I don't know why it didn't hit big. I think it was a great album and concept behind it. I love the songs. Also the tour was banging so, I don't understand why it didn't. It was such a great period and era.

[Edited 9/1/11 13:01pm]

I don't get all the hate for 'Dance On' and 'Positivity' at all. Those are 2 of my favorite songs on the record.

Some observations here:

1. I don't get why the people on this thread put so much 'weight' on the choice of singles for this album. In general this wasnt a single-orientated album, and much more of a concept-album (hence the contineous tracking). Arrangement-wise most songs are simply not single materia. I think it wouldn't have made much of a difference which songs would have been chosen as a single, for the album to be a commercial succes.

I think Alphabet Street was the obvious choice for a first single because the syncopated rhythem guitar work and the 'start and stop' musical structure echoed that of Princes own hitsingle Kiss and George Michaels hitsong Faith. But next to that its a very strange song: the basic song is like some sort of Sly Stone sing-a-long tune, but the rythmic structure is hard to describe: is it reggae, funk or pop? or a combination of that?

2. I don't get the people calling 'Glam Slam' bland. IMO its one of his best pop melodies from the eighties, and the way he 'uses' the harmonies from the guitar and the background vocals is not only brilliant but very catchy. Anyway, a more obvious choice for a single then 'I wish U heaven' which is plane filler IMO with about 5 lines of lyrics, and a rather dated sounding FM-rock guitar (didnt Prince know that Foreigner and Toto were something of the early eighties? lol).

3. Stock, Aitken and Waterman-sound? For fuck sake, what do you know about music? The music on Lovesexy may sound 'thin' nowadays, but that is part of the mixing, not of the production. While Stock, Aitkan and Waterman were trying to offer arrangements sounding as dumb as possible, if anything Prince was too over-ambitious with the arrangements on Lovesexy: its like he was trying to cramp as many harmonies, layers and 'cleverly' placed dissonants into the arrangements as possible. To me that results in a love-hate relationship with this album. When i am in the mood for it, the arrangements blow my mind away. But when i am not, i am thinking: why you are trying to proof to be the new Frank Zappa, when you can keep it simple?

But... Stock, Aitken and Waterman? That makes no sense.

4. I dont get the hate for Dance On and Positivity either. Dance on is a very original song: its like Princes 'skeletoral' take on funk, like Tom Waits did with blues on rock on the album Bone Machine. Abstract and to the extreme.

Positivity might be a bit pompeous and overwrought when it comes to the lyrics and the structure of the arrangement, but i really dig the background vocals on this track (Cat, Boni?) giving the delivery a certain urgency. Next to that, this song has some of the most impressive guitar work Prince has ever done. It is rather burried down in the mix, but the psychedelic-rock kinda playing is really splendid.

[Edited 9/2/11 13:19pm]

Riverman37 said:

Some observations here:

1. I don't get why the people on this thread put so much 'weight' on the choice of singles for this album. In general this wasnt a single-orientated album, and much more of a concept-album (hence the contineous tracking). Arrangement-wise most songs are simply not single materia. I think it wouldn't have made much of a difference which songs would have been chosen as a single, for the album to be a commercial succes.

I think Alphabet Street was the obvious choice for a first single because the syncopated rhythem guitar work and the 'start and stop' musical structure echoed that of Princes own hitsingle Kiss and George Michaels hitsong Faith. But next to that its a very strange song: the basic song is like some sort of Sly Stone sing-a-long tune, but the rythmic structure is hard to describe: is it reggae, funk or pop? or a combination of that?

2. I don't get the people calling 'Glam Slam' bland. IMO its one of his best pop melodies from the eighties, and the way he 'uses' the harmonies from the guitar and the background vocals is not only brilliant but very catchy. Anyway, a more obvious choice for a single then 'I wish U heaven' which is plane filler IMO with about 5 lines of lyrics, and a rather dated sounding FM-rock guitar (didnt Prince know that Foreigner and Toto were something of the early eighties? lol).

3. Stock, Aitken and Waterman-sound? For fuck sake, what do you know about music? The music on Lovesexy may sound 'thin' nowadays, but that is part of the mixing, not of the production. While Stock, Aitkan and Waterman were trying to offer arrangements sounding as dumb as possible, if anything Prince was too over-ambitious with the arrangements on Lovesexy: its like he was trying to cramp as many harmonies, layers and 'cleverly' placed dissonants into the arrangements as possible. To me that results in a love-hate relationship with this album. When i am in the mood for it, the arrangements blow my mind away. But when i am not, i am thinking: why you are trying to proof to be the new Frank Zappa, when you can keep it simple?

But... Stock, Aitken and Waterman? That makes no sense.

4. I dont get the hate for Dance On and Positivity either. Dance on is a very original song: its like Princes 'skeletoral' take on funk, like Tom Waits did with blues on rock on the album Bone Machine. Abstract and to the extreme.

Positivity might be a bit pompeous and overwrought when it comes to the lyrics and the structure of the arrangement, but i really dig the background vocals on this track (Cat, Boni?) giving the delivery a certain urgency. Next to that, this song has some of the most impressive guitar work Prince has ever done. It is rather burried down in the mix, but the psychedelic-rock kinda playing is really splendid.

[Edited 9/2/11 13:19pm]

The reason why the choice of singles matters is that this was the golden age of music videos. Having been a teenager at the time, I can attest to the fact that I watched a lot of MTV, and I bought some albums because I liked a song I saw/heard in a video. If Prince had released a better single with an interesting video, more people would have sought out the album. "Alphabet Street" was okay, and the video did get some play, but I don't recall ever seeing the videos for the other singles. And this was the year that I went to see Prince in concert, the peak of my Prince fan-dom, so I certainly would have remembered them if they had been in rotation.

Maybe he should have put "Scarlet Pussy" on the album and released it as an A-side instead of a B-side. I could imagine a really cool video for that song (think "Fritz the Cat"). Even if MTV banned it, the resulting publicity would have gotten a lot of people looking for the album.

Well, what i am trying to say is i really think that Lovesexy could not have been a bigger commercial succes.

Even with other choices of singles and (semi) high-budget video's.

The material on the album simply wasnt 'commercial' enough, both musically and lyricwise.

By the way: maybe Prince wasn't that interestered in scoring a commercial succes with Lovesexy. Purple Rain made him a huge star in the USA, and he did decide to follow it up with Around the world in a day.

Sign of the Times was his real commercial breakthrough in Europe, and he decided to follow it up with Lovesexy (the album sold about half of 'Sign' over her in Europe, but the Lovesexy tour was very succesfull).

To me its a sign of how 'schizophrenic' he is when it comes to his musical career: he seems to have the desire to be respected by the big mainstream public, but also wants to be admired by the serious music press, and next to that he also wants to be able to follow his artistic muse. And these interests often seem to conflict.

Riverman37 said:

Well, what i am trying to say is i really think that Lovesexy could not have been a bigger commercial succes.

Even with other choices of singles and (semi) high-budget video's.

The material on the album simply wasnt 'commercial' enough, both musically and lyricwise.

By the way: maybe Prince wasn't that interestered in scoring a commercial succes with Lovesexy. Purple Rain made him a huge star in the USA, and he did decide to follow it up with Around the world in a day.

Sign of the Times was his real commercial breakthrough in Europe, and he decided to follow it up with Lovesexy (the album sold about half of 'Sign' over her in Europe, but the Lovesexy tour was very succesfull).

To me its a sign of how 'schizophrenic' he is when it comes to his musical career: he seems to have the desire to be respected by the big mainstream public, but also wants to be admired by the serious music press, and next to that he also wants to be able to follow his artistic muse. And these interests often seem to conflict.

That may be right. He had already been to the mountaintop in terms of commercial success, and maybe he was hoping to make a brilliant album that would cement his status as a great pop composer. If so, that sentiment didn't last long as it's pretty clear to me that Batman was written to be as commercially successful as possible. And it was.

Interesting that you mentioned Frank Zappa in an earlier post. As was pointed out in another thread, both "Bob George" and "Lovesexy" use a sample from a Frank Zappa song ("Our Bizarre Relationship"), so he must have been listening to some Zappa at the time. Mahler, too.

Prince uses the phrase 'serve it up Franky' both on the Black album and Lovesexy. I always thought that was a remark refering to Frank Zappa.

To me Lovesexy is an 'arrangers record', and Zappa was always seen as a great arranger.

For the general public, it took too long to hook to and understand. That's why. Maybe lacked an easy double meaning like his other albums hadnt done, such as a general meaning meaning party til the end of time, but the real meaning was be aware and prepare for the apocalypse

Riverman37 said:

4. I dont get the hate for Dance On and Positivity either. Positivity might be a bit pompeous and overwrought when it comes to the lyrics and the structure of the arrangement, but i really dig the background vocals on this track (Cat, Boni?) giving the delivery a certain urgency. Next to that, this song has some of the most impressive guitar work Prince has ever done. It is rather burried down in the mix, but the psychedelic-rock kinda playing is really splendid.

[Edited 9/2/11 13:19pm]

Positivity..his most underrated jam imho.

I think the whole release (Lovesexy) was too eclectic sounding for its own good to be a hit. I was going to say zappa-ish but ...

Shit, Im glad it wasn't a huge hit even with the tour behind it (this is what he decided to tour the states with instad of SOTT?). It's like Bitches Brew or On The Corner when folks wanted pre-electric fusion Miles.

I can remember at the age of 12 thinking that the cover was something that i didn't want my friends to see when they came round to play, it stayed expertly hidden under my bed until the time came that I was alone and could have a listen. In fact looking back, I don't think I was too keen on my mum and dad seeing it! So maybe some males were put off from going into their local record stores to buy it.

JoeTyler said:

too preachy, weird and european

the pop production probably disappointed funk fans/purists as well...

Funk was just about dead on R&B radio during this time. This was the era of New Jack Swing, Hip Hop, crossover R&B/pop (Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, Atlantic Starr, Anita Baker, Billy Ocean, James Ingram, Babyface, Natalie Cole), and dance (Jody Watley, Janet Jackson, Lisa Lisa).

RodeoSchro said:

No tracks, just one long song, so you couldn't listen to your favorite song in your CD player.

Since records & cassettes were still the main sellers then (at least in the US), the 1 track on CD isn't really relevant. Anyway, no one could know about the non-tracking unless they actually bought the CD and played it, there was no indication on the long box a CD were packed in at the time. I didn't know about it until the 1990's as I had the vinyl. The record has the space between the songs, so listeners could still place the needle on the song they wanted to play.

electricberet said:

Riverman37 said:

Some observations here:

1. I don't get why the people on this thread put so much 'weight' on the choice of singles for this album. In general this wasnt a single-orientated album, and much more of a concept-album (hence the contineous tracking). Arrangement-wise most songs are simply not single materia. I think it wouldn't have made much of a difference which songs would have been chosen as a single, for the album to be a commercial succes.

I think Alphabet Street was the obvious choice for a first single because the syncopated rhythem guitar work and the 'start and stop' musical structure echoed that of Princes own hitsingle Kiss and George Michaels hitsong Faith. But next to that its a very strange song: the basic song is like some sort of Sly Stone sing-a-long tune, but the rythmic structure is hard to describe: is it reggae, funk or pop? or a combination of that?

2. I don't get the people calling 'Glam Slam' bland. IMO its one of his best pop melodies from the eighties, and the way he 'uses' the harmonies from the guitar and the background vocals is not only brilliant but very catchy. Anyway, a more obvious choice for a single then 'I wish U heaven' which is plane filler IMO with about 5 lines of lyrics, and a rather dated sounding FM-rock guitar (didnt Prince know that Foreigner and Toto were something of the early eighties? lol).

3. Stock, Aitken and Waterman-sound? For fuck sake, what do you know about music? The music on Lovesexy may sound 'thin' nowadays, but that is part of the mixing, not of the production. While Stock, Aitkan and Waterman were trying to offer arrangements sounding as dumb as possible, if anything Prince was too over-ambitious with the arrangements on Lovesexy: its like he was trying to cramp as many harmonies, layers and 'cleverly' placed dissonants into the arrangements as possible. To me that results in a love-hate relationship with this album. When i am in the mood for it, the arrangements blow my mind away. But when i am not, i am thinking: why you are trying to proof to be the new Frank Zappa, when you can keep it simple?

But... Stock, Aitken and Waterman? That makes no sense.

4. I dont get the hate for Dance On and Positivity either. Dance on is a very original song: its like Princes 'skeletoral' take on funk, like Tom Waits did with blues on rock on the album Bone Machine. Abstract and to the extreme.

Positivity might be a bit pompeous and overwrought when it comes to the lyrics and the structure of the arrangement, but i really dig the background vocals on this track (Cat, Boni?) giving the delivery a certain urgency. Next to that, this song has some of the most impressive guitar work Prince has ever done. It is rather burried down in the mix, but the psychedelic-rock kinda playing is really splendid.

[Edited 9/2/11 13:19pm]

The reason why the choice of singles matters is that this was the golden age of music videos. Having been a teenager at the time, I can attest to the fact that I watched a lot of MTV, and I bought some albums because I liked a song I saw/heard in a video. If Prince had released a better single with an interesting video, more people would have sought out the album. "Alphabet Street" was okay, and the video did get some play, but I don't recall ever seeing the videos for the other singles. And this was the year that I went to see Prince in concert, the peak of my Prince fan-dom, so I certainly would have remembered them if they had been in rotation.

Maybe he should have put "Scarlet Pussy" on the album and released it as an A-side instead of a B-side. I could imagine a really cool video for that song (think "Fritz the Cat"). Even if MTV banned it, the resulting publicity would have gotten a lot of people looking for the album.

Agreed. A single would have made some difference. The title track was a no-brainer as a follow up single. I do remember "When 2R in Love" getting a lot play on R&B stations at the time, but there was no cross over.

I agree,singles are a BIG DEAL.That's what attracts people's attention.If the right singles are chosen,the album has a better chance at success."Glam Slam" was simply a poor choice.In their review of the album,Rolling Stone magazine said that this song features "the album's blandest melody" and they're right.You gotta remember,this was the summer of 1988,a time when people wanted to hear big,hard dance beats.The title track has all of that.

purplemonster04 said:

Didn't some places refuse to sell the album because of the cover? I remember reading that somewhere..

I remember walking into Record World () and whereas most new releases were usually displayed at the front of the store, this one was towards the BACK...out of sight of the people strolling by in the mall.

thedance said:

LOVESEXY: to me it is one of the best Prince albums,

a Prince top 5 album...

I every track, Dance On is maybe the only weaker song...

Fan-tastic.... and it was #1 in the UK and sold very well in Germany and other European countries too AFAIK: only a disappointment in the US, selling less than a million. I guess the nude cover pic was hurting the sales, those americans (some of those) are strange, lol.....

^^^ to everything except I disagree about 'Dance On'...it's one of my fav on the album. The energy in that track is explosive!

And Tyler'slegacy continues...