OldFriends4Sale said:

why do U think so....exsamples????
curious about ur opinion.

nyse said:

Susannah and Mayte influenced some of his most heartfelt songwriting

2011.

1979

1980-1984

dance4me3121 said:

who is to say he has? he's still alive, and perhaps he has not peaked at all

I don't think U can ever put a ceiling on that kind of creativity.

violetblues said:

^ Violetblues obviously don't know about THE DAWN...

Like Dave92 already wrote the peaks are:

1985-1987

&

1993-1995

Come and The Gold Experience were just brilliant.

thedance said:

Hey Violetblues - try to find this boot, take a listen - and then eat your own words about Prince and the 1990s..


THE DAWN 3 Cd:





this is just brilliant music...

1993-2000

1985-1986. The outtakes from this era really speak volumes about how creative he was at this time. I suppose you could say 1983-1986 if you wanted to extend it a bit. I really don't see how anyone can say 1987 was part of Prince's peak. We haven't heard much music that was recorded in that year (compared to the years immediately before and after) and what we have heard pales when compared to the 1983-1986 era.

BlackAdder7 said:

Take an objective look at the rock and roll era (circa 1955-present). How many "pop" artists have made their best music in their 50s? You could make that argument about a lot of blues musicians but that seems to be the one exception. It happened to Chuck Berry, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and most anyone you care to name. I'm not sure why but for the vast majority of "pop" artists they usually only have about ten-fifteen years of greatness. After that they slowly start to lose what made their music special. Once an artist hits 40 it's almost always a case of diminishing returns. I suppose that you could argue that Bob Dylan has made some of his best music in the last 10-12 years so there's a slight glimmer of hope for Prince but it seems very unlikely that he will ever create anything to rival what he did in the mid '80s/mid '90s.

nyse said:

examples: the Family album was centered around Susannah Melvoin(some of the best music 2 come out of Prince's whole canon of music) Parade aftershow songs like Susannah's Blues Strange Relationships, the Beautiful Ones[song written 2 woe her from her current boyfriend) Susannah being an artist brought a certain level of class to Prince's life, chic if you will and we see the results of that between PR - Sign o the Times, especially Parade and the artistic vision. Empty Room, Forever In My Life, Starfish & Coffee, Adore,

Vanity that whole wild era of Controversy - 1999, Wonderful Ass, the Vanity 6 project as well as the music that was 2 be on the 2nd album

Lisa Colemans
Wendy Melvoin
Sheila E.
Cat
Susan Moonsie:Private Joy
Jill Jones:She's Always In My Hair

some of his hottest songs were inspired by them or the shows or direction he took

I'm not 2 familiar with Maytes influence on songs

rialb said:

Good points: anyone who is familiar with the outtakes will know the largest amount were made in the 1983-1986 years, and the people in his life and band had a lot 2 do with it,

Just 4 Purple Rain era alone there are rumored 2 be about 300 outtakes
and Prince said similar in a 1985 interview

it started to pick up during the 1999 era, Vanity's place in his life also influenced or stimiluated it

Purple Rain - Dream Factory hit out music we still have not heard yet it started to go down immediately during SOTT era and onward

OldFriends4Sale said:

To be fair we really have no idea how many outtakes exist from any era. Only Prince knows for sure!

However the Parade/Dream Factory/SOTT era certainly produced some amazing unreleased tunes.

soulyacolia said:

This is true

but I bet the years with the proteges had the most 1980-1987:the Time Vanity6/A6 Sheila E the Family Mazarati Jill Jones Madhouse

half way through the guitar solo to Little Red Corvette at Montreux. And then at the re-switching on of the Large Hadron Collider.

OldFriends4Sale said:

No, this is not true. What you are talking about are the outtakes( unreleased songs) in the vault that Prince mentioned during that interview you mentioned above...he merely said that he had approximately 300 unreleased songs in the vault but he didn´t say that those were all from the Purple Rain sessions.

The Purple Rain sessions on the other hand did not produce a lot of outtakes.Even Bobby Z. said so in an interview he gave for Uptown years ago when he was asked about other outtakes besides "Wednesday".

I think he reaches a creative peak in each album he creates. There is always a song or two that are just a head and shoulders above the rest.

KoolEaze said:

your right, thanks 4 that correction,

But the PR sessions did produce a lot of songs and there were a lot of unreleased, probably not as much as the Parade-Dream Factory era

But remember a lot of songs that ended up with the Family came from PR sessions, like Nothing Compares 2 U, Desire
there are a lot of studio jams like White Girls, Billy's Sunglasses, Wet Dream Cousin

Coffee & Cocaine, Traffic Jam, the unedited songs from Purple Rain: Take Me With U, the Beatufiul Ones, Computer Blue, Darling Nikki, I Would Die 4 U
Song that were released on Jill Jones album:All Day All Night, G-Spot
Climax
song given 2 Sheena Eeston: Sugar Walls
song given 2 the Bangels: Manic Monday
song given 2 Andre Cymone: Dance Electric

Roadhouse Garden, Our Destiny
Chocolate that was later given to the Time 1989/90

4 the Tears In Your Eyes, Electric Intercourse, God the Love Theme, Possessed, Lust U Always, A Million Miles,

1981 - 1988 (Dirty Mind unto Lovesexy) remains his 'golden period' IMO:
A stream of recordings, releases and concerts that can be compared to the creative growth and the artistic importance of the Beatles in their period between Rubber Soul and Abbey Road.

Within that period i think he had his real peak from 1985 - 1987:
ATWIAD, Parade, songs like In All my dreams and Crystal Ball, The Family Album, The Jill Jones debut, Clare Fisher, The aborted Camille Album, Dream Factory, The Crystal Ball set resulting in the Sign of the Times album.

He did a tremendous job between 1981 - 1984 (Dirty Mind unto Purple Rain) by mixing 'black' and 'white' styles: mixing funk, soul, pop, rock, electronic dance music and new-wave into the 'Minneapolis sound', but it also was a bit too calculated for me sometimes (using his clothes and lyrics for 'shock value', his posure as the new black-white 'crossover' artist 'raunchier' then Michael Jackson, the rather blatant 'american dream' story of the Purple Rain movie)

Between 1985 and 1987 he sounds 'liberated' IMO. Its like the succes and money Purple Rain (the album and the movie) brought him, gave him he thought: i have reached my goal, lets go 'freewheeling' now!
His music from this short period simply bursts with rewarding creativity: wether its the stripped down drummachine beats meeting baroque orchestrations of the Family album and the Jill Jones debut, the Parade album going from Beatlesque marches, to calypso, to vaudeville, 'Pet sounds', Parisian Jazz, stripped down funk and a folky ballad, his embrace of jazz-funk on the Madhouse albums, the genious minimalism of songs like Sign of the Times and If I was your girlfriend, let alone the music that didnt get officially released (the dark, dense 'psycho-funk' of the Camille album, playfully genre-leaping compositions like Crystal Ball and In all my dreams).
Its like he 'paid off' his duties as a 'superstar' with the Purple Rain project, and it opened the way the just follow his creativity without caring too much what the 'big public' would think off it. IMO his music (and lyrics) did benefit a lot from that: it became less obvious, less superficial and more subtle and playfull.
The fact that the Sign of the Times album derives from an aborted 3 album-set, that it compromises three types of Prince sessions (Prince with the Revolution, Prince as his Camille alter-ego, and stripped down, minimalistic Prince after 'getting rid' of the Revolution) and that it still is such a great album, seen by many as his 'magnum opus', shows how much he was 'on a roll' in those years.

Going forward to his 1988 release: Lovesexy. I think that album is great on some levels, and not so great on other ones.
The great part of Lovesexy is that it musically tries to combine everything he did in the eighties: soul, funk, gospel, jazz, hard rock, dance, psychedelic rock, resulting in rather busy, but nonetheless ingenious arrangements (George Clinton and Frank Zappa come to my mind).
Also on a 'lyrical level' he tries to go for 'big answers': trying to combine the carnal with the spiritual, God and sex, love and lust.
But ultimately its a step back from what he achieved with the lyrics of Parade and especially Sign of the Times: On 'Sign' he finally showed some subtle doubts and vulnerability i could relate to. But on Lovesexy he reacts on some bad trip in a totally exeggerated way. Hiding himself behind dogma's and acting like some catholic from the 1930's. He might bring the 'sex' element into his redemption, but its annoying to see someone losing himself in his own dogma's.

1988 was the year when Prince did start to censor himself again upto to an annoying level. He played the funk-rock sexgod between 1981 and 1984. He seemed to get more carefree and 'human' between 1985 and 1987, But for whatever reason he decided to hide himself again in 1988.

IMO he has never recovered from it. He has delivered some great songs (at least, on a musical level) since. His own dogma's about romance (Emancipation), religion (The Rainbow Children, the Jehovah thing) and ownership (the '00's, the youtube-issue) have first of all shown me Prince is an artist affraid to grow up and develop himself as a person, and second, a dogmatic conservative who seems to doesnt know shit about life.

SPOOKYGAS said:

and he isn't trying to either.

1994

violetblues said:

It cracks me up that people think Lovesexy isn't original. Exactly where have you heard anything that sounds like it?

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

everything before Lovesexy

I like lovesexy, but it did not expand on his work like most albums did up to "Sign"
It's been coasting ever since. But i gotta say, to me his live performing has never been better.

.
[Edited 9/14/09 17:58pm]

violetblues said:

unnacceptable still! lovesexy is my favorite Prince album

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Well the reason I put 1986-1987 as his creative peak was because he recorded the majority of Lovesexy in 1987. '87 also saw the recording of the Black Album. I don't think anyone can argue that 1986 saw Prince go creatively apeshit in the studio. To me, 1988 was the start of a downhill slide toward mediocrity (keeping in mind that this is Prince we're talking about - so that isn't as bad as it sounds), as Graffiti Bridge was recorded during this year - not to mention the film by the same name. The 1988-on outtakes are hit and miss, too.

On a side note, there can only be one career peak - not two or three. Other high points in his canon are only spikes.

1982-1987