Despite the magnificence of Uptown's mag scientific method in research, there is one aspect of The Vault book that I don't understand: the fact that, despite the rigorousness of their research, they express personnal, subjective opinions on the music and state them as facts.

For example, about the song Pain: "Despite Khan's skilful vocal performance and arrangement,the song is very run-of-the-mill and lacks memorability."

This is purely subjective: I for one am totally in love with Pain, I think it's a wonderful song with a beautiful and memorable melody (it pops-up in my mind immediately if I think or read about this song).

Sure considering the enormous lenght of work the dudes did for free it's definitely their prerogative to make such statements, but I don't really get the cohesiveness of merging an objective and a subjective approach in the same book.

And please don't misunderstand my thread: I WORSHIP these guys, I will be eternally grateful for the work they've done for 15 years and I wouldn't ever say anything disrespectful about them. I'm wondering about a very little aspect of their work.

What do you think?

I can agree with that. Maybe they should've offered up an objective description of the song, and then had a couple of the authors offer one or two lines of subjective opinion about it.

I guess the UPTOWN people having their say is a very small price to pay for the scale of the information contained. I still return to the book and magazines from time to time even though the princevault site is my main source of Prince info.

Unless someone explicitly states that their objective is to be objective, I expect some subjectivity to be present. Actually, even if someone says they're going to be objective, some subjectivity is always there. I'd always read the book as a combination of the two and never expected anything else. And even though I don't always agree with the opinions expressed (in fact, I think that Per Nilsen and I pretty consistently disagreed about every single track--at least, if I remember correctly), I like that they are there. There are sections that are, and should be, straightforward factual/objective--though there might be some guesswork even there--but I think the personal taste stuff about tracks and such is fine.

I think it's legitimate to combine an "objective" approach with a "subjective" one. Actually, the limits between both aren't always clear. But I agree that The Vault is a reference book, mainly oriented to exposing data, and therefore the combination with "subjective" views sounds stranger than in other books.

I also agree that The Vault is an excellent work. However, I find it suprising that it's almost the only book that gets kudos here in the .org. There are other books, with a more interpretative approach, that I find very interesting too. Not only Dave Hill's Pop Life, but also Prince: the making of a pop icon by Stan Hawkins, The Words And Music Of Prince by James E. Perone or The Lyrics Of Prince by C. Liegh McInnis. These books offer great material to think and discuss Prince's music, and I hardly find them mentioned in the .org. I insist: I love The Vault, it's inmensely useful; I'm only surprised by how it seems to be the only book written about Prince.

add coments of the Peach & Black podcast guys to it, and you get a nice mix of interesting subjectivity !

actually it's really hard to be objective about someone else's 'songwriting' or songwriting in general. two-chord songs or three-chord songs can be stunning in any way possible, or suck at the same time. nowadays, Prince writes only 'pop' structured songs. like intro, verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo and with a couple of predictable bridges.

I remember Prince's songwriting back in the eighties. I went crazy for the specific sound alone, and then all these embelishments, unpredictable bridges and arrangement changes.

He lost it somehow these days. Although...! when he goes live, like that jazz version of 'Strays Of The World', he can become interesting again. But i'm affreaid not many people are going to agree with me on that one.

...

the vault book should be updated as a 'book'. would be nice to have new detailed info collected in a book (again).