I listened to a Prince podcast yesterday, and they had fun discussing his worst album, amongst other topics.

I think a Stevie Wonder podcast, or an anybody else podcast, no way they'd spend time discussing the worst. It just wouldn't come up. But with Prince you have to account for it. People who love Prince will have drunk viewings of Graffitti Bridge. Not only do we remember 'Diamonds and Pearls', but we name drop 'Jughead', hell, we name drop Tony M, and it's laughs all around. More proof: just search the word "worst" on this site.

I wonder why.

My only guess why is that as high as his best moments are, the lows are just as bad. So WDC is the inverse of Jughead. 1999 is roughly as hard as Planet Earth is limp. As great as Sign O the Times is, Graffitti Bridge is as awful a movie (which is to say, the worst of all time).

It's a pretty awesome trait, actually. The guy wins big and fails HUGE. Bad Willie Nelson is just boring. Bad Prince will fucking change the molecules in the room like a teenager without deodorant.

Truth be told: Prince is a tasteless pop whore!

Nah, that's not it...Prince's "lows" aren't any worse than the "lows" of a lot of other rock titans. And for the record, the same amount of talk could be heard about David Bowie's "lows"...his fans had zero problem having discussions about which album/single was his worst.

I don't reason in terms of successes and failures anymore when it comes to works of art, I'm mostly interested in the creative process they reveal.

Plus it's been said before but 1/ Prince's worst are better than most artists' best and 2/ your worst isn't mine and my worst isn't yours: it's mostly all about people confusing their personnal tastes with an objective appreciation.