HonestMan13 said:

Anyone who can get people to go to Connecticut in December hasn't ruined a damn thing! His career is fine and 30000 will testify to that.

I think that makes some people upset . We can speak of everything Prince has done wrong in his career but in view of all those reasons he's still doing his thang!!

To add to good career moves:

3121 cd and resident tours in Vegas

Half-Time superbowl show (still best ever IMO).

Welcome to America (or other countries) tour

Byron said:

XxAxX said:

Deleted - langebleu - moderator

I never get one of these lol...

I want my posts to get deleted by a moderator, dammit!

[Edited 1/4/14 17:59pm]

i'm sorry for that. langebleu handled it appropriately; my content was not at all correct for this website as it consisted of references made to [CENSORED] plus something about an orger and naughty [CENSORED] acts. i stand corrected.

sometimes, i sort of lose it up in here, last year it was the bootlegging issue, this year for some reason it's the ongoing negativity. sorry i'm a cranky old b4tch i'll take a chill pill after i get this offa my chess

i understand that prince isn't perfect and he rarely actually takes any of our input here on this website into consideration nor does what some folks think is 'logical' which pisses folks off to no end and he's quirky and all that. but in my opinion bart's never ending ain't-got-nothing-good-to-say-about-anything-prince-does-EVER posts are proof that he no longer really fits the website which is:

prince.org online fan community

independent and unofficial
Prince fan community site

please understand i do believe in honest criticism even if it stings at times but that needs to be a healthy kind of reaction, like constructive criticism where you're trying to help someone grow, not this obsessive ongoing attack on anything, everything and all things prince. that's just weird. my 2c

[Edited 1/4/14 19:14pm]

Byron said:

XxAxX said:

Deleted - langebleu - moderator

I never get one of these lol...

I want my posts to get deleted by a moderator, dammit!

[Edited 1/4/14 17:59pm]

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

SoulAlive said:

He simply wanted to move on.By the fall of 1987,Prince was already planning The Black Album.It's a shame because,with a tour and a few more singles,the SOTT album could have lasted well into the first half of 1988.

The same could be said about the "Purple Rain" soundtrack! Prince just gets bored easily. Fortunately 4 us, his boredom turns into another album. Eye don't see anything wrong with that!!

SOTT already had THREE top 10 pop singles! Also a classic album cut that still gets played today. The most he had at that time since "Purple Rain"! Things are suppose too happen like they're suppose 2 happen. Here we are in 2014 and Prince hasn't had a new album out in going on FOUR years! Peeps here are still complaining!!!!!!

you're totally missing the point.

SOTT was an album that had alot of momentum.It made people totally forget about the flop movie Under The Cherry Moon and it was considered a return to form,by critics and the general public.A US tour in the fall of 87 would have made alot of sense,especially when there were already all these rumors that a tour would happen.You ever hear the expression "strike when the iron is HOT"?

Look what happened.He goes back into the studio,records another album (Lovesexy) and brings that tour on the road in 1988.The album flops and the tour doesn't even sellout in some cities.He missed the golden opportunity that he had a year earlier,in the fall of 1987.

LayzieKiddZ said:

2elijah said:

Guess I'll join the discussion since I'm snowed in from the snowstorm. Anyway, I think his best career move was when he parted from the Purple Rain era/Revolution band members. I'm sure some folks will not be happy that is being said. But I don't mean it in a disrespectful way, as I enjoyed the Purple Rain era of that time. By that I mean, by his parting with those band members and moving on with his musice, he left a legacy for himself and the Revolution band members who were involved in the Purple Rain era/and the movie. The movie is still watched every year by new fans/fans from back in the day, so that era will always be attached to his name and those band members. Now although he has moved on from playing music from that era, but still performs some songs from that era, not surprising, because of the musically-diverse audience-fans from the Purple Rain era to present day, where many look forward to hearing some of those songs, for memories sake. So it is not surprising to hear him perform songs like 'LRC', 'Purple Rain', 'TMWU', at previous/recent concerts on that basis. It's like when he parted from the Lovesexy band members/era, occasionally he will perform some songs like , 'Forever in My Life', and a few others. I just feel with both the Purple Rain and LoveSexy eras, he's left quite a legacy for himself/including the band members of both eras, which I will admit for me, those two eras were two of his most memorable for many of his fans--based on the PR movie/music and the fantastic performance of the LoveSexy tour.

I also liked the 3121 era of music/shows through early 2012), along with some former/current NPG band members (including his trio back-up singers and horn section). I'm still trying to get use to the addition of the newest, 3rdeye girl band members as part of his musical family and the addition of others like Andre Gouche-who performs with Prince occasionally, only because I haven't seen them perform much live with Prince, as I've seen with the other band members. My first time seeing the 3rdeyegril members perform with Prince, was at the recent Mohegan Sun show on 12/29/13. I did however liked their performance with Prince in the 'Bambi' vid that was for sale last year, that I purchased, and I unfortunately lost on my computer because it somehow crashed.

I believe if he didn't take chances/risks and moved on from the Revolution band era, then he might have just been limited/sort of stigmatized, to songs from that era. You see this happening with the current Morris Day & the Time band. Not to insult, because I always enjoyed the songs of the Time band, but the present-day, MD & the Time's performance seems to be limited when they perform live, as I've seen them twice live, and they only seem to perform songs the original Time members have sung.

I don't think Prince killed his career at all though. Live shows seems the way to go these days, and considering Prince isn't sign to a label, he seems to do well with live shows, even better than some artists who are considered 'popular' today to the younger generation. Given the state of the music industry, introducing plastic acts/clones they try to pass them over as 'real talent', but many of them fall short or fail to take the originality of artists, and make it into a style of their own, well it is a pleasure to have an artist, who may have had his own influences/inspirations from musiciana/artists before him- may have borrowed from some of their styles, but was creative enough and succeeded at turning their influences/inspiration into a style he can call his own.

I think if some believe he killed his career, that could be either based on some fans' desire to pigeon-hole Prince into the Purple Rain or some other era or some fans desire to design him as what they want him to be as a musician/artist, rather than embracing him as the musician/artist that he is, with his own creative vision and how he chooses to present the music to his audience. Not everyone will like 'all' the music of any artist, no matter how famous/popular they are, but being able to basically fill arenas/sell out concert tix on short notice is not something many artists can do either.

[Edited 1/3/14 10:04am]

Good post I agree with all of that.

Same here...even though there's ups and downs but you get that with any artist.

Soulstar77A said:

lwr001 said:

madonna hasnt had a hit in damn near 20 years either

not true!

Madonna Tops Forbes' Worl... 2013 List

Actually,Madonna had a Top 10 hit as recently as 2012 ("Give Me All Your Lovin").In 2008,she had a Top 3 hit single ("4 Minutes").The first single from all of her recent albums always reach the Top 10.

But that's neither here nor there.Click on the link above and you'll see that she's doing very well,career-wise.Compared to many of her peers from the 80s,she has handled her career very well.I'm not saying that Prince is doing terribly.But let's give credit where it's due

...

[Edited 1/5/14 4:36am]

joyinrepetition said:

The name change was just to get out his contract with WB! With a unpronouncible symbol, WB has no claim to any of those projects. Prince knew exactly what he was doing,

That's not entirely true.Changing one's name does not mean you can just walk away from a contract that you signed Prince still had to fulfill all of his contractual obligations to Warners.

***One of his best career moves was doing the Batman album.It was a wise career move because being connected to such a heavily hyped and highly anticipated project guaranteed that he would have a massively successful album.In 1989,after the dissapointing sales of Lovesexy,Prince really needed a hit album,to prove that he was still relevent.

***Another smart career move was hiring Michael Jackson's manager,Frank Dileo,as a consultant for the Diamonds and Pearls album.Prince noticed that MJ's albums routinely had 5 or more big hit singles,and he wanted a similiar result with D&P.It worked.Not sure exactly what Dileo did,but D&P had five hit singles,two of which reached the Top 10 (the title track,which peaked at Number Three,and "Cream",which went all the way to Number One).

I'm gonna get alot of negative feedback for saying this but in my opinion....

Prince abandoned 'the Minneapolis sound' too soon! After Purple Rain,be began his "psychedelic phase",bringing horns and violins into his music,too.I remember feeling kinda sad back then.I love the '1999' album (my favorite Prince album) and I wanted a few more albums like that! That cold,synth-heavy sound with the Linn drums!! "Extralovable",for example.He probably felt that too many other artists were copying his sound at that point (Ready For The World were his biggest copycats) and that it was time to move on,but dammit,I wanted more of that stuff from him!! lol

On this site,we often talk about an imaginary 1985 Prince album called 'The Dance Electric' which features the type of songs I'm talking about.I WANT THAT ALBUM!! I would have enjoyed it alot more than ATWIAD and Parade.

Best career move: can't name just one

Worst Career Move: Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge

I think both Prince and WB were totally delusional when it came to record sales. Look at the contract they signed in 92: it expected every Prince album to reach 5 millions when P was still determined to release an album a year. People like Madonna, Sting, Phil Collins, David Bowie and virtually every other big hitmakers at the time used to release an album every 2 or 3 years on average, MJ was even more extreme with 4-5 years between albums. Prince was the only mainstream artist to release an album a year back then, and obviously there was too much diverse material for it to appeal to more than 5M people every time, and too little time between album for long promotion campaigns that'd allow the record to sell more over a period of 2 years. Every one said back then and still says that ATWIAD, Parade, SOTT, Lovesexy, Grafitti Bridge and bombed. Wait a second... ATWIAD, Parade and SOTT sold over 4M worldwide! GB and over 2M copies worldwide, even Lovesexy was still over 1 million. That's a LOT, they were only disappointments by the standards of being compared to Purple Rain and other big sellers of that time, not in an absolute. For someone who'd release an album a year that was still pretty mind blowing! But the problem is that because he'd lost contact with reality Prince thought he could sell over 5 million every year and started to feel miserable when he'd sell only 2.5M, and the people at WB, despite being supposedly down to earth, started to expect him to sell over 5 million album a year too, and to think he was failing when he wouldn't, and to tell the media behind the curtain that such or such album was disappointing because it sold only 2.5 million copies (!!!), and finally these delusional feelings ended-up being felt and propagated by journalists and... us, the fans! And that's how we end-up reading people here writing that Musicology and 3121 were commercial failures

[Edited 1/5/14 5:55am]

databank said:

And that's how we end-up reading people here writing that Musicology and 3121 were commercial failures

As the post-WB period may have shown you, commercial failures (or not), are not just in the numbers of items sold moved.

At WB he did not have a terrible deal but some of the post-WB deals were better, as the news explained to us.

SoulAlive said:

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

The same could be said about the "Purple Rain" soundtrack! Prince just gets bored easily. Fortunately 4 us, his boredom turns into another album. Eye don't see anything wrong with that!!

SOTT already had THREE top 10 pop singles! Also a classic album cut that still gets played today. The most he had at that time since "Purple Rain"! Things are suppose too happen like they're suppose 2 happen. Here we are in 2014 and Prince hasn't had a new album out in going on FOUR years! Peeps here are still complaining!!!!!!

you're totally missing the point.

SOTT was an album that had alot of momentum.It made people totally forget about the flop movie Under The Cherry Moon and it was considered a return to form,by critics and the general public.A US tour in the fall of 87 would have made alot of sense,especially when there were already all these rumors that a tour would happen.You ever hear the expression "strike when the iron is HOT"?

Look what happened.He goes back into the studio,records another album (Lovesexy) and brings that tour on the road in 1988.The album flops and the tour doesn't even sellout in some cities.He missed the golden opportunity that he had a year earlier,in the fall of 1987.

Eye see your point! Which is really nothing me or any other fan haven't thought about b 4. But at that time, even Prince couldn't see or know or even care about what would happen.

Eye would have rather had the "LoveSexy" tour! Even though it didn't sell out. Eye feel it was Prince's best visual, musical, broadway style play tour ever! A lot of fans consider "LoveSexy" his best 80's album! His die hard fans are the ones that bought it! Which is all that really matters to him. Just like he switched to ATWIAD after Purple Rain. He likes to have a cult following versus a trend following.

U are looking at his success & what could have been! Its been well documented that Prince was in a dark place during those times. He was trying to recapture his funk roots. Lovesexy was his spiritual awakening album! Eye wouldn't have wanted him to change a thing. It is what makes him who & what he still is PRINCE(My musical hero)..

As brilliant as MJ was. All he ever wanted was a mega global following. Selling gazillions of records! It drove him crazy. U see where that led him!

SoulAlive said:

7roses said:

best career moves; all of the movies, concerts, & videos he made!

worst career move; became the jehovah witness

purplesnowlove said:

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

SoulAlive said:

you're totally missing the point.

SOTT was an album that had alot of momentum.It made people totally forget about the flop movie Under The Cherry Moon and it was considered a return to form,by critics and the general public.A US tour in the fall of 87 would have made alot of sense,especially when there were already all these rumors that a tour would happen.You ever hear the expression "strike when the iron is HOT"?

Look what happened.He goes back into the studio,records another album (Lovesexy) and brings that tour on the road in 1988.The album flops and the tour doesn't even sellout in some cities.He missed the golden opportunity that he had a year earlier,in the fall of 1987.

Eye see your point! Which is really nothing me or any other fan haven't thought about b 4. But at that time, even Prince couldn't see or know or even care about what would happen.

Eye would have rather had the "LoveSexy" tour! Even though it didn't sell out. Eye feel it was Prince's best visual, musical, broadway style play tour ever! A lot of fans consider "LoveSexy" his best 80's album! His die hard fans are the ones that bought it! Which is all that really matters to him. Just like he switched to ATWIAD after Purple Rain. He likes to have a cult following versus a trend following.

U are looking at his success & what could have been! Its been well documented that Prince was in a dark place during those times. He was trying to recapture his funk roots. Lovesexy was his spiritual awakening album! Eye wouldn't have wanted him to change a thing. It is what makes him who & what he still is PRINCE(My musical hero)..

As brilliant as MJ was. All he ever wanted was a mega global following. Selling gazillions of records! It drove him crazy. U see where that led him!

I have to agree with this. Woulda's Coulda's and shoulda's are not healthy to dwell on....grow from it and move on. I mean...IF Prince had gone on tour with SOTT , Lovesexy might never of seen the light of day and that would of been just wrong! Horrible devistation for his true fans!

Me personally im glad Lovesexy came so soon after SOTT. Thats when i was introduced to his music at such a yound age and for both albums back to back I was in total awe of the music. Both were such musical maserpieces yet the sound was so different from one another. There were many fans who made the transition to true diehards with those 2 albums forsure! I woudlnt of had it any other way. It was meant to be in my book!

Prince killed his career?!?!

Who the fuck have I been listening to for the last 20years?!

Ha, he didn't kill his career in my opinion, its just gettin started. Prince forever

2elijah said:

7roses said:

Same here...even though there's ups and downs but you get that with any artist.

Thanks to both of you.

Well put and dead on.

Worst: never giving up artistic control

Best: never giving up artistic control

He's still writing great songs, but production sucks.

murph said:

thedance said:

what's Prince best - and worst - career moves... in your opinion..


Imo:

Best career move, was to sign with Warner Bros. in 1977. The WB.-company really was supportive and made him a superstar, world wide, 1982 to 1988.


Imo:

Worst career move, was the symbol name change 1993 to 2000. It was cool in the beginning "Prince is dead - long live the New Power Generation" and all that.. but then became impossible, sometimes emberrassing. I saw the Gold concert in Den Bosch Holland, in early 1995. It was half a year before this album came out and a lot of the new material was played. Cool, but it quickly became "a struggle" to be a fan and to defend this name change to non-fans. It was impossible, no one understood just why he gave up his name for a symbol.

Prince's career never was the same, even when he changed his name back to Prince. He is a living legend that is for sure - the greatest genius of his generation, but today, let's face it, no one (only the true funk soldiers - lol) - no one really cares about Prince's new music anymore.


Don't you agree with me, Prince killed his own career, with some really bad career moves.

This silly post is like catnip to the usual suspects....Some of y'all need to drop Prince all together and listen to some other/new artists....

I'm sayin'....

I wish dude would have some kids or take up knitting or something because I swear he makes a variation of the same damn thread every damn week...sheesh!

2elijah said:

Guess I'll join the discussion since I'm snowed in from the snowstorm. Anyway, I think his best career move was when he parted from the Purple Rain era/Revolution band members. I'm sure some folks will not be happy that is being said. But I don't mean it in a disrespectful way, as I enjoyed the Purple Rain era of that time. By that I mean, by his parting with those band members and moving on with his musice, he left a legacy for himself and the Revolution band members who were involved in the Purple Rain era/and the movie. The movie is still watched every year by new fans/fans from back in the day, so that era will always be attached to his name and those band members. Now although he has moved on from playing music from that era, but still performs some songs from that era, not surprising, because of the musically-diverse audience-fans from the Purple Rain era to present day, where many look forward to hearing some of those songs, for memories sake. So it is not surprising to hear him perform songs like 'LRC', 'Purple Rain', 'TMWU', at previous/recent concerts on that basis. It's like when he parted from the Lovesexy band members/era, occasionally he will perform some songs like , 'Forever in My Life', and a few others. I just feel with both the Purple Rain and LoveSexy eras, he's left quite a legacy for himself/including the band members of both eras, which I will admit for me, those two eras were two of his most memorable for many of his fans--based on the PR movie/music and the fantastic performance of the LoveSexy tour.

I also liked the 3121 era of music/shows through early 2012), along with some former/current NPG band members (including his trio back-up singers and horn section). I'm still trying to get use to the addition of the newest, 3rdeye girl band members as part of his musical family and the addition of others like Andre Gouche-who performs with Prince occasionally, only because I haven't seen them perform much live with Prince, as I've seen with the other band members. My first time seeing the 3rdeyegril members perform with Prince, was at the recent Mohegan Sun show on 12/29/13. I did however liked their performance with Prince in the 'Bambi' vid that was for sale last year, that I purchased, and I unfortunately lost on my computer because it somehow crashed.

I believe if he didn't take chances/risks and moved on from the Revolution band era, then he might have just been limited/sort of stigmatized, to songs from that era. You see this happening with the current Morris Day & the Time band. Not to insult, because I always enjoyed the songs of the Time band, but the present-day, MD & the Time's performance seems to be limited when they perform live, as I've seen them twice live, and they only seem to perform songs the original Time members have sung.

I don't think Prince killed his career at all though. Live shows seems the way to go these days, and considering Prince isn't sign to a label, he seems to do well with live shows, even better than some artists who are considered 'popular' today to the younger generation. Given the state of the music industry, introducing plastic acts/clones they try to pass them over as 'real talent', but many of them fall short or fail to take the originality of artists, and make it into a style of their own, well it is a pleasure to have an artist, who may have had his own influences/inspirations from musiciana/artists before him- may have borrowed from some of their styles, but was creative enough and succeeded at turning their influences/inspiration into a style he can call his own.

I think if some believe he killed his career, that could be either based on some fans' desire to pigeon-hole Prince into the Purple Rain or some other era or some fans desire to design him as what they want him to be as a musician/artist, rather than embracing him as the musician/artist that he is, with his own creative vision and how he chooses to present the music to his audience. Not everyone will like 'all' the music of any artist, no matter how famous/popular they are, but being able to basically fill arenas/sell out concert tix on short notice is not something many artists can do either.

[Edited 1/3/14 10:04am]

Well said...I have always liked Prince's versatility and was always ready whenever he changed directions. I liked some eras better than others but I've never seen the value of incessant whining about something he does that may not interest me at the time. Sooner or later he will do something I love, which is fine.

His career has had it's ups and downs, which is normal....why it causes so much weeping, gnashing of teeth and garment rending around here is a mystery to me,

To answer the question, going indy was ultimately a good career move athough it was a very rocky road filled with uncertainty and turmoil.

If I had to choose a bad move I would say that wasting so much time trying to produce quality music with so many chicks of questionable talent ultimately added very little to his legacy.

Prince doing Prince is his best and worst career move (Achilles' heel anyone?).

Since the WB years Prince has been more R&B and less POP which lowers his profile to the general public. This is a choice, when he wants to go more POP then R&B he does.

Not letting other people direct UTCM and GB is what made those projects not shine as well as they could have.

Most artists or musicians would kill to be in "Prince's killed career."

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

SoulAlive said:

you're totally missing the point.

SOTT was an album that had alot of momentum.It made people totally forget about the flop movie Under The Cherry Moon and it was considered a return to form,by critics and the general public.A US tour in the fall of 87 would have made alot of sense,especially when there were already all these rumors that a tour would happen.You ever hear the expression "strike when the iron is HOT"?

Look what happened.He goes back into the studio,records another album (Lovesexy) and brings that tour on the road in 1988.The album flops and the tour doesn't even sellout in some cities.He missed the golden opportunity that he had a year earlier,in the fall of 1987.

Eye see your point! Which is really nothing me or any other fan haven't thought about b 4. But at that time, even Prince couldn't see or know or even care about what would happen.

Eye would have rather had the "LoveSexy" tour! Even though it didn't sell out. Eye feel it was Prince's best visual, musical, broadway style play tour ever! A lot of fans consider "LoveSexy" his best 80's album! His die hard fans are the ones that bought it! Which is all that really matters to him. Just like he switched to ATWIAD after Purple Rain. He likes to have a cult following versus a trend following.

U are looking at his success & what could have been! Its been well documented that Prince was in a dark place during those times. He was trying to recapture his funk roots. Lovesexy was his spiritual awakening album! Eye wouldn't have wanted him to change a thing. It is what makes him who & what he still is PRINCE(My musical hero)..

As brilliant as MJ was. All he ever wanted was a mega global following. Selling gazillions of records! It drove him crazy. U see where that led him!

Let me just say that I saw the Lovesexy show on Friday,November 11 1988 in Oakland,California and it was absolutely the BEST concert I ever attended.It was just amazing!! So,I'm not knocking that tour at all.Just saying that,from a commercial standpoint,it would have made more sense to have brought the SOTT tour to the US a year earlier.That was a more commercial album and I know the tour would have been a massive success.Hell,it might have even overshadowed MJ's 'Bad' era.

[Edited 1/7/14 4:28am]

His career is more than intact. He is seen as a icon more and more. Gets respect and is known by nearly the whole world...

His record sales aren`t bad either for a guy who is 35 years into his career. Sold out shows everywhere, the media in the UK goes crazy just because of rumours he is performing there......His latest goal is to be recognised as a great guitar player to the public which is the background on the 3rdeyegirl thing among others.

The worst carrer moves were many and it`s basically the same all the time...doing things his crazy way but this is on the other side one of the reasons he is what he is...

For example not having a proper twitter, facebook, internet page....seems crazy, but on the other side what is cooler than not having all of this when everyone else has it?

How boring is it to be a fan of Madonna? Or U2? Record after record, tour after tour....