If Prince wasn't fighting with WB, Then TGE would've been a huge hit album. The first single should've been Endorphine machine followed by Billy jack bitch, dolphin, and Gold. Pussy Control had a potential 2 be huge in the clubs, at that time. This album should've sold at least 2 million!!!

i do believe it was a Top 5 for about a week.

Yea,,, then it fell off of the face of the earth because of his fight with the wb company

yes also SHHH is a great song as well

Did the fight with WB really hurt sales of this album? I thought it was the poor choice in singles. And didn't Prince choose the singles to be released?

The name change and "Slave" on his face probably hurt too; maybe you're including that in the WB fight. But those are Prince's fault, not WB's.

In some ways, I think P Control qualifies as a Prince hit, by the way. Not a conventional chart hit, but that song made the rounds like a viral video back in '95.

I knew it wasn't gonna be that successful to anyone but faithful Prince followers..

It should have been stamped... 21 and over. Because the last thing we need on this planet is a bunch of sleezy 18 year olds taking pictures of their sex...

I agree....if Prince hadn't been feuding with Warners at the time,TGE could have been one of his biggest albums of the 90s.There are at least five songs that could have done really well as singles.I was pissed at him for not releasing a video for "I Hate U"....even though he had one already completed! He was angry at Warners and wanted to make a point.

Prince destroyed this album the same way he destroyed come and the exodus. Bad choices for singles.

"I Hate U" didn't make it into the Billboard Top 10, and broke Prince's string of years with at least one Top 10 single, started in 1982 with the "1999" songs. It was a poor choice for a single, definitely.

Your Mom should have been a successful album

SoulAlive said:

he did, ive seen it

The Most Beautiful Girl was a massive hit in the UK, his only number 1 single ever over here. Hardly the worst choice from that album.

However, the feud definitely hurt it. He was trying to promote it at the same time as come. The video for Dolphin was on MTV loads before the Come album was released. By the time the album came out, Beautiful Girl was a distant memory and there was no promotion.

Personally, it's easily in my top 5 Prince albums, I love it.

A great album. INTERACTIVE!

It was a success.

TheEnglishGent said:

TMBGITW wasn't a single from the album. It was released long before the album as a separate project, which is when everyone who wanted it bought it, and then a slightly different (and kind of annoyingly remixed) version of it was put on The Gold Experience.

I Hate U should not have been the lead single for this album, which is in my opinion why the album didn't do as well. Dolphin is a great song, and would have done well as the lead single.

Taurus said:

Prince was on his 'ballad as a lead single' trip, something he stuck with for far too long.

IMO, the album could've been a commercial success on par with D&P had it been a) released more timely, b) promoted long and hard, and c) not been slap-bang in the middle of all the stupid 'slave' stuff.

The 93/94 era was a really productive period, tons of great tracks, maybe in the future it will looked upon as Prince's great undiscovered country?

Originally there were going to be several singles released from the album,
but mainly due to the feud with WB that didn't happen. Much as I love
"I Hate U", I don't think it was the best single choice. Particularly since
there was no video for it when it was released. Originally, "I Hate U" was
going to be released as part of "The Hate Experience" EP, which was
going to include "Pussy Control" as the lead track.

Here's the singles that were scheduled...

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Dolphin
Pussy Control
Endorphinmachine
I Hate U
Gold

the promotion was absysmal

i remeber when it was released in europe to fucking stellar reviews

and what did WB choose as its soundbite??

"the best prince album in many a cherry moon"

pathetic

TGE was one of his most critically albums EVER and it just wsnt capitalised on

of course the feud just about killed it too

its funny cos most of my american mates (non p fans) all know P CONTROL cos of its heavy club rotation

it should have been released hot on the success of The Most Beautiful Girl.
i thought Dolphin was an excellent 2nd single and the video was beautiful.

the fact that they released "come" after the "most beauitul girl" single,
coupled with he namechange that wasn't (come is still credited to prince),
coupled to the fact that there wasn't a physical single for Dolphin stead
of just a video.

taking into account the god awfull packaging of the final album release,
stripped of some of it's best songs (days of wild), plus it's being out
into the stores far too late after far too much confusion and weird ass
single choices that didn't include any videos.

all of that set the album back tremendously. if they'd just promoted the
hell out of it with a string of strong singles with good video's it could
have been a massive hit.

could have. cause you never know how these things go. they could have done
all of what i think would be good choices and the public could still have
ignored it. although i doubt they would have given how good the album was
to begin with, after he overproduced it and tinkered with the tracklist a
year and a half.

Efan said:

Yes, but it should have been enough to raise the profile of the album. Prince wanted to release The Gold Experience much earlier and surely with the release and success of TMBGITW, he might have hoped that it would push Warners to release sooner?

BorisFishpaw said:

Didn´t "I Hate U" make it all the way up to number 11 on the billboard charts without heavy promotion or a video ? I guess that is pretty good, IMO.
Now just imagine he had used that promotional video that was already shot, coupled with a few promotional live renditions of that song ( Tonight Show, Letterman, TOTPS, Soultrain etc.etc.), it could have been a HUGE hit, maybe even a number 1 hit, don´t you think ? As far as I remember, even non-Prince fans loved that song back then. I wonder why he even shot the video if he wasn´t going to use it .
And the EP or maxi had some decent remixes and alternate versions on it.
All in all, it was a good choice, IMO, just way too much self-sabotage going on.

Why do you regard it as a bad single choice ( despite your love for the song )?

TheEnglishGent said:

Not sure what you mean about raising the profile. I think it had that effect regardless of anything, so it seems a moot point.

I also don't see how anybody but Prince messed up the promotion of the album, what with the quick succession of Come, TGE, and Chaos & Disorder. When you take that and add to it Prince's notorious ADD--which meant he barely promoted any project past the first two singles, no matter how many plans for future singles he may say he had--it's no wonder WB was wary of everything.

That's just my take on it, though.

I don’t believe it had anything to do with promotion.
The Gold X is by far the most overrated Prince album period, its not a terrible album, but just his average 90's 6 years behind the time style of dated mediocre music.
I love "eye hate U", beyond that everything else is just a few churns away from cheese, but still stale milk, maybe a little moldy when it hit store shelves.
You cant blame promotions, a top selling famous artist like Prince doesn’t need the promotional bombardment of an new obscure artist, the music should sell the product, the general public took a taste, and put it back on the shelves.
[Edited 8/14/08 15:32pm]

IstenSzek said:

totally agree-the worst thing for a prince album is to leave it on the shelf for a year and a half
he gets bored with it-plus yeah over produced

much prefer the rawer version of endorphin and TMBGITW sans soundeffects!

violetblues said:

are you high?

SHY??? cheesy???

BILLY JACK BITCH?? cheesy?

NOW??? thats fuckin insane

that was a genuily exciting period of music-were you around then ?

jonylawson said:

No just have "high" standards of the music i listen to.
ok, shy is a great cut!, billy jack bitch, tho funky, is a few churns from cheese,
[Edited 8/14/08 21:04pm]

was one of the first albums i got once fandom set in..i must say i immediately liked most of the stuff on there.

rusty1 said:

l totally agree with u on this one.....
this album should have been very sucessful it was a brilliant album ....
l blame it one the warners bros.....

and yeah alot of people tht l come across has said to me the dolphin song was very good... and should have been a single .....and it would have been a big hit over here...
and the video has been played alot over here on mtv
the dolphin song would have been a single but the warner bros wouldnt let prince play tht single for some reasons.....
blame it on warner bros they were the ones tht stopped tht song being a single...whereas prince wanted tht to be a single ...but warner bros refused again.....

tht why prince fell out with warner bros.....
its a big shame really l love tht song so much.....