Ok, I can't take anyone seriously who says it's Gonna be a Beautiful night could be removed from SOTT and not be missed. It's Gonna Be A Beatiful Night is one of the baddest jams by anyone ever. It kills. It reminds me of Day 6 of the third Celebration. My friends and I were talking about night 5 and how it was pretty much the greatest most mind blowing concert ever, and we heard someone else saying, "I just don't get how he could waste so much time on songs nobody wants to hear." Everyone has their own perspective, but sometimes you just gotta say c'mon! Beautiful Night is the jam!

Hell to the naw. Any of the Prince albums from 1978-1984 are far better than "Sign O The Times"




I like "Sign O The Times" better because I like every single song on the album. There are several songs on the "Songs In The Key Of Life" album that I don't like. However, the songs that I do like on "Songs In The Key Of Life" are much better than most of the songs on the "Sign O The Times" album because Stevie's music on that album sounded like 70s music while the 70s was happening. Prince's music on that album sounded like the 60s while the 80s was happening.

vainandy said:

am really surprised that you would say sott is better than songs, given your history of criticizing P's post Purple Rain work.
Prince's music on that album was an amalgamation of psychedelia, not just rock psychedlia but also imitating the temptations great work at the time. However, he threw enough little quirks and twists into sott to make it fresh and genius. Sott had a great bass line throughout and simple use of unusual chords to make the song even more stark, not to mention his habit of using silence to create mood. Starfish and Coffee, Slow Love and Dorothy Parker are all fantastic additions his work. Slow Love was a ripoff of Sly's Hot Fun In the Summertime but a very good one. Starfish and coffee and dorothy parker are psychedelia at it's absolute funkiest. u got the look has guitars that sound like keyboards and kooky vocals, again his use of unique chords here. Strange Relationship has always been a favorite, I'd be willing to bet that it was a normal song at some point which he began to tinker with for this album, the actual song is a very good song in and of itself, then you throw in the ending with drums and chants and funky bending synth bass and it takes it over the top. If I was Your Girlfriend takes Mary Jane's riff and has one of Prince's most provocative and profound lyrics. I could Never Take the Place is a great rock tune with a great solo, kind of like baba o'reilly. Adore of course doesn't need much explaining here. All in all, a work of inspiration and genius even with all the hearkening back to the earlier eras. Stevie's album however is just as good and better in many departments, but I don't think it has quite the actual creativity that sott does even though, the songs are great songs, "Ordinary Pain" for example breaks no ground whatsoever but it is a damn good, funky song.

drclay said:

Well it is a studio creation, totally fake overdubs all over, anybody that owns 'Testament' bootleg will, um, testify.

The original recording is very sparse, almost instrumental in fact. It is a great jam yes, but don't be fooled into thinking it is in any way, real. cause it aint.

One of the amazing things about SITKOL is....like the title suggests,it takes you on a journey through "life",the good and bad,the ugly and the beautiful.It could be the soundtrack for that entire era (mid-70s).Stevie really gives you a glimpse of how life was back then,the struggles that people were facing,as well as the joys.Many of the songs ("Pastime Paradise","Love's In Need Of Love Today","Village Ghetto Land",even "Saturn") have timeless lyrics that are just as relevent today as they were in 1976.


On SOTT,the title track is Prince's big political statement.It's powerful,yes,but I don't think the rest of the album comes close to the stuff that Stevie was talking about.Prince wasn't digging as deep.


.
[Edited 3/14/08 5:53am]

Marrk said:

I had no idea, seriously. would love to hear the original.

Marrk said:

I don't get what u mean by this? If it was created by Prince it's real. I must not be interpreting u correctly.

Marrk said:

The main problem with the IGBABN Lp-version is that it sucks compared with the version of the SOTT live-movie...

JoeTyler said:

the rap sounds better on the studio one!

Songs... is waaaaay better than SOTT, and that album cemented me as a big ol' Prince fan, back in the day.

I think Prince did some tremendous work during that period. SOTT is an incredibly enjoyable album that his all sorts of notes and covers a lot of ground.

But it isn't nearly as deep as Stevie's masterpiece. I mean, it's almost an insult to Stevie as a lyricist to compare Prince to him. (This is not to say that Prince is a hack, but he's no Stevie Wonder... )

I mean, we can do esoteric musicologist studies of the two albums, we can compare topical variations of lyrics, we could try mundane comparisons (which album gets better airplay in supermarkets? ) -- SITKOL comes out the winner, in my book, on all fronts.

There's a universality to Songs... that has made it the classic that it is. That Stevie found such broad appeal without compromising quality lyrics or music is a testament to that album. I just don't think Prince covered as much ground topically or as masterfully. But he should've won the Grammy for it.

ThreadBare said:

Anytime someone brings up the lyrics of a black musician it intrigues me because almost all of them at some point or another have been dissed by white critics as being great musicians but poor lyricists. Truth is, after much thought, i came to believe it was just a thinly veiled stereotype. Blacks are great at the musical end but lacking in the literary capabilities of whites. I've long been irritated when I've seen such statements of some of the greatest artists of our time that I'm just saying it's interesting to bring up Stevie's lyrical ability(who has been criticized lyrically). Similarly, Hendrix, Michael Jackson and Prince have all been accused of being limited with words when, so far as I can see, they are just as good and/or better than most in the field of pop music. People laughed when Dylan called Smokey the greatest living american poet because of their latent stereotypical thinking. I happen to think Sly Stone is one of the very greatest poets in rock music and you'll never hear a mention of him when it comes to lyrics. Sorry but it pisses me off.

mozfonky said:

1. Hi. I'm black. Honest.

2. "This is not to say that Prince is a hack..." was my nod to his not-so-shabbiness as a lyricist.

3. In my post, I tried (and possibly failed) to point to the universality of Songs... During his SOTT period, a fair amount of Prince's stuff still mined a lot of sexual territory. Topically, I feel, Songs... succeeds in part because it's more topically mature and accessible. I'm biased. I think Stevie's a superior lyricist.

4. Next you'll be saying that black quarterbacks in the NFL don't get their due. I keed, I keed...

ThreadBare said:

I wasn't singling you out, just a sore topic with me as far as the white way of thinking goes, and yes it's still there. I'm indian by the way, but I don't like that type of thinking about what I consider sometimes "our people".

Too tough. DRAW!

Here is my latest blog, sorry, but I am angry, i don't know how everyone else feels.from my myspace.As i cruise the net to keep up on current events, I find the recurring theme of black people (and others) being insulted in the most vicious of manners. I try to keep a feel for the current pulse even though I watch little tv. I read about a recent shooting in the CD of a black man by a black man in online journals like The Stranger which allows readers to comment, well the comments are pretty degrading and insulting and are pretty much the same as when I see white people speaking without anyone seeing them face to face; blacks (and others) are the genetic weaklings who are subhuman, of below average intelligence, incapable of being civil (this stated by the most destructive races in history) and all sorts of trivial hate mongering like having pictures of women called "laqeesha" who have a human body and ape head. I find it even more insulting when I’m told that I am a racist for reacting to white hatred with anger and basically say "fuck em" to those that don’t understand. I’m all for the world being a better place and there are plenty of white people I love dearly but as a group they have fucked up a lot of human lives. Anyway, here is a tiny sample of the true hatred whites have when granted anonymity (from craigslist rants and raves, seattle): Reply to: pers-612276695@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-03-20, 2:23AM PDT


You are quite contradictory. Oops, sorry for using such a big word…your small mind won’t understand it. When you put a "peace" symbol in your message, then you turn around and say there will be no peace…well then, there you have it. It just goes to show you how intelligent you really are. And, if you are going to put statements out on the web, well you should learn to spell first, or use spell check. I would be more worried about riots if Obama won! I can’t imagine our country being led by someone like him, who can’t even distinguish his ethnicity or his religion. The threats by people like you is what makes us believe that you really are little porch monkeys that have not yet evolved enough to live civilly in this country. So,,, go on back to the jungle from where you came and live amongst your closest and more intelligent relatives…..the apes!

songs in the key of life

Hasn't damned near every cut on Songs... been remade by artists from just about every genre?

Case closed, imps.

Adisa said:

Imps? Take your meds!

SOTT all day

Really good topic here. I think both 'Songs in the Key' and 'Sign' are brilliant, epic, mighty, and stand high over almost everything else in pop/soul/rock/funk music. They are certainly peaks of a sort for both Stevie Wonder and Prince (whether or not they are each artist's best albums is of course debatable); the former made his epic in 1974-1976, aged 23 to 25, the latter from 1986-87, aged 27 to 28. Both artists were young and at the peak of popularity when making the records. They're both sprawling double albums, and both seem to comment aptly on the era that produced them.

There are some differences to note, too. Stevie's record was his vision in its entirety -- he even got to add a 7-inch record 'EP' onto the double album set, no doubt against Berry Gordy and Motown's wishes. Prince on the other hand had his vision for Dream Factory whittled down by Warner's executives who knew he was over-saturating the market. Stevie's album is more of a piece, while Prince's is a bit of a messy hodge-podge of Revolution-era songs, 'Camille'-project leftovers, solo stuff, and a live track. Stevie's message seems to be that with spiritual strength we can overcome the world's problems, while Prince's seems to be that we're already mostly defeated but we can dance the night away and then make slow love to get through the night. It should also be noted that the public embraced Stevie's effort while Prince's was not as popular with the mainstream (not that it wasn't popular, but it wasn't a huge #1 hit like Stevie's).

I'm surprised to hear someone read that 'Sign' doesn't sound dated at all. I totally disagree, in that Prince's (over?)use of the Linn-drum machine is very dated in sound, as are some synths. I think 'Songs in the Key' sounds fresher, just in terms of the instrumentation.

Likewise, I'm baffled by the opinion that Stevie is a superior lyricist. Though I'm a huge fan of him, I don't think Stevie's lyrics are excellent at all. Generally, they're fine, and certainly communicate his messages effectively, but they don't go beyond basic expressions and simple narratives. Even my favorites like 'Golden Lady,' 'I Believe', 'Village Ghetto Land,' 'Pastime Paradise', etc., are not notable for the brilliance of the lyrics. They ARE notable for the subject matter, at times, but not the quality of the words. Prince, on the other hand, has tackled some very strange subject matter and produced some really clever lyrics (some cringe-worthy, but usually when he takes sex-talk too far). On 'Sign of the Times' the lyrics to "If I Was Your Girlfiend", for example, are brilliant and bizarre. The title-song is very moving, despite its simple images. By situating the narrator in the first-person and depicting him as a regular, everyday Joe disturbed by the world around him, Prince made the lyrics insightful rather than leaden or banal. Even a pop song like "Manic Monday" shows a gift for pop-poetry quite beyond Stevie: "'Cause it takes me so long just to figure out what I'm gonna wear / Blame it on the train but the bus is already there", etc.

I would hesitate to pick one over the other; on any given day my preference would just depend on my mood. But I will say that I think 'Sign of the Times' hits a more diverse range of buttons than 'Songs in the Key.' That doesn't necessarily make for a better listen over the course of an hour-and-a-half, but it does shows Prince's unbelievable (seemingly effortless) range.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that there was really not much to most pop lyrics. To compare them to real poetry was silly. So, when I say that Prince and Stevie were as good or better than most, it doesn't say a whole lot. To me, the manner and clarity in which they express ideas or feelings for a community which they mirror is something different from poetry. I studied poetry formally and it's very dry, rulebound boring but there are also some really creative things done that make pop lyrics sound elementary. At the same time, what's better? I would rather here Prince say "hey we got the power, so(in response) we got the soul"(Batman-black/white relations) than read walt whitman because it's got more meaning for me. The very few pop musicians who do approach lyrical greatness are often not even recognized because people don't really sit around and dissect it. Sly wrote some deep deep shit which probably 1 in 10000 listeners even tried to understand. At any rate, Prince and Stevie are both ok lyricists.