ladygirl99 said:

these posts r funny.... Kiss, Mountains, Girls & Boys and Anotherlover....were all over WPGC, WKYS & WHUR here in DC. In fact they would play the 12" versions. DC remains to this day one of his stronger markets along with Detroit. Theses stations also had no problem with playing Raspberry Beret, Pop Life & Shes Always in My Hair on the radio!!!!

Alot of people jumped off the band wagon because unlike Purple Rain or 1999 which were rock and pop albums the work that followed them was extremly uneven and experimental. In any case black people dug the singles from Parade...they just didn't dig the songs around them

So Prince says nothing on the album is any good except Kiss. Yet 6 months later, he makes "Girls & Boys" the only pre 87 song he does in full on the SOTT tour.....

Hmmm...walking contradition.....

I really think Prince is talking about the production, not the songs and their structure/compositions themselves. I think he feels he half baked the production on some of the tunes... the arrangements...

ufoclub said:

You see, I think it's the other way around - some of the songs are flimsy, but the arrangements and productions are so interesting I still rank the album as one of my very favourites.

Mountains, for example, isn't the greatest SONG in the world, but the production and arrangement just make it fantastic.

SquirrelMeat said:

I agreed with whoever said Prince was his own least qualified critic. It's like he pulled the Black Album because it was "Evil", and then performed Superfunkycalifragisexy and Bob George on the Lovesexy tour. Bob George, for Christ's sake!

I appreciated Parade the way it is over the years. When I first heard it, I was disappointed by it because I still expected a funkier album or close to Purple Rain but still I like it better than ATWIAD.

I wondered would the album sold better had he released Girls and Boys and then Anotherloverholenyohead instead of Mountains? No dispresect to that song and I love it dont get me wrong but that wasn't a radio-friendly tune! I think that Bobby Z said the same thing that Prince should have chosen Girls and Boys as his second single. Once he choose Mountains, the album just falling off the charts in the US. I noticed that when I found and listened to those yearbyyear mixes that Chicago and NYC DJs did in 1986, I often heard Girls and Boys, Kiss, and Anotherloverholenyohead because they did very well in R&B charts and were more R&Bish but never Mountains.

I think that Prince made that comment at the time because 1986 was a very rough year for him and he was devastated with Under the Cherry Moon's failure and the album didn't do that well like he hope for. You guys right he still does play the songs from that album. I think that Prince is proud of that album overall.

SoulAlive said:

I agree with your order of singles except for one. Replace "Anotherloverholenyohead" with "New Position". The songs have a retro feel to them, which people were already pissed about, but "Anotherloverholenyohead" had that orchestra shit in it that everyone was making fun of. "New Position" would have been a better choice.

NorthernLad said:

I agree with your order of singles except for one. Replace "Anotherloverholenyohead" with "New Position". The songs have a retro feel to them, which people were already pissed about, but "Anotherloverholenyohead" had that orchestra shit in it that everyone was making fun of. "New Position" would have been a better choice.

I would imagine he's a little more fond of it these days.
If not, he needs to come see me.

NDRU said:

i've always thought that prince judges his past music less on his artistic achievements or the quality of the work, and more on where his mind was at the time, what was going on in his life, who he surrounded himself with, whether he was happy or unhappy, etc....so if he made 'parade' during a bleak time in his life, even if it was a blip on the map of his life, then i can see him thinking it wasn't a great album.

which brings me back to my previous statement about how prince isn't qualified to criticize prince albums.
[Edited 2/21/07 16:43pm]

Just to make this a racial thing (because that's a always so fun on these threads) Parade is maybe his most white album, certainly the most European sounding.

He was having issues at the time of people saying he'd abandoned black folks, his first fans (the movie had the same questions asked of it).

Sign was more R&B, and then of course the Black Album took it further.

Maybe that's part of his disowning of it at the time.