I find it very hard to believe that people were rockin this release at the time of release as heartily as they speak on it now. Especially after the false hope of kiss as a first single. I dont buy it and can't be fooled.

From "Kiss" onward, I rocked this album. And I still spin it and its singles in my car and at work.


To this day.

ThreadBare said:

Turned up Do U Lie eh?

jtfolden said:

so if thats the case maybe he felt that "he" didn't have enough good material and that most of the best output came from other folks at the time.

just a theory

DiamondGirl said:

Sure did. Absolutely. Then I thought it was a neat song. I dig it all the more, today, for its subtleties: the tongue-in-cheek melancholy lyrics, the gently strummed guitar (probably played by Wendy), his affected British accent toward the end (Prince is crooning, a la Al Jarreau, throughout the song), the brushed drums, the walked bassline at the bridge, the horns...

No, you're right: The song is not "Lady Cab Driver," but there are some real hints to mastery and craft that are worth a closer listen on Parade. And, "Do U Lie?" is one such song.



.
[Edited 4/7/06 23:49pm]

of course did not enough good material for Parade in 1986, Prince was too busy squirrelling away for the prosperous,abundant year of 1987, see thread just below (Actually I adore Parade)

i'm surprised everyone believes prince meant it. i always heard/though it was an insult to wendy and lisa who had unprecedented influence on princes music by this time. so when he split with them he criticised the album that they'd just done. if he felt he didn't have enough material why record a triple album for the next year? then black album? in the next 2 years he wrote 5LPS worth of material, plus madhouse released an album around that time didn't they? 3lp SOTT/Dream Factory etc, Black Album, LoveSexy, Madhouse.

Supposedly on the ONA tour someone brought him a parade lp to sign and prince smiled and said i'm glad i'm not the only one who digs this. obviously this is just a 'story' but the fact he plays songs from the album now suggests if he ever did dislike it, then he certainly doesn't anymore.

ThreadBare said:

Right, I love Parade as the whole record. For me it was the most exciting moment to hear the first songs in radio (they did this back in the days) The next day I bought it. 'Do U lie?' was always a great and positive surprise to me.
I think I never loved an album ´from first song to the last than that did.

In Musician mag 1988 P stated he felt the album wasn't that "funky". If u noticed other than kiss he hardley does any material from that album live. He didn't even include any of the popular tunes on the hits & b - sides. Only kiss and anotherlover... have been played live since the "Parade" tour to my knowledge.

JQuad said:

Don't remember him playing 'Anotherlover' after the parade tour, but he's played Girls & Boys And 'Sometimes It Snows In April' since.

There are many albums which Prince rarely plays music from on subsequent tours, it's not really a good indicator. Personally, I'd be over the moon if he suddenly started playing other songs from this album again!
[Edited 4/8/06 5:23am]

OdysseyMiles said:

Yes, yes and yes! Parade was the first Prince album I bought, and it blew me away! I had never heard anything like it before, and I played it to smithereens . It made me go out and buy every album I had missed till then - and no, I wasn't disappointed. To this day, Parade is one of my favourite albums. I think it has stood the test of time, and I play it all the time.

padawan said:

U obviously aint gettin compensated enough if THIS is all u can come up with to bait.

origmnd said:

Ain't bait. It's an observation. Why don't you offer some thoughts on why Prince didn't use GREAT vault material?

Hey I love Parade. It just wasn't too hittin at the time as one would have expected from Prince. But..in retrospect...

The best parts of Parade:

the transitional drumming from New Position to I Wonder U to UTCM. He supposedly did all the drumming for three songs in one take. The bass on New Position..sweet.

The slow groove of I Wonder U..and the ending of it with that heaviness...and that muted horn throughout..and the girls laid back vocal...and the guitar picking at the very end. In UTCM where Prince goes "thats alright" in the breakdown bridge..and you can hear the horns having a field day with headphones. How Girls and Boys has that push me pull you rubbery bottom like Bowie's "Fame." When the girls sing I Love You Baby, I Love you so Much. The kazoo keyboard and the linn drum "kuhh!" sound at the end. How Life Can Be So Nice starts up real fast and has that "kah" sound at the beginning with the keyboard lines..then it stops when Prince starts to sing...

when he says "Kisses never lie" it all starts up again--this is Roadhouse Garden material--really. Then near the end it all comes crashing together with the vocals going wild! The drums live being played furiosly, then it ends. How Venus just pops up giving the sense of having just reached climax and now your laying there letting it happen....and the mournful horns playing near the end--I picture an overcast dock when they play..and that last piano key played,

then the very best part is the opening of Mountains..that linn drum making it like rubber and the "phu puck' sounds interlaces throughout the fake heavy drums...the falsetto--nice and "dry"...the part that says "the sea would one day overflow with all your tears, and love will always leave ya lonely"..the ethereal choir (or is it synth) that gets higher in register...the horn blasts like staccato keyoard synths..the break down...the part where he says "guitar and drums on the one, huh!"..then the guitar strumming....then part where he goes "and the girls say/sing"...

the bass seprated in Do U Lie...when he says "mama mama" or something like that..and when he comes back in cracked voice from the bridge and says "when I lie..."the JB geetar lick that opens Kiss..almost like a reverse of when Venus starts, inside out..the push push sound like moving furniture...the denseness of the production..sounds like its "air tight"...the drum sound and that synth the spounds like nothing else...the wah wah geetar part..saying Dynasty, one of the only few pop culture references hes ever used..the ending guitar licks like its being strangled.

The droning opening strains of Anotherlover..and the drums beating like they're waitng for something..then the boom of the piano and the sludge...the bottomness of the whole song..his lackadaisical singing..(this song is POP Life inside out btw)...how the girls etc sing with Prince a few beats behind then it all comes together for the chrous after the second verse...the guitar strains in the bridge..and when he says "baaad"...theres gonna be a riot and when they say that there's that piano key rise real quick. Sometimes Snows In April..The "ahs ahs oh ohhhs", the tuba sounding Prince singing with that first ones..then the real horn blwoing...the strumming of the acoustic...the chorus voices mixed on the title part and when they sing "sometiimes I feel so bad"...when he says "now looking at his picture I realize"...RWPBIM
[Edited 4/8/06 11:29am]

lazy? maybe but it is what it is and sex cymbol what?

DiamondGirl said:

This is a pretty silly comment that shows a very narrow viewpoint of the world where your own opinion 'must' be valid for everyone. - 'fraid not.

You don't speak for me and I find your opinion pretty foreign. There was no "false hope" with Kiss as it was NOT the best thing to come from Parade, to my ears. UTCM, Girls & Boys, Mountains, Anotherloverhoneyohead (especially this one), Sometimes It Snows In April, even the B-Side Love Or Money, are all killer tracks, to me, that are at least as good as Kiss and sometimes better. Up until that time, Parade was the first album I'd ever enjoyed, non-stop, from beginning to end - every track, every B-Side, every outtake.

In 1986, Parade was MORE than anything I might have expected. Indeed, it didn't just fill my expectations it pretty much blew them (and his past releases) to smithereens and it was a good 6+ years before I heard anything from Prince to top it.

Meloh9 said:

I guess my first problem with this whole idea is, in the mid-to-late 80s, can you imagine Prince releasing an album he wasn't happy with? There was no rush to release Parade, it came out months before the movie. This is a guy that canned the Black Album a week before release. If he didn't like it, he would have fixed it quick.

This might have been an ego issue later (when he was trying to put that period and W&L behind him) but at the time I think it's safe to say that he didn't look at it that way... or else he wouldn't have been asking W&L to make even more music for Dream Factory.

jtfolden said:

There will always be a few outliers.



I wont mention declining sales either though.

i bought this the other day (i won the album on a radio show in 86 and my CD disapeared some time ago but i had it as mp3, and bought Emancipation at the same time because the 1st disc was in my car when it got nicked - what a lucky thief).

Its so refreshing and its Prince on a tangent artistically. The flow from all the stuff on side one (LP thinking here) is smooth and surprising with the arrangements twisting around. I love the flutes and drums at the beginning. Theres no way a Prince album will start like that again.

JQuad said:

Which, again, sounds like BS frankly. Prince always insisted that "Around The World In A Day is a funky album. Live it's even funkier." Parade pretty much wipes the floor with ATWIAD where funky moments are concerned. In fact, there's more in the Parade era pointing to his pre PR roots than anything on the two albums preceding it. Thankfully, there's a lot of new and more exciting moments, as well.



Prince has regularly played Kiss, Girls & Boys, and Sometimes It Snows In April (a W&L composition) in concert over the years. I believe some of the other tracks have popped up on occasion... That's a pretty good number if you want to use it as an indicator of anything... How many songs does he still play from each of his other '80s albums?

DiamondGirl said:

Which is irrelevant unless you're a popularity lamb that feels compelled to rely on what the other sheep like. Baaaa-baaaaa... not me. However, 20 years later and Parade still maintains a popularity that most of Prince's other releases don't.



That would be a smart move on your part considering that a) no intelligent person would ever expect Prince to maintain his PR audience (especially considering Prince purposefully set out to dump the shallow hangers on with ATWIAD), and b) Parade and SOTT sold in similar numbers to what 1999 did prior to the PR explosion. Prince's real sales decline came with LoveSexy (in the US at least).

KISS, Girls & Boys, I Wonder U, Life Can Be So Nice, Under The Cherry Moon, Anotherloverholenyohead, Mountains, Do U Lie and Parade's B-sides, Love or MONEY & Alexa De Paris was truly a great experience to '86's pop scene and later Mia Boca, G-Spot & Baby You're a Trip by Jill Jones and Wendy & Lisa's Waterfall, Song About, Blues Away, Sideshow & oh hell their debut albums kept the vibe going. This was a slamming time for 4 His Royal Badness & his Funk Soldiers. & Those of U who were waiting on the return of 1999/Purple Rain then maybe U should have been listening to Jesse Johnson, Morris Day, Jam & Lewis' Janet Jackson and Dre Cymone's Jody Watley. Maybe that's why P was changing styles musically because by this point everybody was on his 1999/Purple Rain style. Lets remember Prince played Controversy first, then The Time, Vanity/Apollonia 6 & Sheila E. All of which had the flavor. ATWIAD & Parade represent change, people stared to realize that P wasn't just a funkster but a real po artist (unlike his contemparies). Who else (mainstream artist) could have pulled off an album like Parade?

padawan said:

I would say the vault tracks wouldnt have fit into the realm of the movie. Also
Prince likes to "lie" about how much of his material there is..

jtfolden said:

PARADE was Prince's most collabroative effort; this is just his ego talking because he's being dismissive of the contributions of Wendy & Lisa et all. That quote came around the time he was also making fun/putting down W&L on his love4oneanother website.

The fact that he performs "Kiss", "Sometimes it Snows In April", and "Girls & Boys" live, and NOTHING from the likes of "EMANCIPATION" (the album he was apparently "born" to make), "SYMBOL", "GOLD EXPERIENCE", etc. tells me that he's FULL of it!

"PARADE" and "RAINBOW CHILDREN" alternate as my favorite album.
[Edited 4/8/06 15:05pm]

jtfolden said:

The sales comment meant thast not many peopel were feeling it. The outliers comment meant that of course there were some reveling in it.

But Im here to tell ya that not many at that time were reveling in it just because YOU and a few others were. Parade has grown with affection during the past 20 years more then it garnered at time of release. Dont be upset.

jtfolden said:

EXACTLY what I was thinking... If "Purple Rain" had flopped, I bet he would have called it a mistake.

PurpleKnight said:

I'll go with this answer.

DiamondGirl said:

...but the comment is really fairly baseless. "Not many people were feeling it" as opposed to what? It only sold 1+ million in the US but over 4.3 million copies world-wide... that's more than any album from For You through Controversy, comparable to SOTT, more than LoveSexy, more than any 90s album outside of D&P. I'm sure Prince hoped for some mainstream success with the movie tie-in but, comparatively, it did rather well considering it was anything but a mainstream album. You really can't use sales as a slight when looking back with hindsight.



There's nothing to be upset about... The fact that Parade has continued to enjoy growing affection over 20 years shows the high quality of this collection. Even Prince himself still mines this album for concert material today when he neglects much of his other works.
[Edited 4/8/06 21:08pm]

warning2all said:

I agree about the ego part but the quote originally surfaced back in the '80s, not long after the Revolution had been disbanded.