SoulAlive said:

there r other curse words in release it, love machine that probably warrented the sticker

skywalker said:

Prior to 1985 There was no ratings for albums

Purple Rain
Around the World in a Day
Parade

where pretty clean (no curse words) and if, it was so murked that you would have to listen listen and listen to pick it out

SOTT
Lovesexy were pretty safe as well

OldFriends4Sale said:

how can sott b safe with housequake lyrics saying bullshit? and tho u have 2 hear it really well but it it's gonna b a beautiful night "can't nobody fuck with us" chant?

The backlash was mainly in North America - over here in the UK he maintained very solid sales and critical reception for long after Purple Rain. Popularity fell away sharply after the Hits compilations. Come may have been a number 1 album but is dropped like a stone as has every album since.

wmccwmcc said:

Theres a perception that if you release a greatest hits, your career is over.
Alot of the general public lost interest after the hits, and I think this is perhaps why.

L4OATheOriginal said:

Yeah 4 the most part it's safe, it's not a vulgar album

And even certain curse words, placed a certain way can sound really nasty or just like 'oooohh you said a bad word'

I've listened to comedians who use a curse word here or there and depending on where it's placed makes the joke really funny

and then there are others who just make me cringe when they curse
Chris Rock is on my explicit list, the curses are just vulgar and unnec.

But back 2 SOTT as an album 99% of it is pretty radio friendly

(very long)

What backlash? lol

IMO Prince became more interesting as a musician / artist/ creative force in the years RIGHT after Purple Rain.

The backlash started later on (slow decline since the Batman album, the real dive down with the Emancipation album).

From Dirty Mind unto Purple Rain, Prince 'invented' and perfectionilised the 'Minneapolis sound': a mixture of funk, soul, rock, electro and new-wave.
It was quite clear what he was heading too in that period: getting succesfull with (often innovative) cross-over music with genderbending, provocative lyrics.
He became a superstar with that mixture with Purple Rain, hence the movie being an almost stereotypical take on the American dream (the musical equivalent of the first Rocky movie, sort of speak...lol).

That project (the album, the movie, the tour) not only brought him tremendous commercial succes, but on an artistical level I think he couldnt really get 'any further' with refining his trademark sound. As he said himself: "It would have been rather easy to deliver a Purple Rain nr. 2".

How could he possibly get any bigger commercially after that? And, would it offer him any real creative challenge to simply make "Purple Rain nr.2"?

In that light i see the release as ATWIAD as rather brave, but first of all logical step.
Contrary to others I think, that on a pure musical level, ATWIAD is not really a real watershed from the Minneapolis sound: it still had that trademark, cleverly programmed linn-beats, the use of synths to 'colour in' the arrangements, and some pop- and rock elements thrown into the mix to 'spice things up'.
Okay there were some more exotic instruments in the mix, a bit of saxophone and orchestral arrangements, but in essence its a more psychedelic take on the Minneapolis sound.
But, an important difference on this album was that he gave more room to Revolution-members and co-writers (his dad, Jonathan Melvoin) to help create the music with him.
An other difference is also that he dares to vary more with the 'tone' of his emotions: melo-drama on Condition of the heart and the Ladder, bleak selfloathing on Tambourine, the manic sound of Temptation. Its all a bit less calculated then the messianistic funk-rock-sex guru image of before, a bit more layered and multi-faceted.

For me personally the real watershed came with the Parade album. Not only did it give even more room for his fellow-musicians (Wendy and Lisa notably, Eric Leeds to a lesser extent, and lets not forget Clare Fischer) to influence the songs and the sounds.
Musicwise it is quite a break from his trademark sound. He ditched those typical linn-drumbeats with the 'side clap' (apart from Anotherloverholenyohead, that is). Replacing them with often electronically altered drum-patterns that changed from from song to song.
He gave 'room' in his music for more intricate acoustic and orchestral kind of textures, instead of always using the typical synths-as-horns 'fill in'.
There is also a new found playfullness in the music (compared to the rather claustophobic sound of ATWIAD). Like he has recorded dozens of jams with the Revolution, while saying to them: just play what comes up in your mind, and we assemble some songs of it later.
The Parade album shows a kind of intuitive, freewheeling approach to his music, that not always leads to great songs (some of the material on the album is rather sketchy), but IMO the approach itself outrules that. Maybe that is why this album still sounds as fresh today, as it did in 1986.

Alltough its probably his strongest album to date, Sign of the Times strange enough appears a step back from what he achieved with Parade.
As I said, the Parade album showed a rather 'intuitive' touch and he gave lots of freedom to his bandmembers and arranger Clare Fischer.
But at the same time his popularity in the mainstream was fading, because probably many people didn't get the creative choices he was making. And music critics were saying that he was going into too many directions with his music,
losing his focus. Pared with the destructive revies of the Under the Cherry Moon movie it probably brought him to re-evaluate his music, and how it was perceived by other people.
The result: he ditched the Revolution, he tried to focus more on the songwriting aspect (delivering well-written and composed songs), and first of all it sounded to me like he was trying to find a certain balance to the immediate appeal of the material on Purple Rain, and the more nuanced, 'mature' aspects of the ATWIAD and Parade.
The more focussed songwriting, coupled with a growth in writing more mature, intelligent lyrics (The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, If I was your girlfriend, Strange Relationship, Starfish and Coffee, to name a few), resulted in a new masterpiece.
There is one party i especially like to thank for that: and that is ironically, WB. Prince originally wanted to release a set consisting of 3 Lp's. And altough there are a lot of gems to be found in the outtake-material from that period, I think in its entirety it would have become a too messy album: part quirky, intuitive 'parade' approach , coupled with the far more straightforward approach of the camille / Prince tracks. It would have created a confused 'overdose' of music.
Prince was forced to bring the release down to 2 Lp's, and I still dont know how he managed it with material from such different sessions, but a 'happy accident' somehow brought us Princes one-man-band (almost..) version of the Beatles "White album". Probably his finest, most mature album to date.

For me the most prolific, creative period of Princes career ends with the Lovesexy album.
While Purple Rain had brought him the commercial superstar-status (something like the 'Thriller' phenomenon), Sign of the Times (at least in Europe) did get the 'serious music press' enthralled: they were comparing him to the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, praising him like hell, like a genious, and labeling him the most important musician of the eighties.
The public response on the Parade tour and especially the Sign of the times tour in Europe, was also beyond any expectations. Purple Rain made him popular worldwide, but with Sign of the Times people in Europe were simply going crazy over him.
I am quite sure Prince was reading or hearing about this superlatives, and somehow felt flattered by it. I can see how that could result in even more musical ambitions on the Lovesexy album. A desire to be 'one of the clever musician boys', translated into arrangements that refer to both the funk-rock opera's of George Clinton and the jazz-and classically influenced elite-rock of Frank Zappa.
Coupled with the desire of Prince to express a seemingly 'spiritual' process he went through during the recording of the black album, it resulted in an album that is 'over the top' in almost everything: musically, arrangement-wise, lyrically.
Lovesexy sounds like he is trying to 'ram' everything he had done before in one single 45-minute album, musicwise, lyricwise, arrangementwise. He does that with such a manic drive that it becomes the kind of album you have to be in the mood for it to listen to: You can go along with the brilliant arrangements and the manic blast of energy of the titletrack, while at other times you can get tired with all the idea's Princes is trying to incorporate in a song like Positivity.
Also lyricwise Lovesexy sounds like some 'final' Prince statement: the carnal is finally 'married' with the spiritual, sex and god are finally combined, and manic Prince can't do anything else then 'shout about it'.
At its best Lovesexy shows how great an arranger Prince can be, at its worst it sounds like some manic guy shouting out what he did found as 'truth', while you are thinking: pfff.... ease it down a bit, relax man...
That 'tension' makes it an intriguing album, an album with multiple sides, certainly not flawed, but still a piece of art.

After the 'final', all-incorporating 'blast' of Lovesexy (the album and the tour) Prince has been struggling a lot with his vision and his artistic course IMO.
His albums have never reached the general quality of the ones before, but at least untill 1995 he managed, through individual songs and his qualities as a musician, composer and arranger to deliver material that was often better then 95 percent of the artists around him.

Compositionwise the Batman album offers nothing new, but his use of samples to 'built up' the music is rather fresh, and the psychodrama he puts into the lyrics with the Bruce Wayne - Batman and Prince - Camille comparisons give these songs an extra edge.

The strongest tracks from the Graffiti Bridge album, are the ones he had written and demo-ed during the eighties, and especially the Question of U and Joy in Repitition are classics. But the movie is an awfull, poorly written, directed and acted attempt (within a cardboard decor) at Purple Rain nr. 2. The religous - messianistic references in this movie get very annoying also, lacking irony and selfreflection. They show how much Princes lyrics have degenerated since Sign of the times.

Altough partially calculated, the arrival of the New Power Generation brought some fresh air to Princes music.
It was obvious he was going for a more organic 'live-sound' with this outfit. Allthough his music became less inventive and groundbreaking with this band, the individual skills of his bandmembers, and the strong, more traditional, songwriting on (parts of) albums like Diamonds and Pearls, Symbol and the Gold Experience, make me label this as a sort of 'rennaisance'.
Unfortunately he also had the tendency during this period to incorporate styles like hip-hop and new-jack swing into his music, often leading to cringefull results.
The funny thing is that 'obligational records' like Chaos and Disorder and The Vault probably show better what Prince had in mind with the NPG without the commercial pressure, then the 'official' releases like Diamonds and Pearls and Symbol.

(To be continued)

^^^ Nice Post.

skywalker said:

I could not agree more. Timing is the key to this puzzle. Also when Prince changed face with ATWIAD he still had fans and critics feeling high off of Purple Rain. Everything in moderation as they say. You can't just change up on people and not expect a modest reception or being put on iggy. It's happened to every artist. Look at Mariah Carey. Once she stopped being miss girl next door all covered up and singing happy love songs, the criticism went up and the album sales faltered. MJ too, he's never topped Thriller and I actually thought BAD was very good! Even Madonna has felt the decline. She was the shock girl and now there's nothing left to shock people with.

Doesn't take away from their talent, its just the nature of the biz. You won't be on top all the time.

Desire2006 said:

NO POINT IN SAYING ANYTHING ELSE!!! You got it 100% correct here...BAM!

I think it is really unfair to compare Prine with Michael jackson and Madonna.People may argue that MJ was more successful even though regarded as a freak and Madonna still successful though regarded as a slut. But the key difference (Apart from them not being particularly great) is that you could strip the music from the person. Listening to Cherish or Like a Prayer(Without the video) or Black and White is a completely inoffensive experience. With prince it is generally one and the same experience so you are gonna have an opinion. So post Purple Rain there was a backlash by the masses coz the masses had bought in to a sound that was easier(I'm basing that on singles-I'm sure a lot didnt like computer blue for example), Purple Rain is probably the least representative of prince's personality. Look at David Bowies career that worked in reverse, yes he was popular in the 1970's but to be a fan came with baggage and his music was immediately associated with that identity.He sold well but not on mass. With Let's Dance he found a generic market to tap into because the music was not related to a persona. I've always thought that as a perceived "Freak" Prince has probably been the most successful artist ever, he's had his cake and eat it as far as it can be pushed

Riverpoet31 said:

very long post, indeed, I didn't read it all....

I'm talking about the backlash in the media: very well described by Dance4me, with quotes from the DanceMusicSexRomance book (see his post: #30 on page 2 by Dance4me).
[Edited 6/5/09 10:38am]
[Edited 6/5/09 10:38am]

There wasn't anything unusual about not matching the success of PR. How can you do that twice? Still, I remember that for several years after that, every new Prince album was a cause celebre. People really talked about him. I remember there were Rolling Stone interviews with artists in which something like "What do you think of Prince?" was a common inquiry.

It's not like the follow-up albums were commercial flops. I think a lot of people gave up on him after Lovesexy and Alphabet St. That was one of my favorite periods, however.

asdfjkl said:

thedance said:

His albums & singles din't sell that much before "Purple Rain", why should this be a backlash?

Don't confuse Prince fans with Prince POP fans.

Desire2006 said:

as a newbie to Prince with PR- ATWIAD was def. a WTF?!?! moment...

til i got to learn a bit about the man, and nothing he now does suprises me

a gutsy move IMO, he could have kept churning out PR, and made squillions...but he dances to his own tune, and thats what makes him Prince

Keep in mind also that P had a huge "bandwagon" of Purple Rain fans in 1984-85. They were never into him before that LP and movie. P even said it himself that every night on that tour he saw people in the audience he never saw before and knew he would never see again.

Once "Parade" and "U.T.C.M" came out, they moved on or went back to listening to Tears For Fears and Mr. Mister. They were waiting for Purple Rain part2 and it never happened.

SPYZFAN1 said:

Yeah it did. Unfortunately.




THE KID. THE KING. BAD BLOOD. HOT STELLAS. IN A STORY THE WAY ONLY PRINCE COULD TELL IT....WITH MUSIC!
GRAFFITI BRIDGE.
PRINCE, MORRIS DAY, JEROME BENTON, AND THE TIME. MAVIS STAPLES, GEORGE CLINTON, INGRID CHAVEZ, TEVIN CAMPBELL, AND PRINCE. GRAFFITI BRIDGE!! aaahhhhh!!!

DesireeNevermind said:

I've only watched that thing once and probably never again.

Purple Rain had wide appeal because people thought he created simple and powerful music. His music after Purple Rain became increasingly sophisticated and nuanced in a way that made casual listeners less interested. Diamonds & Pearls became a big success because again he tapped into the tastes of the masses with several of the songs, but in general, his music since the late 80s and until today is not for everyone. But it is for me.
[Edited 6/7/09 2:13am]

Desiree you're right. I almost forgot about that. But you know what I mean.