Ultimate Prince.....who picked these songs?

Well, your title is misleading. This is a compilation, not an album!

The label picks out the initial batch of songs - using sales, charts, and fanbases as a source of what are the hottest songs.

Then, on this release, they (the record company and Prince) combed over the songs to remove songs that might conflict with his new JW views about cursing.

As far as albums go, in the Warner Bros. years THEY picked out the final songs.

Se7en said:

I don't think that's entirely true. For one, there's no way they would have let Prince release ATWIAD with the tracklist it had if they had any choice in the matter, since clearly it was a massive step away from Purple Rain and I'm sure they would have wanted a more commercial album instead. There's that story where the first time Waner execs heard it was when Prince played the fully completed album for them in conference room.

On Parade, no one really liked how Kiss sounded but Prince insisted not only was it going on the album but that it would be the first single.

Certainly Warners had the ability to reject songs or albums that Prince showed them - for instance they rejected Rave Un2 and 200 Balloons the first songs intended for the Batman album. But with Prince's forceful nature, most times he got his own way. Occasionally he would compromise - apparently they rejected Come once or twice wanting some of the stronger songs Prince was saving for The Gold Experience. On TGE they insisted on having The Most Beautiful Girl even though by the time TGE came out it was over a year old.

But for the most part, the tracklists were Prince's creation. He handed over both The Vault and Chaos & Disorder fully packaged to complete his contract and they had no choice in the matter, take it or leave it.

metalorange said:

This is actually what I meant. I didn't mean that WB went into a room and picked songs off a shelf. My point was that their "veto" power was in fact "choosing" songs. I also agree that Prince presented the original tracklistings (what HE thought they should be) and WB whittled it down or made changes.

That's how Crystal Ball (original) became SOTT - so many songs deleted that the tracklisting changed. Imagine if we had all of Prince's albums in their originally-presented forms!

Okay, so what I'm asking is who pic'd the tracks for Ultimate?

Ya kinda have to spell it out for me, I don't get all that record deal, mumbo jumbo.

Se7en said:

I don't think that's how CB became SOTT - it was more of a case of, Prince wanted to release a triple album, Warners insisted it wasn't profitable because of the extra cost of production plus the extra price putting off casual buyers, so they compromised and agreed to a 2 CD album - it was then Prince who decided which songs to ditch and rename the album. Certainly I don't think Warners picked the final tracklisting for SOTT or insisted that specific songs such as the original title track be ditched.

As for Ultimate, what appears to have happened is that Warners picked the original tracklist and presented it to Prince, perhaps because they needed his approval to re-master the tracks. Prince requested they remove a few and instead replace them with others - I think there were about 4 tracks that got shuffled around - and that's how the final tracklist came to be.

metalorange said:

This is exactly what I posted before! I think we're saying the same thing in two different ways.

Se7en said:

Not true. Prince had total control over his album's tracklistings.
The only thing WB could do was accept the album or reject it.

They use a Crystal Ball!!

metalorange said: