i expect Prince to write better songs than most people on the charts
and yeah, my expectations don't always match reality
but as long as he keeps churning out a gem here and there, color me content

Time and again i hear/read about people having expectations about something, in this case Planet Earth. As soon as the rumor got out, this forum was alive with people voicing their expectations of it.

I don't think there is anything wrong with expectations as such, but it seems that inmany cases they become a hindrance when the actual reality presents itself. By that time the expactations may have taken the form of a big neon fixation in your mind, and as long as the actual album more or less resonates with it, everything is allright. If it doesn't, we get to see the typical response of people being disappointed. The tunes themselves may not be bad at all.. they just don't meet the expectations.

And that's the thing.. i think that if your expectations are too defined and too fixed, you won't be able to enjoy what is actually there. Actually, this coul;d very well be lesson 1 when it comes to being a Prince admirer/fan/fam. Still people more or less expect an extrapolation of whatever it was he put out, and for some reason people actually want more of the same.

But what is the point of that? Whatever he made previously is there already. What i admire in P is that he makes whatever he feels like making, on his own terms. In that respect PE represents his current state of mind, just like his previous albums represent his state of being at that time.

So i guess what i want to say is; try to listen to PE as it is, without prejudice and on it's own terms. There is a lot to like on it.. if only you can peer through those figments in your mind to see what is actually there

Payt said:

I don't get why you have to make up an "explanation" as to why people don't like PE. Are you telling me that people who like this album are going to be approaching it without any favourable bias just because its a Prince album?? I think the reaction to TRC by many Prince fans is an example of this where it was seen as "anti-commercial" and so this brainwashed many of his fans into calling it a masterpiece. It's an awful record beginning to end.

Firstly, it's IMPOSSIBLE to approach any piece of art unprejudiced. You're always going to be making comparisons whether you're conscious of them or not. This is even more true with an artist like Prince.

That being said, PE is not just a bad Prince album - it's a bad album in general. There's nothing exciting about it, it's just boring. This has nothing to do with fast or slow beats, its just stale music. However, I am making comparisons to music I have heard throughout my life experience. Maybe if I had never heard music before I'd be enthralled with Planet Earth. Unfortunately, I have heard everything Prince is trying to do on PE done much better and more interestingly.

I guess I'll add the politically correct disclaimer that this is just my own opinion. I think the very best that we can ask from each other when evaluating art is that we are honest rather than consciously fooling orselves and each other into liking or disliking something when we know the opposite is true.

internationallover2004 said:

not saying you're wrong, as I haven't heard the album and I don't know you. But I will defend PAYT by saying I've hated some Prince albums based on what I wanted them to be only to love them once I heard them for what they were.

would be the best example

Payt said:

I don't get why you have to make up an "explanation" as to why people don't like PE. Are you telling me that people who like this album are going to be approaching it without any favourable bias just because its a Prince album?? I think the reaction to TRC by many Prince fans is an example of this where it was seen as "anti-commercial" and so this brainwashed many of his fans into calling it a masterpiece. It's an awful record beginning to end.

Firstly, it's IMPOSSIBLE to approach any piece of art unprejudiced. You're always going to be making comparisons whether you're conscious of them or not. This is even more true with an artist like Prince.

That being said, PE is not just a bad Prince album - it's a bad album in general. There's nothing exciting about it, it's just boring. This has nothing to do with fast or slow beats, its just stale music. However, I am making comparisons to music I have heard throughout my life experience. Maybe if I had never heard music before I'd be enthralled with Planet Earth. Unfortunately, I have heard everything Prince is trying to do on PE done much better and more interestingly.

I guess I'll add the politically correct disclaimer that this is just my own opinion. I think the very best that we can ask from each other when evaluating art is that we are honest rather than consciously fooling orselves and each other into liking or disliking something when we know the opposite is true.

PS: I don't care if Prince makes an album of funk, rock, jazz, folk, country, classical, bluegrass, salsa or whatever kind of music AS LONG AS THE SONGS ARE GOOD. Simultaneously, I'm not going to like an album of his even if its extremely diverse (as PE admittedly is) if the songs are so bland.
[Edited 7/11/07 16:44pm]

NDRU said:

"What they were" is pretty ambiguous. If you have to convince yourself to like something, I don't think that's good at all. Not saying that's what you did because I don't know, but I dunno. I've listened to PE many times now and it's shockingly bad in terms of songwriting. It's hard to believe Prince wrote these songs.

i would always always ALWAYS wait till you hear it for yourself to form any kind of impression of a new album. opinions around here vary so wildly, you'd be doing yourself a disservice to listen to a new record through the filter of all these ears. i try to keep my reading of first-impression posts to a minimum till i've heard the album a few times. i've been a fan so long, i want the first listen to be between me and the music and nobody else. after that, i'll join the discussion.