Lovesexy is a fan-tastic masterpiece..


and Lovesexy is far better than The Rainbow Children.

the pop-funk of Lovesexy is maybe a little complex to some, a huge succes in Europe, and a failure saleswise in the US...

some couldn't keep up with all those Prince album releases in the 80s. When Lovesexy was released people weren't hungry for Prince music after a long and very very impressive string of strong albums, 1980 to 1988.

The Lovesexy album is a great concept album, the sound is unique, with lots of screaming guitars.. and with a very positive message.

I really really love Lovesexy, it's very unique, I don't think I've heard anything quite like it. It's one of my favourite albums and way, way better than The Rainbow Children, which again is very unique and I don't think I've heard anything like it either... but then I don't really want to.

So to answer your question, while that would be kind of cool, I don't wish that would have happened. I also happen to like Graffiti Brige, Diamonds & Pearls, Love Symbol, The Gold Experience, half of Emancipation and Crystal Ball.

Could have really done without Rave though, spare Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do, which is a great song.

thisisreece said:

for me, it's a career highlight of his, but it sits comfortably within that

2001/2003 time frame and only there, with all the instrumentals, and

the solo piano music just orbiting around it like satellites.

.

much like "sign of the time" sits at the center of it's own galaxy with

the madhouse albums and the black album as it's orbiting moons.

.

what i'm saying is that they're better for the book ending music that

was released before and after them.

.

as regards to completely whiping out anything post 1987 up to 2001,

*i don't think so*

You mean, you actually need HORNY PONY to remain in his discography, Isten?

SpiritOtter said:

You mean, you actually need HORNY PONY to remain in his discography, Isten?

yes, i do

i just really enjoy listening to prince. admitting, there are those songs and albums

that are absolutely magical and that never age and are always in my top 10 lists,

or whatever. but even his less cool or less good output is something i enjoy from

time to time. i know for a fact that there will be days when "horny pony" will be on

a loop at my house, i just do

in fact, i want to go listen to it now

Me too, me too. I've been listening to HORNY PONY and SCHOOLYARD more than I would care to admit, recently. By the way, in case you have not heard this AMAZING Music Snobs podcast: PArt 2 is here: http://themusicsnobs.com/...924/tms008

SpiritOtter said:

You mean, you actually need HORNY PONY to remain in his discography, Isten?

I fucking looove Horny Pony.

"Jack be nimble, whoo! You're doin' it see, it's the horny pony y'all..."

Silly but oh so fun.

but rainbow children is so fucking horrible .. lovesexy is not that far behind save a couple great tunes on the record ... if we were gonna wipe everything post sott, i would hope rainbow disappeared with the rest of the mush ... the songs in between anything tony m was on are far better than what came after .. i will take the 3 good songs on new power soul over rainbow .. it takes a special talent for not listening to lyrics or delivery of said lyrics to sit thru rainbow ..

All I really have to say is whether it was released in 1988 or 2001, it's still crap. Lovesexy is a classic, although I could always take or leave "Eye No".

TRC would be considered an obnoxious, yet stale and contrived regurgitation no matter when it was released.

[Edited 9/16/13 19:15pm]

TrevorAyer said:

I love Rainbow Children, comfortably in my top 5 Prince albums.

But then again, so is The Gold Experience, so no, I wouldn't have wanted there to be nothing between that and Sign Of The Times.

Imagine a best-of collection of OUTTAKES if Prince didn't release any work between 1987-2001. Just off the top of my head...

JOY IN REPITITION

POSITIVITY

VICKY WAITING

STROLLIN'

AND GOD CREATED WOMEN

DARK

DOLPHIN

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO DOWN

INTO THE LIGHT/I WILL

IN THIS BED, I SCREAM

COMEBACK

WASTED KISSES

I LOVE U, BUT I DON'T TRUST U ANYMORE

THE DANCE

...

But, of course, there could be 10 CDs worth of outtakes i.e. entire albums, which we would have all enjoyed, including the Gangster Glam remixes.

TheEnglishGent said:

I love Rainbow Children, comfortably in my top 5 Prince albums.

But then again, so is The Gold Experience, so no, I wouldn't have wanted there to be nothing between that and Sign Of The Times.

Agreed re: THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. But it sounds like we are in a complete minority regarding TRC, which really surprises me. I mean, what is so dire about it that many individuals find distasteful? I think the lyrics are particularly good and, finally, there was a return to "making a point" with a Prince record, whether I understood (or agreed) with it or not.

SpiritOtter said:

TheEnglishGent said:

I love Rainbow Children, comfortably in my top 5 Prince albums.

But then again, so is The Gold Experience, so no, I wouldn't have wanted there to be nothing between that and Sign Of The Times.

Agreed re: THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. But it sounds like we are in a complete minority regarding TRC, which really surprises me. I mean, what is so dire about it that many individuals find distasteful? I think the lyrics are particularly good and, finally, there was a return to "making a point" with a Prince record, whether I understood (or agreed) with it or not.

I think a lot of it is to do with the widespread hate towards JW's and their religion. If you swapped Anna Stesia and Last December accross the two albums people would hail LD as a classic and dismiss Anna Stesia as JW dogma.

I don't really know why people object so strongly to the lyrics. I don't want to fuck my sister, or get a blow job from a virgin bride who's on the way to her wedding, yet that doesn't stop me from enjoying Dirty Mind as an album.

TheEnglishGent said:

SpiritOtter said:

Agreed re: THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. But it sounds like we are in a complete minority regarding TRC, which really surprises me. I mean, what is so dire about it that many individuals find distasteful? I think the lyrics are particularly good and, finally, there was a return to "making a point" with a Prince record, whether I understood (or agreed) with it or not.

I think a lot of it is to do with the widespread hate towards JW's and their religion. If you swapped Anna Stesia and Last December accross the two albums people would hail LD as a classic and dismiss Anna Stesia as JW dogma.

I don't really know why people object so strongly to the lyrics. I don't want to fuck my sister, or get a blow job from a virgin bride who's on the way to her wedding, yet that doesn't stop me from enjoying Dirty Mind as an album.

IF that is the case, what an absolute shame that "hate" towards a form of worshipping, alien to one's own, can inspire one to not appreciate a quite incredible piece of art. For those who dislike being "told" there is one way to GOD, or that there is a GOD at all, surely we can appreciate the right for everyone to have their own worldview (as long as it's not forced upon us). Whilst I never agreed with Prince on this particular subject matter, I was certainly never "offended" by his expression of his particular brand of faith. If anything, I found it inspiring that he finally found a subject to sing out loud and make a stand about, especially when the musical results were so singularly and unequivically on-point. To each their own, I guess.

V10LETBLUES said:

while the gold experience isn't as crap as TRC, its still an overrated album by a handful of off regulars.

Your overrated is my much enjoyed. It's the beauty of Prince's music.

If Prince had retired after SOTT then he'd be even more of a legend than he is now, from a musical standpoint. I sometimes wonder how he'd be treated by people if that had happened, without his slide into obscurity and awful releases. No-one in music has surely been that consistent for a decade.

Back to the topic precisely, I do think TRC would have been judged very differently. Musically it's up there, not necessarily lyrically, but it showed a bit of passion and ingenuity that had been missing for a while and pretty much ever since in my book. Prince was driven to make TRC and it showed.

TheEnglishGent said:

SpiritOtter said:

Agreed re: THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. But it sounds like we are in a complete minority regarding TRC, which really surprises me. I mean, what is so dire about it that many individuals find distasteful? I think the lyrics are particularly good and, finally, there was a return to "making a point" with a Prince record, whether I understood (or agreed) with it or not.

I think a lot of it is to do with the widespread hate towards JW's and their religion. If you swapped Anna Stesia and Last December accross the two albums people would hail LD as a classic and dismiss Anna Stesia as JW dogma.

I don't really know why people object so strongly to the lyrics. I don't want to fuck my sister, or get a blow job from a virgin bride who's on the way to her wedding, yet that doesn't stop me from enjoying Dirty Mind as an album.

Agree with your whole post. Interesting remark about "Anna Stesia" and "Last December". I find "Anna Stesia" to be preachier than "Last December", but as it's a Lovesexy track, no problem then...

-----

And the thing is that many people find Prince's sex lyrics very funny, even in the cases when they are blatantly silly, but they object Prince's religious ones, even in the cases when they aren't preachy at all and they just show a man fighting or a man enthusing about his beliefs and his happiness. That says something about many Prince fans, I guess...

[Edited 9/17/13 23:14pm]

Scotsman1999 said:

SuperSoulFighter said:

^Well, some of Prince's religious lyrics are blatantly silly as well! (Colonized Mind, anyone?) I used to think that way about Rainbow Children, good music as long as you don't listen to the lyrics. These days, I find the music a lame unfunny parody of the worst 70s jazzrock. But...it's part of Prince's catalogue whether I like it or not. [Edited 9/18/13 12:27pm]

Yes, all kind of Prince lyrics can be silly and all kind can be interesting. The thing is that the religious lyrics are the ones that get laugh at or criticised time and time again, much more than the sex ones.

meh .. i would say the post SOTT lyrics get criticized more than the pre .. prince used to write great lyrics about sex AND religion ..

SpiritOtter said:

Imagine a best-of collection of OUTTAKES if Prince didn't release any work between 1987-2001. Just off the top of my head...

JOY IN REPITITION

POSITIVITY

VICKY WAITING

STROLLIN'

AND GOD CREATED WOMEN

DARK

DOLPHIN

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO DOWN

INTO THE LIGHT/I WILL

IN THIS BED, I SCREAM

COMEBACK

WASTED KISSES

I LOVE U, BUT I DON'T TRUST U ANYMORE

THE DANCE

...

But, of course, there could be 10 CDs worth of outtakes i.e. entire albums, which we would have all enjoyed, including the Gangster Glam remixes.

Man, just think if all that album stuff had been outtakes... it would have been brilliant. And we could have felt so cool that we all had it and the masses didn't!!!

Outtakes are always better--because they're outtakes!!! We accept them and praise them for being good in whatever ways they are good and to whatever extent they are good (because, hey--it's an outtake)--but a released song has to be comparable to his best released songs to catch a break.

Seriously, I'd want all of it just the way it was.

But I also wouldn't have probably cared about The Rainbow Children when it came if it hadn't been for much of the intervening work. I wouldn't have been thinking "Hmmm... I wonder if Prince is gonna ever release something again"--I would have been listening to the old stuff sometimes, but probably not that often. It's the immensity of his work that gives me so much to choose from that I can often find something--across the years and range of styles--that hits me so often in different ways. I wouldn't have found my way to a lot of other funk type musics without a continued active interest (and some of the stuff he did in the 90's). I probably would have a much (for lack of a better word) "whiter" taste in music. Honestly, except for things I've gotten to largely through/because of Prince (as a starting point), I'd have a much more restricted musical world.

If music would have that great a role in my life at all if Prince hadn't given me a home base for my musical excursions during some of those years.

As to The Rainbow Children itself--it's all right. Much of the material from the 90's is far more essential to Prince's ouevre in my opinion. I find some of the lyrics absolutely asinine--but that's not unique to that album. There's not much lyrically on it that's really good. Some of the music's great. Some of it's humdrum. It's an actual album and leaves a unified impression as an album. The three albums from the mid-00's don't do that. I have trouble even remembering which tracks are on which album--I'm completely confused by the people who have strong preferences for one of those over the others.

Javi said:

SuperSoulFighter said:

^Well, some of Prince's religious lyrics are blatantly silly as well! (Colonized Mind, anyone?) I used to think that way about Rainbow Children, good music as long as you don't listen to the lyrics. These days, I find the music a lame unfunny parody of the worst 70s jazzrock. But...it's part of Prince's catalogue whether I like it or not. [Edited 9/18/13 12:27pm]

Yes, all kind of Prince lyrics can be silly and all kind can be interesting. The thing is that the religious lyrics are the ones that get laugh at or criticised time and time again, much more than the sex ones.

Well, for me at least, when a sex lyric becomes silly, I tend to give Prince credit for being "self-aware/self-mocking" or just playing for laughs. I can't do that when a religious lyric strikes me as laughable, because, well--I don't think he's joking, and I don't think he wants me to laugh. So I just feel uncomfortable, because here's an artist whom I respect as an artist, he's expressing something I believe is important to him, and he seems to be slipping into cliche or confused jargon or just plain silly awkwardness or (worse) hack-work--and I don't want to laugh, because he's given every indication that this is the core of his work. So I'm left cringing--embarrassed not because of what he's saying or what he believes, but because his art (I think he's fairly often a clever, if not so often a deep, lyricist)seems to fail him so often when he's clearly trying hard to do something that really matters to him.

This has nothing to do with how I feel about his religious views. Nor is it an across the board feeling that Prince's religious art is unsuccessful--some tracks (or portions of tracks) from throughout his career and spiritual journey are quite successful to my ears. But it certainly is easier to enjoy the sex lyrics than the religious ones when they go off track or seem weaker--because the sex ones don't matter in the same way Prince wants us to think that the religious ones do.