This is one of the best posts I've ever read here. Great read; I couldn't agree more.



I hate this argument, I really do. So because Prince is getting older, he has to sound boring in the studio? Sorry, I don't buy it.

Passion doesn't magically die with age. You don't need to be a man in your twenties to be passionate about topics. Hell, Prince has a wealth of topics he could be passionate and urgent about; issues that all people have to confront as they get older. His age isn't an excuse, or at least not a very good one.

For a while now, Prince has been churning out lifeless old school tributes and meandering adult contemporary songs. Live, his songs are all still vibrant and have a touch of emotion in them. Why must that be suddenly non-existant in the studio? Whatever happened to that heart wrenching emotion in songs like I Love U But I Don't Trust U Anymore, or that sexy, climatic joy in The Sensual Everafter? When I hear songs like Te Amo Corazon or anything from Musicology, I don't hear any heart at all. None.

I'm glad he's happy, but last time I checked, that doesn't mean you have to be dull.

Jonny -is there a point to posting those lyrics? Are they up there as examples of recent work with urgency and energy? Are you trying to argue criticisms by cut-and-pasting? Are you Prince?

pepper7 said:

I don't think music needs to make you think necessarily. It just needs to move you. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally, or even just make you want to get up and dance. But if it can't do any of the above, what's the point?

Jonny, in 1997/98, those actually rather unwitty lyric posts might have kept the few fans who hung around, but pulled no punches in being honest about the mediocrity they heard, still wondering if they were being fair to old Princey, but without a hint of irony or humour, posting those victim-complex stroking lyrics just illustrate the teenage girl brand of blind-faith pop idol fanaticism you apparently subscribe to.

They might have worked if the songs they belonged to weren't as equally derivitive and mind-bendingly adolescent as the lyrics you reminded us they mirror.

Ironically enough, your defence, is our strongest witness.
[Edited 1/9/06 21:35pm]

meow85 said:

Sorry my point also was that WE as the General Public buy this kind of music.

So Prince probably thinks THAT'S what people want to hear.

Rap, Hip Hop, R&B, Jazz Funk, etc...

It's like he's just trying to please and be popular and well liked.
[Edited 1/9/06 21:37pm]

Yeah I think it's also more that Prince seem to lack passion in his music.

I can understand his influences and what direction he wants to go in.

I think he's music just sounds less vibrant because he used to be so expressive.

If he had NEVER made music like Sign O The Times or Dirty Mind then there would be nothing to compare it to.

Being vicious wont make him play what you want him to or me remotely address your twaddle. You will accept this material or youll complain. Its beyond irrelevant.

If he had NEVER made music like Sign O The Times or Dirty Mind then there would be nothing to compare it to.

PurpleRein said:

I'm not boring when I'm happy.

That music of Prince's from 1978 - 1993 is always gonna have a well-dusted but very used shelf of it's own in my record collection, but the rest since then has all too often been something I snort at to friends when I justify why I know the guys music inside out and bore my friends and partner to death with some trivial storyline about this song or that song when some vaguely connected person or song pops up the media -- I'm a fan for life, so the people who swoop in with a cheap 'frontin'" or "bitter hater" comment can save it - Yes, I'll always want to hear what Prince's new music is like, even if I feel with 99.99999% certainty that it will be a heart-sinking fan-prophecised wet-fart, because I know what great things he did with the humble pop song in those shit-hot years in the 80s. Prince was the coolest fucker around, cool because he had musical talent in an age of video fluffery, gender/race/sexuality/stereotype fuck-up themes to his work and attitude that seemed utopian then, but just found memories of pop music's last gasp for air before it got sucked down in the murky still waters of todays quagmire of wannabe pretend-sluts who live with their mums and trailer-park boyfriend or identikit rappers who are so afraid to do anything with their position in popular music, they'd rather sit back in the MTV cribes whilst shooting multi-million dollar videos about how hard they had it on the streets as a kid for the sanitised escapism fatasy buying pleasure of middle-class white teenagers.

So I'm listening to Loose!...

PurpleKnight said:

Well, without completely disagreeing with your post, I think "Loose!" is one of the most uninspired Prince tracks ever. It makes perfect sense that he placed it on one of his 'contractual obligation' albums...

Sure, he has mellowed somewhat. But there's still some urgency in his music - listen to "Marrying Kind" and "If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life". You just have to get over the fact that he's no longer in 'badass' mode.
[Edited 1/9/06 23:13pm]

PurpleKnight said:

Well, without completely disagreeing with your post, I think "Loose!" is one of the most uninspired Prince tracks ever. It makes perfect sense that he placed it on one of his 'contractual obligation' albums...

Sure, he has mellowed somewhat. But there's still some urgency in his music - listen to "Marrying Kind" and "If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life". You just have to get over the fact that he's no longer in 'badass' mode.
[Edited 1/9/06 23:13pm]

gargamelgibson said:

How can he be over it? Musicology was like a continuation of the Emancipation to High era and sound, it's like TRC was just a day-dream he had in the limo on the way to the grammies.

'Te Amo Corazon' is what exactly if it's not another mis-judged lead-single ballad with terribly over-used, coy and unerotic lyrical repetitions fron the big book of Courtley Love come-ons.

Prince has a situation where he can have the best of both worlds - a commercial hit record every few years for the masses and media to absorb along with every other popstar from the past 40 years still releasing records and touring, whilst using the NPG Music Club and mail order to release more interesting, absorbing little experiments that would only be labelled as 'too much self-indulgence too soon after the last triple CD set of self-masturbation' by the music press.

Those flames under Prince's once inviting but fiercely blazing log-fire are looking duller and duller every time he knocks out another album of that sickly, tooth-achingly sacharin and artificially flavoured "melting pot" of pop/funk/R&B with a guitar solo and Linn drum samples sprinkled here and there.

If anyone didn't get it by Emancipation, then by NPS or Rave it must have hit like a 2 by 4 - because there'd been tons of fans since way before then screaming Chicken Little - but some of us were distracted by the CD boxsets and loudly hyped, but silently revoked fan-friendly album projects and releases.

That music of Prince's from 1978 - 1993 is always gonna have a well-dusted but very used shelf of it's own in my record collection, but the rest since then has all too often been something I snort at to friends when I justify why I know the guys music inside out and bore my friends and partner to death with some trivial storyline about this song or that song when some vaguely connected person or song pops up the media -- I'm a fan for life, so the people who swoop in with a cheap 'frontin'" or "bitter hater" comment can save it - Yes, I'll always want to hear what Prince's new music is like, even if I feel with 99.99999% certainty that it will be a heart-sinking fan-prophecised wet-fart, because I know what great things he did with the humble pop song in those shit-hot years in the 80s. Prince was the coolest fucker around, cool because he had musical talent in an age of video fluffery, gender/race/sexuality/stereotype fuck-up themes to his work and attitude that seemed utopian then, but just found memories of pop music's last gasp for air before it got sucked down in the murky still waters of todays quagmire of wannabe pretend-sluts who live with their mums and trailer-park boyfriend or identikit rappers who are so afraid to do anything with their position in popular music, they'd rather sit back in the MTV cribes whilst shooting multi-million dollar videos about how hard they had it on the streets as a kid for the sanitised escapism fatasy buying pleasure of middle-class white teenagers.

Sheeshh! When Madonna starts looking like a profound pop music act, you know the sky is falling on pop music!

Prince can stick to Jazz or Funk jams or whatever, but Christ, do it with passion, don't just bang out another 'please all quarters' disc of warm, flat packet-made lemonade - it tastes like shit, and sooner or later all that's gonna be left at the stall are the mentally-challenged and toothless sugar-junkies and old grandma's cooing at their memories of high-school crushes.

TRC is still a hot topic for fans - people vitriolic in their hatred, people lavishing it with the highest praise and everything in between - That can only be good, only the village idiots are still singing around the Emancipation./Rave maypole, and they're starting to smell a bit off too in their electric blue skin-tight PVC body stockings and poorly sown NPG Parkas - Someone throw a fucking toaster in the bath with them and see how quickly those moonraps they're wearing on both ears melt along with them and their cherished copies of GCS2000.

PurpleKnight said:

I have to agree, there's definitely a particular 'fire' in Prince's music that
hasn't been heard since The Gold Experience back in '95.

JonnyApplesauce said:

Likewise for the game of Emperor's New Clothes that some fans play.

I'm not making an open letter to Prince in a plea from 'a true fan' to wake up and smell the coffee, I'm just expounding on my thoughts and reasoning why someone with so much potential and quality squandered it on gluttonous self-indulgence and brattish torrents and tantrums, then smeared feaces all over, whilst still being unflinchingly dellusional and glaringly evasive about how mediocre that period was.

I'd be a little worried for him if he did come here to read what people with their own opinion thinks, rather than starring at the grey, blank walls of the NPGMC ivory tower.

NouveauDance said:

Of all the posts to do it, this aint the one to mispell delusional.

toejam said:

And you have to get over the wrongful assumption that I want middle aged Prince to be the same as "Dirty Mind" Prince.

I don't hear any particular urgency in Marrying Kind or If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life, I just hear safe pop songs that mimic his old style enough not to turn off any casual listeners. I don't really hear any genuine sentiment or ambition in either one.

Say what you want about Loose!, but the song has a life in the vocals that I don't hear in any of Prince's post TRC songs, or in most of his post-Emancipation work.

Prince's new album songs are just lifeless. Take Reflection. He performs it on Tavis Smiley, and you just feel the genuine emotion oozing out of him with every lyric sung. Then the album version: completely flat and devoid of any sentiment in comparison.

Then there's his guitar playing on the RRHOF performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It was just...devastating. Compare that to his mechanical playing on A Million Days. There's no comparison at all.

Live, his music still has a genuine energy and life to it that is simply not there in the studio anymore. It's almost as if he's so petrified of recording a collosal failure now that he's making sure not to take any chances; nice and safe (and in the process, dull) songs so as to not repulse possible new listeners under this Universal deal.

I don't even like TRC, but on that album you could tell Prince cared about the quality of the album more than the possible reception to it. You could tell it meant something to him. He had a message to convey and he was gonna do it regardless of what some thought. I don't hear that vibrance anymore, and I miss it. More than him swearing or singing about his love for giving head. I just want Prince to record songs that sound like they came from deep down within his heart. I don't care if they're jazz or pop or whatever; I just want songs that matter again, rather than forgettable tunes that don't elicit love or hate of any kind.

I'm not sure a comparison to Te Amo Corazon is a fair one.

Whereas it doesn't have Endorphinmachine like screams I don't think many ballads past or present have too much urgency.

Maybe Te Amo is 3121's She Loves me 4 me - that's what I'm hoping anyway.

-If only Prince would do what I want him to do, all would be right with the world-. Lather, rinse, repeat.

O.k., we get it.