errant said:

0ne0n0ne said:

Prince has plenty of hits that most likely the red-tape of the industry refused to acknowlege.

stillwaiting...I do not understand why "Crystal Ball," upset Prince fans. I'm a fan and I was never upset. Maybe I'm not a big enough fan to understand where you are coming from.

people ordered it. and they waited. and waited. and waited. and when it shipped, got their credit cards charged multiple times. and it showed up in nation wide record store chains before it showed up in the mailboxes of people that pre-ordered it (it was supposed to be available only to orders, not in stores). and when people complained or started asking questions, they were mocked by the love4onenoather website as "Naysayers" and told that they would be eating their words on toast. even though they still hadn't received the item. and on top of all of that, he was sending out cease & desist letters to fanzines and websites as a gestapo tactic to control all of the Prince online community.

it was not good times to be a Prince fan.

Oh, I did buy "Crystal Ball," at the record store. I wasn't dependent on the computer back then.

jpnyc said:

Because he doesn’t CARE about having hit singles. Prince stopped caring about hits in 1984.

Uhm, no.

Hit Songs:

Maybe, once upon a time, they were a reflection of what the public was into and were an actual reflection of taste/rotations on the radio/caller requests.

However, for much longer they have been simply an indicator of exposure and successful promotion.

I suspect that this has been the case even early in Prince's career. It is no surprise that his albums with the most "hits" have been his most heavily promoted/funded.

The entire Purple Rain project certainly was a case of massive genius exploding on the world at the exact right time. However, it was also because WB wanted a monster album/machine. They wanted their own Thriller and they pushed/paid for one. Thus, Prince got a movie and WB films behind him as well as WB records.

Once Prince stopped playing nice/being easy with WB the "hits" stopped coming.

As a fan, I could give a shit. My favorite Prince songs are not usually the ones on the radio/tv anyways. "Lady Cab Driver" anyone?

[Edited 1/31/11 9:56am]

[Edited 1/31/11 9:57am]

Well, he actually has to release them and promote them to begin with. You can't have a hit single if you don't release one.

The last song to actually have HIT potential was Chelsea Rogers. All we got was some sort of video and a website that came and went in an instant. No physical copies, nor remxes nor promotion. So....no Hit Single.

IstenSzek said:

if "black sweat", "fury" and "dance 4 me" didn't manage to break the charts,

why bother anymore at this point?

they were all solid songs. perhaps not number 1s but decent enough.

for the hardcore fans to buy his singles he's gonna need to bulk them up a

fair bit imo. a single should have an extended version and a remix, which

prince did so very well in the 80s and early 90s. plus there should be one

or two new, non album tracks on there.

as it is, the last single i bought was "cinnamon girl" simply because it had

"united states of division" and "dear mr man live" on it. and before that,

the last single was "come on", because i loved the extended remix version.

but none of that really matters anymore today, i think, since it's all about

airplay and stuff like that. or is it? i don't know, i'm almost 33, i'm totally

out of the loop with charts and such.

yet, if these things are in place:

1. good song

2. a decent video

3. promotion

4. prince actually hyping the song on tv and playing it live at gigs

if those things are all in place and still no one plays his song, then what

else can you do?

is it because you need a recordcompany paying for airtime or such? if

that is the case, i'm sure prince is fine just letting things be as they are.

he's above buying a number one, i presume. well, apart from all those

copies of TMBGITW that he bought back in the day.

but still, with a decent single, including bsides, an extended version of

the aside and a good remix, available online in itunes or such, he would

at least sell a solid amount to his fans.

i don't know about you, but i just don't consider buying a single from an

album that i already have when it doesn't include anything beyond the

a side, which is already on the album.

I think all youneed is a decent video and promote it. Put the song on iTunes so people can buy it and you're pretty much done. Radio play doesn't really matter anymore. A good video and let it go viral (which he hates) and folks will tune in.

NouveauDance said:

The examples you give are MBGITW and NC2U? :vomit:

And NC2U wasn't even his hit.

For what it's worth I think the following had potential that was wasted...

Musicology

Black Sweat

Fury

Love

Chelsea Rogers

Chocolate Box

Lay Down

Hit singles are not what they used to be for one thing. Prince has made some poor single choices for another.

Some fans may believe he is all about the dollar but he could certainly be ten times richer if he released the best obvious singles and stuck to business model that was in place for artists at the height of his popularity. But we knew way back he was not going to do that.

To me he has always walked a fine line between being a commercial artist and being an underground one. His competitive nature at times has made him want to "show" everyone what he is capable of but when you release a song like "I Wish U Heaven" you have to know some people are just not going to get it. I loved the song but hey I got great taste....lol

"Tell me to walk a straight line, I put on crooked shoes". That is Prince all day and night. I have had to accept that as a fan. With all of his "perceived" screw ups he is still a musical legend and that says something.

stillwaiting said:

benjamino71 said:

HE IS SO TALENTED, PRINCE COME ON! YOU GOT SO MUCH TO GIVE, GIVE US ANOTHER "THE MOST BEAUTIFUL...", GIVE US ANOTHER "NOTHING COMPARES...", GIVE US ANOTHER "SOMETIMES IT SNOWS...", GIVE US ANOTHER "DIAMONDS AND PEARLS"...

COME ON, JUST DO IT!

Well, where would you like me to start? Other than spending EVERY WAKING MOMENT DOING WHATEVER HE CAN TO AVOID HAVING HIT SINGLES, Pissing everyone in the business off, having business models that AVOID HIT MUSIC AT ALL COSTS...other than that...then I have no idea why he hasn't had any hit singles...no clue whatsoever.

Now I love Prince. I have pissed off a lot of people by saying he is better than the Beatles, U2, and James Brown COMBINED....

but he doesn't even have the business sense of El DeBarge.

Reasons for not having hit singles..

1. Even dating to the Warners days, single choices were sometimes very lame.

2. Having Tony M in the band had to have a negative effect somewhere, even though Gett Off, Sexy MF, and My Name is Prince all featured that waste of space.

3. Saturating the market with too many albums

4. Being so difficult in person to so many in the business, it was easy to see him being blackballed by so many he has probably offended. It says a lot that the 1999 re-release of "1999," was his last Top 40 hit...and that was 11 years and 1 month ago. The hot girl that works at the Burger King down the street was probably 9 years old at the time...

5. Pissing his own fans off by playing awesome on one tour, and then lame on the next one. I remember seeing two girls I met at the Northrop show in 2000 crying at the end, as they had hoped for something resembling his songs live. Instead they got tons of chanting, and lame raps by Doug E Fresh.

6. Pissing his fans off with Crystal Ball. (Won't repeat this story...if you don't know it, you do not know Prince.)

7. Pissing the fans of with websites promising one thing, and then delivering another. Oddly, each website got a little worse than the next, culminating with LotusFailure....charging fans $77 for a T Shirt that would not fit Gary Coleman in 1975.

8. Further pissing off fans by putting 77 tracks on 20Ten to make fun of how he ripped everyone off for $77. That was real low.

9. Not releasing 20Ten in his home country. Making you track it down on ebay...which meant you either got the real thing, or some Chinese bootleg that has an "Open Up," carboard sleeve.

10. I could name about 200 other reasons he has no hit singles....but I won't. The funniest thing is that he probably has around 50 songs worthy of the Top 40, but with him being without Management since like 1985, it wasn't meant to be.

Just in case anybody is wondering what I said about no Management since 1985. Most close observers saw that Spaghetti, Macaroni, Frangoli, and Ravioli were just collecting checks after Purple Rain blew up. By that time, Prince felt he was big enough to tell them how to manage him.

Great analysis and an interesting read. But was it really necessary to mock the names of his Italian-American management team?

Most of what you wrote makes a lot of sense though.

It doesn't really have anything to do with Prince's songs being good or not. Most singers/bands over a certain age don't have hits. Ageism in radio has always existed. Look at Carlos Santana. Do you really think that Supernatural and the records after it would have sold if Clive Davis hadn't put the young acts that were popular on them? Some have some kind of gimmick to sell like The Isleys' Mr. Biggs. Aretha Franklin did a song with Jermaine Dupri. Charlie Wilson had to sing hooks on rap songs to make a comeback.

MickyDolenz said:

Aretha Franklin did a song with Jermaine Dupri.

XNY said:

I would love a new single, extended version, or b-side - but if you haven't noticed, 90% of the stores who used to sell them have disappeared.

Walmart and Target don't sell singles. Best Buy's cd section has shrunk, and they're singles section is dismal- at least where I live.

Golly gee internet, thanks for nothing. But I get a hundred penis/breast enlargement emails a day. Whoopeee!!

Amazon and iTunes are the best places to get these.

errant said:

0ne0n0ne said:

Prince has plenty of hits that most likely the red-tape of the industry refused to acknowlege.

stillwaiting...I do not understand why "Crystal Ball," upset Prince fans. I'm a fan and I was never upset. Maybe I'm not a big enough fan to understand where you are coming from.

people ordered it. and they waited. and waited. and waited. and when it shipped, got their credit cards charged multiple times. and it showed up in nation wide record store chains before it showed up in the mailboxes of people that pre-ordered it (it was supposed to be available only to orders, not in stores). and when people complained or started asking questions, they were mocked by the love4onenoather website as "Naysayers" and told that they would be eating their words on toast. even though they still hadn't received the item. and on top of all of that, he was sending out cease & desist letters to fanzines and websites as a gestapo tactic to control all of the Prince online community.

it was not good times to be a Prince fan.

Not to mention the frustrating track listing. You can't just say Crystal Ball and deliver outtakes that are recent or are remixes. Don't get me started about calling 1-800-New-Funk and it'd ring and ring and ring. The ONLY saving grace was The bonus The Truth.

MickyDolenz said:

It doesn't really have anything to do with Prince's songs being good or not. Most singers/bands over a certain age don't have hits. Ageism in radio has always existed. Look at Carlos Santana. Do you really think that Supernatural and the records after it would have sold if Clive Davis hadn't put the young acts that were popular on them? Some have some kind of gimmick to sell like The Isleys' Mr. Biggs. Aretha Franklin did a song with Jermaine Dupri. Charlie Wilson had to sing hooks on rap songs to make a comeback.

And Clive Davis was brought in for Rave and look what happened there. I agree that ageism exists, but it doesn't have to stop an artist from having a hit single or album. I think the older you get the chances of having a hit single get slimmer, but your chances of having a hit album remain. Like with everything, the right amount of promotion and publicity can get you far in the business. I just think Prince is very confused as to how he should put his music out there.

superspaceboy said:

MickyDolenz said:

It doesn't really have anything to do with Prince's songs being good or not. Most singers/bands over a certain age don't have hits. Ageism in radio has always existed. Look at Carlos Santana. Do you really think that Supernatural and the records after it would have sold if Clive Davis hadn't put the young acts that were popular on them? Some have some kind of gimmick to sell like The Isleys' Mr. Biggs. Aretha Franklin did a song with Jermaine Dupri. Charlie Wilson had to sing hooks on rap songs to make a comeback.

And Clive Davis was brought in for Rave and look what happened there. I agree that ageism exists, but it doesn't have to stop an artist from having a hit single or album. I think the older you get the chances of having a hit single get slimmer, but your chances of having a hit album remain. Like with everything, the right amount of promotion and publicity can get you far in the business. I just think Prince is very confused as to how he should put his music out there.

The way that album was mixed, the guests weren't that noticable. Anyway Clive was fired, LA Reid was put in charge and he stopped promotion on Rave. The Stones still release an album every once in awhile, but when was the last time they had a hit? Probably the early 80's. In the US at least, how does Prince, The Stones, or Bruce Springsteen fit in with Soulja Boy and Taylor Swift? Prince's image and look doesn't help either with the "thug" or "keepin it real" audience today. For the most part, having a hit song has to do with payola and a record company is not going to spend their money on an old act and someone releasing their albums independently doesn't have the big bucks to pay the Clear Channel run radio stations.

prince doesn't have hits because he doesn't spend the money to do the proper promotion to generate hits. The one time in the last decade that he had a label set up to do the promotion (Rave), the guy who was behind the promotion was ousted from the company the week the album was released. It was Clive's project, nobody followed through.

It's perhaps worth noting that Prince won as many grammy awards this past decade as he did during his commercial peak in the 80s and his last 4 albums all made the top 3, including a 3121 hitting #1, which is as many top 3 albums as he had in the 80s.

Musicology was 2x platinum, the same as Around the World in a Day

3121 went gold, the same as lovesexy

I hear plenty of songs on his recent albums that are good enough to be hits. And far from being a washed up singer, his vocal work is better than ever.

alandail said:

Musicology was 2x platinum

Is that because people bought it or because Prince had it set up that Billboard tracked the "giveaways" at his concerts?

0ne0n0ne said:

errant said:

people ordered it. and they waited. and waited. and waited. and when it shipped, got their credit cards charged multiple times. and it showed up in nation wide record store chains before it showed up in the mailboxes of people that pre-ordered it (it was supposed to be available only to orders, not in stores). and when people complained or started asking questions, they were mocked by the love4onenoather website as "Naysayers" and told that they would be eating their words on toast. even though they still hadn't received the item. and on top of all of that, he was sending out cease & desist letters to fanzines and websites as a gestapo tactic to control all of the Prince online community.

it was not good times to be a Prince fan.

Oh, I did buy "Crystal Ball," at the record store. I wasn't dependent on the computer back then.

ironically enough, I don't even think you could buy it from 1-800-NEW-FUNK over the internet at the time. I think you had to order it over the phone.

Without the backing of a major label this is what happens. "Musicology & Call My Name" were all over the radio in 04' but I haven't heard SHIT on the radio from any album released after that & it's a sad cause A LOT OF IT IS BETTER THAN THAT CRAP THAT'S IN HEAVY ROTATION TODAY!

He didn't have enough?!

Because he's old!!!

KoolEaze said:

stillwaiting said:

Just in case anybody is wondering what I said about no Management since 1985. Most close observers saw that Spaghetti, Macaroni, Frangoli, and Ravioli were just collecting checks after Purple Rain blew up. By that time, Prince felt he was big enough to tell them how to manage him.

Great analysis and an interesting read. But was it really necessary to mock the names of his Italian-American management team?

Most of what you wrote makes a lot of sense though.

Thank You. I'm half Italian, but lacked maturity when I wrote that part. I have a complex on how great a writer I am when it comes to Prince. I think the best compliment I can ever get is when the weak minded here trash my posts. So in an odd way, I almost don't want the great compliment you gave me. I do have to give you major props for actually reading my post. I can't believe how much is taken out of context in the complaints some have given me...It is like they have no idea how to distinguish the sarcasm from the reality.

MickyDolenz said:

It doesn't really have anything to do with Prince's songs being good or not. Most singers/bands over a certain age don't have hits. Ageism in radio has always existed. Look at Carlos Santana. Do you really think that Supernatural and the records after it would have sold if Clive Davis hadn't put the young acts that were popular on them? Some have some kind of gimmick to sell like The Isleys' Mr. Biggs. Aretha Franklin did a song with Jermaine Dupri. Charlie Wilson had to sing hooks on rap songs to make a comeback.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my posts. When I was a youngin, Paul McCartney, The Stones, and Stevie Wonder were all still played on Pop Radio after 40. Despite Prince's stupid career moves, he might have had a few more hits if MTV and Radio had not just gone from worse to even worse than horrible awful...but any chance of a hit was taken care of by Prince's actions which were things to avoid hits at all costs, despite producing music that sounded like he was trying for hits.

squirrelgrease said:

YEAH... WHY THE FUCK NOT??!!

Could be a clever line if the Sopranos make a movie::

Mobster: "Hey Tony. Why the fuck does Prince not have some more Hit Singles??"

Tony: "Why the fuck are you asking me that for"

skywalker said:

Hit Songs:

Maybe, once upon a time, they were a reflection of what the public was into and were an actual reflection of taste/rotations on the radio/caller requests.

However, for much longer they have been simply an indicator of exposure and successful promotion.

I suspect that this has been the case even early in Prince's career. It is no surprise that his albums with the most "hits" have been his most heavily promoted/funded.

The entire Purple Rain project certainly was a case of massive genius exploding on the world at the exact right time. However, it was also because WB wanted a monster album/machine. They wanted their own Thriller and they pushed/paid for one. Thus, Prince got a movie and WB films behind him as well as WB records.

Once Prince stopped playing nice/being easy with WB the "hits" stopped coming.

As a fan, I could give a shit. My favorite Prince songs are not usually the ones on the radio/tv anyways. "Lady Cab Driver" anyone?

[Edited 1/31/11 9:56am]

[Edited 1/31/11 9:57am]

"Lady Cab Driver", one of my all time favorites. Top 20 for sure, maybe even Top 10...

if prince WROTE a hit it would BE a hit

TrevorAyer said:

if prince WROTE a hit it would BE a hit

This makes no sense. Or does it?

dantronix said:

skywalker said:

Hit Songs:

Maybe, once upon a time, they were a reflection of what the public was into and were an actual reflection of taste/rotations on the radio/caller requests.

However, for much longer they have been simply an indicator of exposure and successful promotion.

I suspect that this has been the case even early in Prince's career. It is no surprise that his albums with the most "hits" have been his most heavily promoted/funded.

The entire Purple Rain project certainly was a case of massive genius exploding on the world at the exact right time. However, it was also because WB wanted a monster album/machine. They wanted their own Thriller and they pushed/paid for one. Thus, Prince got a movie and WB films behind him as well as WB records.

Once Prince stopped playing nice/being easy with WB the "hits" stopped coming.

As a fan, I could give a shit. My favorite Prince songs are not usually the ones on the radio/tv anyways. "Lady Cab Driver" anyone?

[Edited 1/31/11 9:56am]

[Edited 1/31/11 9:57am]

"Lady Cab Driver", one of my all time favorites. Top 20 for sure, maybe even Top 10...

That's what I'm saying. Who cares if a song is a "hit" or not?

If you're a fan of his work, why would you give fuck all whether he charts or not with hits for the masses? I have plenty of artists that I absolutely adore that no one who likes main stream music has ever heard of, and it doesn't bother me one bit. I'm secure in my musical taste and choices and don't need approval to validate what I consider to be good stuff. Besides, as it is, Prince has made more money than most people can imagine they would see in a lifetime, so as long as he's number one at the bank and has his devoted fan base, I doubt he gives a crap whether he makes Top 40 or not.

Who decides or defines what a "Hit" is? Some idiot dj who thinks Justin Beiber would have a hot duet with Lady Gag?? LMAO

Real Prince fans think most of his songs are "Hits".