite Prince album but I can recognize it as one of his best. It's certainly a stronger work than the likes of ATWIAD, Dirty Mind, and Lovesexy. Artistically, there's no comparison. Hopefully, others will learn to appreciate it some day.

whodknee said:

It's not just that many of the songs are similar to pieces by Prince's musical heroes but they seem to be blatant immitations of the style/feel of prince's heroes. Sure every artist is "influenced" by others, many even quote or borrow from others, and sometimes even great artists will outright steal from others, but the songs I mentioned, and maybe some others on the album, sound like deliberate pastiches, which is all fine and dandy but ever so slightly cheapens the album as a whole as opposed to in the 80s when you could definitely detect his influences but he wasn't blatant about it and his songs still felt like "prince" song rather than homages or immitations.

The morphing/mutating of these songs isn't always, or even that often out of transitioning or seguewaying, and I don't have a problem with songs that do that, in fact I love them, but I think it was a tad excessive here because it makes it so it's difficult to keep track of what song your on or to be able to remember the sound or feel of song. I also think that it seems somewhat contrived as an attempt to make the tunes seem more interesting than they are.

Again, I like this album, I think it's his best album outside of his prime, but it's not on quite the same level as Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times or whatever other albums are considered "classic".

An album that stands alongside:

Dirty Mind
Controversy
1999
Purple Rain
Around The World In A Day
Parade
Sign 'O' The Times
Lovesexy
The Gold Experience
The Truth
The Rainbow Children?

love