For those of you who are complaining about the lyrics, it's clearly a 'joke' song in the same mould as "Prettyman", "Movie Star", and many other tracks written for The Time.

When I first heard the instrumental snippet on mplsound.com, I admit I thought it was fake due to it's generic qualities... however having heard the lyrics now, it all fits in perfectly - it's supposed to sound like Prince covering Prince!

All I know is if you put your 600+ Prince songs on RANDOM and just let it play, it'll be no more than 15 minutes before you hear another 'dance, goin' to a party, gonna' have some fun' track that's just like this. Musically/lyrically different, but the spirit is the same.

Within an hour, I've heard probably 4 such party songs. 'Feel U Up' is playing right now.

The 'WOHOOOOO!' bugs the hell out of me, but he's used something extremely similar on other songs. It's something he trots out on occasion. I think the difference with this song and others it that instrumentally, there's a lot less going on. It's pretty simple and sparse - i'm sure by design, but it makes the inclusion of those WOHOOOS! even more noticeable.

Doesn't mean he won't add more layers to the song. He may. Who knows.
[Edited 1/13/09 12:12pm]

NouveauDance said:

This is the attitude that irks me.

I'm glad he's doing this sorta of stuff, just because you don't like it doesn't make it worthless.

I don't like it either. For the past few albums Prince has been trying to sound like the old Prince, musically anyway. If he's gonna do that he's gotta make sure that the music is good, if he's gonna travel back.

I love the song. It's fun.

bobbyc17 said:

I think this song has alot of Sexy Dancer and Lady Cab Driver in it . I LOVE IT!And i cant wait to dance to it in concert.

Rinluv said:

Is it Prince trying to sound like the old Prince, or is it just Prince being himself?

toejam said:

He wasn't sounding like this in the 90's. When Rave came out he said he wanted to get that "old" sound back.

Wow - so now we have people saying the song sounds like the stuff from the 90s AND someone saying he's trying to sound like his stuff before that.

It's Prince being Prince. Nothing else.

bleutuna said:

Exactly. I laugh everytime someone says Prince is imitating Prince. Do you know how to imitate yourself? How the hell is Prince going to imitate himself? Some people are a hot mess, but I love you guys anyways!

bleutuna said:

If you read it correctly it said he wasn't sounding like this in the 90's. I was saying songs like "What Do U Want Me 2 Do", "Future Baby Mama" and "There Never B..." sounds reminiscent of his 80's style, Musically as I said before meaning beat wise.

purplecam said:

Actually, one thing that is cool with Prince is that he writes songs as though he is a hyper-exaggeration of himself - tracks like "Prettyman", "Movie Star" etc. - even stuff like the over-dramatisation in "The Beautiful Ones" etc. It's like there's the "real Prince" and then there's the "image/perception" of Prince. The real Prince loves to write songs as if he is the image/perception that people think he is... hope that makes sense.

So that's what "(TNB)ALM" is... it's just Prince playing the role of the perception of himself - the egotistical funk maniac - and that's what I love about it.


[Edited 1/13/09 13:15pm]

purplecam said:

Also in an 80's interveiw Prince said himself it is possible to copy yourself . Because he's done it thus him not releasing the songs, he felt he was copying himself. Whether musically or lyrically.

Prince does Prince.

Some people in here mentioned him doing the Emancipation/Rave sound - that's 90s. But it may not be the 90s stuff you're thinking of.

You say it's him trying to sound 80s again. Someone else says it's him trying to do the Rave sound again. It's neither and both of those.

Just Prince doing Prince. None of us can love every song.

Rinluv said:

Then he's crazy I don't think he's imitating himself but hey, different strokes for different folks.

Hi Everyone,

I completely disagree with a lot of the comments on this thread.....there are a lot of people on here who dished Planet Earth and then appeared on different threads saying a particular song was good and another song was great and the guitar riff in another song was fantastic...before you know it.. they've reviewed every song in different threads, saying there either ok, great or fantastic yet decided the album as a whole is poor!

Let's all post a thread in the summer about this track and see what comments we get then. My guess is alot of fans on here will type how they love it and say how they liked it from the moment they heard it!

This a fun and funky song which completely sums up Prince for me and why I so enjoy his music! I mean man...it just makes you wanna dance, get ya groove on and go out an party! Isn't this what Prince has been chanting for all these years?

I can actually hear how much he's having in the song...it's Prince being cheeky, funny, cool and cocky!....Isn't this how he was back in the day!

And why is everyone so hell bent on Prince going back to Pre 80's or pre 90's...
If we were still there, then I'd be the first to moan how Prince needs to move on!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I don't think this song is as bad as some people are suggesting.

Phew, there I said it....now can someone help me down off my soap box!

it's funky 2 me

Damn. How many threads are there going to be on the hatred of this song?

Yeah the lyrics are corny but it's catchy and it reminds me of the 1986 era P.
The outro is pretty cool too. And I will say that this tune makes up for the entire "Planet Earth" CD.

Mayb they should pull the release

toejam said:

That's a cop out IMO. A crap song is still a crap song. Movie Star is a great track and Pretty Man is half-decent, their comedy doesn't excuse a poor song to begin with.

bleutuna said:

It's actually Prince sounding like 90's Prince when he was trying to sound like 80's Prince.

superspaceboy said:

I just immediately thought of someone burning a 128kbps mp3 to a disk.. then ripping the same song back to 128kbps..

quality.
[Edited 1/13/09 14:29pm]

But what is 2000 era Prince? We can actually go back and look at that now that the decade's nearly over:

Is it Rainbow Children? Not really.

Is it Musicology? Not really.

Is it 3121? Maybe...but people say that sounds like 90s Prince.

Is it Planet Earth? Similar to 3121, but like a pale shadow.

So to me, this fits in with 3121/Planet Earth just as well as it does with things from the 90s.

NouveauDance said:

What exactly makes a soug sound like crap to you? I respect your musical choices, even the crazier ones, but it's clear you haven't liked most of Prince's output since Emancipation of PP. I am wondering what Prince is doing differently now than before, I feel there is some good stuff...some really good stuff mixed in with the rest.

Maybe a better question would be...what have you liked and loved since Emancipation. I am really curious as I have read about some of the music you find terrible i.e. ICP&C and Black Sweat that I think are Classics.

superspaceboy said:

Someone is bound to come along and pull it apart looking for inconsistencies in my opinion, but all I can say is I know when I hear something I don't like, and usually, what I don't like is laziness and artifice. Not artifice in terms of anything synthesized, or "manufactured pop", but in terms of gimmicky band-wagon jumping and trend chasing, which is what I hear on Rave/Musicology and 3121 and a lot of the NPGMC stuff.

superspaceboy said:

I like a lot of stuff since 1996 off the top of my head:

New World, We Gets Up (!), Dreamin About U, all of TRC, most of ONA (Piano), a little of The Truth, C-Note, Xpectation, NEWS, Judas Kiss, When I Lay My Hands On U, most of NPS, If I Was The Man In Ur Life, most of Planet Earth, Crimson & Clover. I think that's quite a lot tbh, there's more I DO like than I don't looking at it.

I don't try to purposely be obtuse, NBALM has all the qualities above I don't like in Prince's post-WB output. I like to think Prince can do better than a lot of his recent output. So I'll keep looking in the sewers for that diamond ring someone dropped down the toilet because I do keep finding the odd one, and still believe there's more to find.... somewhere!



BTW, I'll give you Black Sweat, but calling ICP&C a classic is stretching it to say the least.

toejam said:

I completely understand and agree. I've thought of this exact same "two images" analysis of Prince in the past.

"Never b Another Like Me"
"Jughead"
"lotlita"
"Love"
"Life of the Party"
"We March"
Three Chains O Gold"



Just part of the mature, or "growing" aspect of Prince music, according to fams
[Edited 1/13/09 17:59pm]

funkyhead said:

ya. don't bring 'we can funk' into this mess! the lyrics are just...cringe inducingly lame. lol, i don't really wanna listen to it again to get the lyrics right but, what was all that about "let me check my e-mail so i know where the party b?" or the whole thing about "i can't stand cussing!"? yikes!

ps-what is bilge?

Uh...it means he checks his email. To find out where the party is.

o_O

I thought that was self-explanatory.

bleutuna said:

i was just wondering....go take some midol.