OK, so we know that Prince is widely considered to be a strange man. Whether or not we all agree with this notion is not important. My question is actually, are there any songs that Prince has done that you are completely willing to admit are among the strangest songs you've heard, but you love them anyway? I'm sure there are, I'm just kind of curious to know...do you love them for the strangeness? Does it matter? Do you consider anything he does "weird" anymore, if ever?...that kind of thing.

3 Chains O' Gold is pretty weird. Many people describe it as an attempt to do a Bohemian Rhapsody, but I don't really hear that influence. Great song though.

I could imagine some regarding 'Dolphin' as pretty weird, with lyics about being reincarnated as a dolphin...

metalorange said:

yeah it's a rock opera

almost everything prince did in the 80s was weird. deceptively so, sometimes. everything he did had some sort of 'wrongness' or 'kink' which made it fascinating.

i mean, 'all the critics love u in new york' is SO weird, that's an obvious one. what a cool slice of basically - what? what do you call it? and 'the beautiful ones' - who else ever wrote glacially beautiful ballads underpinned by burbling mechanical engines and phased-out drum effects? it was what prince together and the way he did it that made it all so shocking and wonderful.

yup, i'm a FIRM fan of the 80s. i've liked lots of stuff since then but you know,what i always come back to is the 80s stuff. because - read it slowly.

IT. DIDN'T. SOUND. LIKE. ANYTHING. ELSE. ON. EARTH.

of course you can trace influences in prince's 80s work (jimi, sly, beatles, p-funk, whoever else you fancy) but, um. read the above sentence again slowly. who can fit the following songs into simple genres:

life can be so nice
if i was your girlfriend
i wonder u
pop life
when doves cry
the ballad of dorothy parker
it
good love
positivity
shockadelica (my GOD, now there's a great weird song. there's more successful and original ideas in that one song than in other artists' entire careers)
cindy c
rockhard in a funky place
anotherloverholenyohead (and if you think that's good, try the 12" version - more mechanical engines underpinning the groove. my lord, it's good)
lady cab driver
annie christian
erotic city (basically the sound of 2 people fucking for 8 minutes in cartoon land)
housequake (james brown on diet pills)

and on and on and on. for each example above i could have picked 2 or 3 other representatives. irresistible bitch, anyone? how weird is that song? how weird, come to think of it, is purple rain? which (as been commented elsewhere) is neither country nor traditional pop power ballad but... um.. something ELSE. how about 'i could never take the place of your man'. how about the fact that the main body of the song never uses a minor chord? how about the breakdown to the west coast guitar meditation? what's that all about? but it works.
my god, and i haven't even mentioned the solid thud of strange relationship - such a mighty strutting song to play against a confused and fragile lyric (though nothing LIKE as confused and fragile as IIWYG - and let's not forget that 'camille' was singing these songs and what confusion THAT added to the mix).

what type of animal IS u got the look? listen carefully and note how many peculiar and extraordinary things happen in that song. well, HERE we ARE - intoned in 3 different voices, each an octave or 2 away from the preceding one. and some of the treated guitar spot effects that are going on in that song. my goodness. glam slam? the synth strings that run riot towards the end of the song? nothing normal there, people. nothing normal.

and, um. here's the thing. it all worked. none of it sounded contrived or out of place or jarring - it just all worked within the confines of the 4/4 beat. wild stuff, people.

so don't let's get too hung up here. prince ALWAYS did it weird back in the day. and how startling it was.

goodnight and good luck.

tiger2 said:

Well written. great points.

Crystal Ball
Dream Factory
Days of Wild
319
I Would Die 4 U
The War
Digital Garden
Rave into the Joy Fantastic
Tamborine
Come On
Moviestar
Slave
Pheremone
When I Lay My Hands On U
Why Should I do That When I Can Do This
3121
Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance
East
My Little Pill
Had U
Animal Kingdom
The Exodus Has Begun
The Ball
My Name is Prince
Silicon


oh wait... the king of them all...

Bob George

There's Others Here With Us

Bob George.

funky as it is weird.
[Edited 5/23/06 3:24am]

cosmicslop said:

Probably the weirdest song he has ever done.

muirdo said:

It's not werid as it is wicked!

Krystal666 said:

In 1988 at the Lovesexy concert here, as "Bob George" was ending, and Prince got "shot", one girl turned to another girl, one row in front of me, and said, "weird."
[Edited 5/23/06 7:44am]

Cheek said:

I'd like to own just the instrumental backing to that track. I don't really like the lyrics or melody to his singing, but the background noise is excellent.

Omadon said:

Yeah. It's perfect for interrogation.

Cheek said:

mountains. really odd.

The FUTURE

tiger2 said:

What a beautiful description of my all-time favorite Prince song.