I cannot believe that there are Prince fans who still put their faith in what critics say about new Prince albums. I like to think that, as a Prince fan, you are individualistic enough to make up your own mind.

Why worry about some fool's opinion of Planet Earth?
You wouldn't let someone else's opinion wreck your enjoyment of, say, 1999 would you?

Thanks to those at Prince in Print-----http://princetext.tripod.com/





New Musical Express
November 20, 1982

Flasher in the Pan

Prince
1999
(Warner Brothers)

DEAR Mixed-Up of Minnesota.

Well - don't you have problems!

Being the sole son and heir of Barry White and Jimi Hendrix is no easy burden for a young boy to bear, but when the only people who like you are the people who get their records free... Well, then comes the hour when the record company, in one last mad gasp of magpie marketing, puts out the "Specially-Priced Two Record Set" and almost audibly screams "Come and buy it, you bastards! It may stink, but at least it's free!"

You saw, you conquered, you came; that used to be your preoccupation, Prince, you pup! You were the Reeperbahn of rock; but now as you and your countrymen sit and contemplate your cold stores in the U.S.A.H (After Herpes) I detect a more chaste worldview, full of partying and vague romantic sadness rather than blow by blow cornporn. Yet even this can have its complications; you use partying, like many of your nasty nationality, as a carwash for the brain, having fun to hide from fear, most graphically in the title track. The end of the world, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Prince, leave the social comment to Grandmaster Flash and revel in your role of pretty boy's pin-up!

I also notice that you have one song, "Little Red Corvette", which implies that you want the world to know that you are a regular guy and not just a sex freak, a regular guy pace Noble, New Jersey, who always fall back on singing love songs to lumps of metal when he wants to show that he is as capable of having fun as the next guy; though falling in love with a lump of metal is a rather recherche way of having fun, I would venture, and far from normal!

I still remember your first communique, "I Wanna Be Your Lover", with som affection. You were the carnal castrati incarnate, there was a gurgling, glorious exuberance about you, all those sweet soaring runs and that nifty backcombed backchat, you were out of the closet and in your element, being just what you always wanted to be..... a girl group! But now your songs sound like an interminable string of Fame B-sides, and considering how Fame A-sides sound, that's some insult.

There is an ancient Leninist dictum heeded in the early days of the Russian Revolution and kept alive by many Third World freedom fighters; the One Glass of Water theory, which young revolutionaries applied to S.E.X., your very own cottage industry, in deciding that sex is of no more importance than one glass of water to a thirsty man. Well, I'm sure these baby Spartans enjoy their sparkling sustenance when they get it more than you and your countrymen have enjoyed the rather joyless orgies in which you have been partaking for the last couple of decades and albums. Your problem, Prince, is commercial post-coital triste on a cosmic scale.

The antidote? Get thee to a nunnery, or at least to Donna Summer's songwriter. Few things are such bets chartwise as a Bible-bashing black, Born Again. Sex is no manifesto, no saviour and certainly no shock. As my colleague Confucius likes to say, "Nothing sadder than a flasher who no one notices."
[Edited 6/25/07 18:12pm]

skywalker said:

you couldn't be more right ;

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/232229

I really don't think most hardcore Prince fans give a rat's ass about critics' reviews, even though it is interesting to see what the "experts" think.

My hesitatation about Planet Earth comes from my opinion of Prince's recent albums, which although having their moments, were entirely underwhelming for me.

Thanks for 1999 review, a fun read.

Sometimes, they get it right though! Or (partially right.. he he)..
READ THIS REVIEW FROM THE NY TIMES. THE LAST 2 PARAGRAPHS ARE AMAZINGLY ACCURATE...

PRINCE'S 'PARADE' STAKES A CLAIM TO POPULARITY
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By JOHN ROCKWELL
Published: March 30, 1986
Prince became a big star with the 1984 release of his first film, ''Purple Rain,'' and its attendant soundtrack LP and hit singles. But it's sometimes easy to forget that he's only 25 years old. Even though he's a practiced pop-music veteran, having released an album a year since 1978, he's still coalescing as an artist. Unlike a student or a garret-dwelling Bohemian, however, his maturation is taking place in the glare of modern celebrity publicity - an exposure likely to distort as much as it reveals.

Now we have the 1986 Prince release, ''Parade'' (Warner Bros. WB25395, LP and cassette due out tomorrow, with the CD scheduled for April 28). It comes in the wake of his guardedly received 1985 album, ''Around the World in a Day,'' which was widely criticized for a false and over-ornate 1960's psychedelic feeling. But more than a corrective for any stylistic misstep - there is plenty of 60's atmosphere in ''Parade,'' too - the new album is an attempt to recoup ground lost by the negative publicity surrounding Prince personally.

It is likely to succeed in that aim for three unrelated reasons. One, it's very good. Two, as the soundtrack for Prince's forthcoming second film, ''Under the Cherry Moon,'' it may win a wider audience in the same way as the ''Purple Rain'' soundtrack. Three, given the increasing volatility of the pop music star-making and star-breaking apparatus, it's about time for public taste to swing back in Prince's favor.

Stars today are rapidly, almost instantaneously inflated into mass phenomena, sell millions of records and appear on every magazine cover. Then, suddenly, grievous character flaws are discovered - which may or may not exist, or may exist in lesser measure than eager exposes imply -and the public mood swings into dismissiveness.

The public perception of Prince swung from a sly charmer to surly misogynist paranoid between 1984 and 1985 - just as, the year before, Michael Jackson had fallen from boy genius to androgynous eccentric. In Prince's case, a few luridly reported incidents of snooty public behavior combined with overzealous body-guards certainly fueled the backlash. He hardly helped his cause with last year's ''Around the World'' album, in which a not very convincing approximation of McCartneyesque Beatles innocence clashed egregiously with his own image of defensive arrogance.

The irony was that his entire early reputation was of an aggressive kid obsessed with explicit sexuality (typical song-themes included incest, fellatio, onanism and bondage). ''Purple Rain,'' aside from being a musically more diverse and assured album than most of his earlier efforts, also represented a softening of that image. Thus the uglier behavior that provoked last year's ''backlash'' might be seen as a reassertion of the ''real'' Prince.

But reality in this case seems considerably more interesting and complex; Prince is a talented, still-evolving musician capable of far more challenging work than a mere facile pop trickster with a dirty mind (the title of his 1980 album, and one of his best).

When he signed with Warner Bros. Records at the age of 17, Prince was a prodigiously gifted provincial loner who created most of his albums by himself in his Minneapolis studio, overdubbing all the instruments. This is a situation conducive to self-aggrandizing fantasies. And the mere presence of striking musical gifts -for composing, singing, instrumental playing and studio manipulation -can cover up an unsure, half-formed sense of artistic direction.

With Prince, sexuality seems to have been both a publicity ploy - one hardly unprecedented in the raunchy world of rock-and-roll - and a genuine reflection of his adolescent interests, or so he's said in interviews. This sexuality, coupled with a less-than-sure gift for lyric writing - his texts are often prosaic and naive -made his other themes, like God, the apocalypse and political injustice, seem hollow.

And yet the outrageousness did serve a musical purpose, aside from its positive and negative marketing aspects. As with David Bowie, with his glitter image and constant ''changes,'' Prince's arresting persona enabled his public to accept (until ''Around the World,'' at least) his restless stylistic experimentation, his often brilliant attempts to blend black and white musical influences and every manner of rock, soul and disco.

Indeed, Prince's success in overcoming musical and racial boundaries has not just directly (through his many proteges) and indirectly (through those he influenced) affected 1980's popular music. He has also done much to lessen the de facto segregation of black artists that had arisen in the early 80's on radio and in the televising of music videos.

''Under the Cherry Moon,'' Prince's second feature film and the first he's directed himself, is scheduled for release July 2, and until then, certain aspects of the lyrics will remain obscure. The new soundtrack album begins with ''Christopher Tracy's Parade'' and ends with ''Sometimes It Snows in April,'' a ballad with a lovely chromatic chorus, maudlin verses and ''sincere'' acoustic instrumentation in which Prince seems to be lamenting the death of ''Tracy'' in an overtly homoerotic manner. When one learns that Prince's character in the film is Tracy himelf, however, homoeroticism turns into narcissism, with Prince lovingly crooning his own valedictory. The film is also set on the Cote d'Azur, with a French female star, which explains the occasional French lyrics, moaning French female love-talk and accordion-flavored chanson arrangements.

Apart from the chanson flavorings, there is psychedelia here, too - most overtly in the ''Sgt. Pepper''-like opening of ''Christopher Tracy's Parade'' - as well as continued examples of Prince's tendency toward busy studio clutter overlaying a dance beat. There are also two songs co-written with his musician/ father, John L. Nelson, who once performed under the name Prince Rogers; Prince's full name is Prince Rogers Nelson, and he has apparently had a complex relationship with his father - depicted in part in ''Purple Rain.'' The two co-written songs are the most psychedelic ones, suggesting that Mr. Nelson, who also co-wrote two songs on ''Around the World,'' may have helped point Prince in that direction.

But the most striking songs here are the tougher ones, those in which Prince chooses to play up the black side of his multifaceted musical sensibility. There's the catchy ''New Position'' and the single, ''Kiss,'' with its stripped-down instrumentation and falsetto vocal. But above all there are two songs, the clear highlights of this album. ''Anotherloverholenyohead'' has an irresistible chorus, as sexy and kinetic and ingratiating as anything in ''Purple Rain.'' ''Girls and Boys'' is even better, full of delicious instrumental touches capped by a grunting, honking baritone saxophone solo.

In the future, such songs may conceivably slip into the minority of Prince's output. From the first, sentimental ballads have seemed closer to his true spirit than the uptempo dance numbers. Prince may turn out to be a latter-day Elvis in more ways than one, renouncing the sexual flamboyance that won him his first success.

No doubt he will take more false steps - there can be no experimentation without them - and no doubt he will continue to annoy people who could, in the short run, help him along. Sometimes, like Stevie Wonder, he'll put out second-rate music, and sometimes he'll seem sentimental and dopey. But as a source of vernacular musical invention and deserving pop hits, he's as good as we have. And ''Parade'' certainly succeeds in another of its intentions: it makes one eager to see the movie.

http://query.nytimes.com/...gewanted=1
[Edited 6/26/07 4:47am]

Too true.

I remember early reviews for 'Rave' were calling THAT a "return to form".