http://music.guardian.co....10,00.html

Most remarkable feature of Prince's latest album is the manner of its launch

Caroline Sullivan
Monday July 16, 2007
The Guardian


Contrary to popular opinion in the form of youngsters texting opinions to yesterday's Radio 1 breakfast show, the new Prince album, Planet Earth, is not awful. It is not up to the standard of the albums produced during his 1980s high-water period - Purple Rain, 1999 and Sign 'O' the Times - but it is by no means terrible. Of course, to a 15-year-old who only knows the 49-year-old as an eccentric peripheral figure, his priapic entreaties on songs such as Future Baby Mama and The One U Wanna C will automatically trigger the "Ewww" mechanism. To anyone else bar obsessive fans, Planet Earth will be greeted by shrugs.

Prince albums don't generate much discussion now, and even less airplay. The only reason Radio 1 had got in there was that Minneapolis's most prolific pop star had released the CD - his 46th album, counting hits and live collections - via the unique route of distributing it free through a newspaper, the Mail on Sunday. Had it not been for the hype, Planet Earth would have slipped out almost unnoticed, as many of his recent albums have done.
It is not that Prince no longer has anything to say. If anything, his mind seems to be swirling with thoughts, which come as fast as he can shape them into lyrics. Trouble is, his primary streams of inspiration - sex and religion/morality - just aren't producing the magnificent madness they once did. Nowhere on Planet Earth is there a "WHAT did he say?" moment along the lines of When Doves Cry's "Animals strike curious poses, they feel the heat, the heat between me and you". Instead, there's quite a bit of "I know what you want - what every good woman wants!" which is complemented by equally pedestrian funk twiddles and curlicues.

It's easy listening - you might even call it easy-listening - but it's not what Prince was invented for. Nor does he push the right buttons on the title track. Given that he named the album Planet Earth, we can take it as a clue to his current state of mind, which seems to be: worried enough about the environment to make the song the opening track (and that is worried - the sleeve photo, too, captures him brooding over a boiling blue-white globe). But the song's slow soulish meander and the question it poses - "What will be left in 50 years?" - is not a patch on Marvin Gaye's far more elegant, eloquent Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), released in 1971.

The album gets closest to the pizzazz of old on Chelsea Rodgers, a female-characterisation song which, like 1984's Darling Nikki, paints a picture in sweatily effective terms: "She's too original from her head down to her feet, still got a butt like a leather seat." Hip-twitching as it is, it's filler. If Prince had written Chelsea Rodgers in 1984, he probably would have judged it too slight to appear on that year's Purple Rain album.

These points are pretty moot, however. While Prince will never entirely be written off - his gigs are still considered the gold standard of live performance - his 46th album will mostly be remembered for the hype surrounding the means of release.
[Edited 7/16/07 7:36am]

Geez...I agree with the Guardian.

They must be iceskating in hell today.

Heaven forbid, never in my life have a read such a hogwash piece of article as that written in the media section of the Guardian Newspaper by Naresh Ramchandani (Why Prince gave away his Album). I am a Guardian reader and a Prince fan how can a newspaper I so respect produce such a distorted article. Yes Mr Ramchandani after reading your article you certainly come across as a pretty cool and hip guy with his pulse on popular music culture. Your knowledge of popular music is to say the least not worth writing in the Mail never mind the Guardian. Prince is hoping to sell out his 21 live performances in London – duh they were pretty much sold out before the release of the album and please go and see him live before writing such dribble. There is less than a gnat’s hair between the revered Nothing compares 2 U and the reviled Take My Breath Away – ohh dear. Prince was cool because he was not Michael Jackson, sorry to disappoint you Michael Jackson’s past work is still cool – proof his videos have been in the iTunes top 10 download ever since it has been available. Further, many young people I come across still view his music from the 80’s as being relevant and cool, maybe not in suburbia but certainly in the inner city where I live.

Spunky said:

That reminds me, i should have put the link to today's other article that you mentioned too. Here it is

http://music.guardian.co....45,00.html

Prince's album giveaway is a sign of his times

Naresh Ramchandani
Monday July 16, 2007
The Guardian


Is Prince a dude or not a dude? Depending on how you answer that question, yesterday's Mail on Sunday covermount was the most audacious piece of marketing subversion or the saddest piece of record promotion the world of music has seen.
Theory one. Prince is and always has been insurpassably cool. Armed with both a hairy chest and a perfect falsetto he has lived androgyny and played with sexuality in a way that other stars have only pretended to. While other artists whooped and moonwalked and touched their genitalia, Prince smirked through his moustache and jigged with perfect kinetic taste and, just for a minute, made Sheena Easton look sexy. People lost all reason around him. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to whimper with desire whenever she saw him on telly and, oddly, my presence didn't seem to deter her. A perfectly rational friend of mine actually believed that Prince was God.

To advocates of theory one, Prince has always marketed himself to perfection. The Black Album, pre-released and then withdrawn, was a smart piece of myth-making, a clever way of telling those who thought he had pitched his tent in the pop camp that he still did raw funk. And when he changed his name to symbol/the artist formerly known as, it was a perfect wordless critique of the hollowness of music celebrity, a trail-blazing piece of thinking and publicity that laid the path for Damon Albarn to hide behind his brilliant avatars-cum-Gorillaz.
To these people, yesterday's Mail on Sunday giveaway was further evidence that Prince could out-think the rest of us. Filesharing means that new music no longer makes money and that the old music industry business model has fallen on its face. In a stroke of subversive creativity, Prince is giving away his new album to 2.5 million people to create a new income-model based on gig ticket and T-shirt sales. The fact that this man is giving it away on the Mail on Sunday is a perfect piece of Prince perversity. On a Sunday when the Observer had a Music Monthly and presented a politically and musically sympathetic cover mount opportunity, Prince went for numbers because he could. His credibility, say theory oners, is undilutable and riding the Mail on Sunday is the perfect demonstration.

Theory two: Prince isn't all that cool. He is a diminutive man with a wispy moustache that any Indian like me could grow in an hour.

Sure, he wrote When Doves Cry, one of the sexiest songs of all time, but he also wrote Let's Go Crazy, one of the most embarrassing. His dashed-off funk has fallen flat more often than it has fizzed, the Black Album wasn't good enough to release and there is less than a gnat's hair between the revered Nothing Compares 2 U and the reviled Take My Breath Away, the theme tune from Top Gun.

Another perfectly rational friend of mine has an astonishingly complicated theory of how Prince's credibility has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Michael Jackson. Prince, he argues, was in the lucky position of being the anti-Jackson. Because Jackson got slick, it made Prince look raw. Because Jackson got pompous, it made Prince look real. Because Jackson became faux-white, it made Prince look authentically black.

Not surprisingly, advocates of theory two have far less regard for Prince's marketing than theory oners. To these people, the secret hidden title of the Black Album was cod-Beatles and the distribution of a few purple tickets with his 3121 album was just cod-Roald Dahl. To these people, Prince's name change to a symbol that didn't work well on radio, then to a set of words that substituted for "Prince" but included the word "Prince", was just a pure piece of Spinal Tap.

To these people, the Mail on Sunday deal was more of a resigned piece of self-knowledge than a triumphant outwitting of the music industry - and here I think I agree with them. I suspect that Prince knows that his purple reign is now over, knows that the Mail on Sunday is about as hip as a hip replacement, but also knows that it's probably the best way for an artist who's nearly 50 to reach an audience squarely in their 40s.

Sure, the Mail on Sunday hurts the Prince brand a little, but it gets distribution for an album that will uplift ticket sales for 21 straight dates at the 02, London's newest, biggest and most middle-aged-friendly indoor arena. That in turn will make Prince some cash, more cash than sales at Asda or a licence payment from Heart.

Prince is doing what every artist formerly known as good has had to do. He's selling out, and it's never pretty.
[Edited 7/16/07 8:26am]
[Edited 7/16/07 8:30am]

Couldn't agree less with the article.

Nor with 'youngsters' texting Radio 1.

OperatingThetan said:

If the Guardian had given the album away the reviews would be totally different.

OperatingThetan said:

How is this guy a music critic and calling Lets Go Crazy embarrasing?

He lost all credibility with me right there and thats where I quit reading!

This article lost me right in the beginning with "its not up to the standard of his 80's work". Thats when i turn a page and realize a critic has his head up his ass. If u dont dig it cool, if u do cool, but if you are going compare everything to past accomplishments then guess what?? U are always gonna be letdown in some way. If Prince did a total Purple Rain part 2 everyone would bitch about him sounding dated and trying to cash in, if he does something different then they say hes lost "IT" , its just the same bullshit with all these reviews, I never see anything constructive, everything is always talking about a past accomplishment or a past song or album, shit Let it Go already, if you want another Purple Rain or SOTT then pull out the cd or vinyl and crank it up and enjoy it and live in the past. Sure its great to have meomories, but thats all they are, MEMORIES, you aint ever gonna re-create that feeling U had when u first heard Purple Rain or 1999 or SOTT, so just dont expect to feel that way again, cause u know why?? Not only has PRince gotten older, so have U!
[Edited 7/16/07 10:43am]

He's dead on about the "Ewwww" factor.
Not just young kids do it--full grown adults do it when they think of Prince.


But if 21 sold out shows was enough of a buzz, I fail to see why the "giveaway" was the only reason why folks would notice.


But I agree with the review in that the problem with Planet Earth is material. I love the album--but it's not going to fly of the shelf based on the material which doesn't live up to some of his greats--it's going to fly off the shelf (if it does ) due to publicity. This of course speaks for just about any mainstream pop album today

pjh1972 said:

I just stopped reading after that point.

TheEnglishGent said:

OMG....some people's kids....

I agree with most of this article. Imagine 15 year old kids waking up to get a new Prince album given to them by their parents. They put that on and start running the other direction especially if they have never heard anything from him before. Kids will hate it, old schoolers will say it's not good enough and fans will accept it for what it is. I am going the fan route on this one.

46 albums, really? I guess I never counted them before,but to see that in print sort of shocked me. I know I have every cd Prince has released...WOW!

As for the review, eh!