GustavoRibas said:

I like The Gold Experience album a lot, actually. That's probably as close to his best "concept 80's" album without sounding like it's from the 80's as he's going to get.

I have to agree here, although he's done some great songs since '88. I bought Lovesexy a couple of months ago, and I felt that the first song, (Eye) No is better than anything on 3121. If there was a "best album since Lovesexy" I would have to say Rainbow Children.

Lovesexy was the last album that had really cool fonts on the cover. I think the Lovesexy font is amazingly creative.

And the videos were great. But overall, it was kind of the beginning of the Disney-ification of Prince music.

Lovesexy was the culmination of Prince's 80's albums & when taken with the concert, was definitely the height of Prince's creativity - that's not to say that he hasn't produced some excellent work since then, it's just that the excitement & mood around this era was fantastic.

GustavoRibas said:

And what is wrong with Batman? Batman was the bridge between the 80's and the New Power Generation... GB is actually a quite brilliant album too. D & P is probably the weakest before the monumentous Symbol... Come shoulda been better than it was but TGE is awsome. Exodus is wicked too...

Personally I dont see Lovesexy as the end of anything or the last of anything... The whole journey continues beyond.... and ends at TGE.

Lovesexy is a strange one - I had followed Prince for a number of years prior to it, seen him live, papered my room with posters, and I was ecsatic when I bought it, getting that by then familiar 'what the ~@'#? reaction. In retrospect although it doesn't compare too well with the albums leading up to it especially the one it follows, it always has an emotional effect on me.

The few years leading up to Lovesexy in '88 were so much fun as a Prince fan, what with amazing albums, tours, bootlegs etc, and the whole Lovesexy experience seemed to crown that period. Certainly the magic seemed lost after it. So although I maybe don't rate it as highly as any of the other albums from that decade (besides Batman), it is the last special album for me, and I prefer it to anything he has subsequently released with the notable exception of TRC. As an atheist, the message on TRC is quite repellent but his inspiration was evident and echoes the emotional charge of Lovesexy, the less conventional and dogmatice view of spirituality found there I find easier to admire even if I don't share it.

Oh, and what is wrong with Batman? It was the first Prince album on which I couldn't find a great song, and although I enjoyed it as I did many of the later albums, it was a huge dissapointment coming as it did after such a great 10 years of perpetual growth and wonder.

Lovesexy is my favorite of his albums, but it's far from the last great thing he did.

vivid said:

I guess people have different ideas about how they see the end of that era, I
personally see the end of that era with Graffitti Bridge, it may not have been made or released in the 80's but to me it was kinda the last bit of that 80's Prince for example it was the 3rd and last made soundtrack album, it featured the Time and had a lot of that Morris Day attitude and characteristics about it that we saw previously in Under the Cherry Moon and Purple Rain.

I think D&P was kinda the start of Prince going in kinda new directions, getting into Hip Hop thing, although I guess there was some of that on GB too.

I also think Come was the beginning of a series of less inspired and mediocre albums, not that Come was hopeless but it seemed incomplete or lacking overall as an album, similiar thing with C&D, then NPS was suprisingly mediocre but ill admit can be ok when the mood is right.

I see LoveSexy as significant album in its era, it had a funky sexy religious theme but it was probably more interesting than the churchy TRC, when I first heard Batman it took time to grow on me , but it was actually reasonably good album and fit very well as soundtrack for the movie, I see BATMAN as being fairly consistant with the themes of that 80's era Prince, best songs were PartyMan, VickyWaiting, Batdance, Arms of Orion, and Scandalous.

but I don't think it's nessesarily one of his best.

The Gold Experience, , and Emancipation to me are equally as good, and have just as many or more flaws. [/quote]


You are sooooo wrong!

I think "LoveSexy" is the album where you can divide Prince's career with a clear line of before and after. It's definitely better in hindsight but I also think (my opinion) that it was the last album that Princ's fans were probably obsessed with at the time.

Parts of Grafitti Bridge and most of The Rainbow Children snuck in to hark back at the glory days but with Prince's insistence on not repeating himself he's pretty much painted himself into a corner. He also needs to go back to a more no-nonsense approach to recording. Some new stuff you hear and you wonder (Like Stevie's latest) why he went THAT far in the studio. Even Madonna's new stuff isn't as fussed over.

QuakeXLE said:

because he is still a fan of a certain timeperiod of music...which he can listen to any ole day and enjoy and remember why he loved it...and he wants to come to a community like this were there is commonality.



with that being said, i'll agree with whomever said that lovesexy was the last time prince was uninhibited in expressing his artisty. not to say he hasnt released some great stuff since then...but to my ears the majority of the tunes that make up his albums come off, "calculated" rather then free forms of expressions.