1- betcha by golly wow

2- greatest romance....

3- my name is prince

4- I hate u

5 if i was your girlfriend

Agree with all of those...except IIWYG was the worst SECOND single. Great song, AWFUL single, almost brought the whole CD down saleswise.

GottaLetitgo said:

Agree with all of those...except IIWYG was the worst SECOND single. Great song, AWFUL single, almost brought the whole CD down saleswise.

i stand corrected.... SOTT was the 1st! sorry...

didn't Sexy MF come before My Name is Prince?

Te Amo Corazon

ufoclub said:

didn't Sexy MF come before My Name is Prince?

Yes.

"Eye Hate U"... among "worst" singles... wtf..!!

That song is brilliant, his best in the 90's, imho.

UncleJam said:

Te Amo Corazon

Right. That's more like it.

A really bad choice, boooring song.

"The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" was a poor choice for a first single.Why would anyone choose the dullest song on an album,to be the lead off single? The only reason I can think of is,Prince (and/or Clive Davis) probably thought that the song is very similiar to "TMBGITW" and felt that it would appeal to the same audience that turned that song into a smash hit.

SoulAlive said:

"The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" was a poor choice for a first single.Why would anyone choose the dullest song on an album,to be the lead off single? The only reason I can think of is,Prince (and/or Clive Davis) probably thought that the song is very similiar to "TMBGITW" and felt that it would appeal to the same audience that turned that song into a smash hit.

And he still choose the dullest songs as lead single, Pretzelbodylogic for example. I'm sure there's better songs on the new album that would make a good lead single

[Edited 4/8/14 1:41am]

Don't get me started! TMBGITW has a lot to answer for. Ever since it hit...Prince has been convinced he can successfully release any ballad/ supposedly romantic melodic pop track and it will be received similarly. Some of Princes ballads are beautifully arranged however a very select few are what I personally consider suitable for single release...and certainly not as a lead single. If Prince is trying to get the public to hear his ballads, releasing them as singles is not the way to achieve that goal. Release a strong, catchy pop tune and people may then buy the album and all of a sudden a significantly greater audience is experiencing the whole album.

agree with above, but as good as a lot of his music has been in the past 20 years - nothing really stands out as possible worldwide smash material. Musicology maybe?

[Edited 4/8/14 2:16am]

[Edited 4/8/14 2:16am]

Sexy MF and My Name Is Prince did really well in the UK so i will always defend them

The Greatest Romance, Te Amo, Betcha By Golly Wow, they're the main offenders

MattyJam said:

I personally rate The Greatest Romance as his last great single release. I still to this day believe it could've been a huge hit.

I dug the usage of the Craig Mack "Flava In Ya Ear" sample but it did date the song somewhat. When you're sampling a huge hip-hop track from 5 years earlier that dates it a bit. A few years later, it would have been long enough to be a retro throwback.

But it's still a great track.

Dinner with Delores....

batman89 said:

Don't get me started! TMBGITW has a lot to answer for. Ever since it hit...Prince has been convinced he can successfully release any ballad/ supposedly romantic melodic pop track and it will be received similarly. Some of Princes ballads are beautifully arranged however a very select few are what I personally consider suitable for single release...and certainly not as a lead single. If Prince is trying to get the public to hear his ballads, releasing them as singles is not the way to achieve that goal. Release a strong, catchy pop tune and people may then buy the album and all of a sudden a significantly greater audience is experiencing the whole album.

the same thing happened to bryan adams after "everything i do, i do it for you".

he kept releasing ballads and writing these slow, sugarsweet songs and no one

cared anymore. when he started to release a few uptempo songs years later he

got some more airplay and videoplay all of a sudden.

betcha by golly wow was SO incredibly underwhelming at the time.

the whole noise about 3 discs of new music prince was "born 2 do",

coming on the heals of Come/Gold era greatness. and then this is

our first taste of the new project.

MattyJam said:

I personally rate The Greatest Romance as his last great single release. I still to this day believe it could've been a huge hit.

I also think this was a very good song and completely addictive melody. I think where he was messing up was not having a really interesting video. This was still a time where music videos where a big deal and way of hearing the song to me.

I don't know any other song on the album outside of "So Far So Pleased" that sounds like a pop single. But I could be forgetting!

MattyJam said:

I personally rate The Greatest Romance as his last great single release. I still to this day believe it could've been a huge hit.

AlexNevermind28 said:

uh.... Eye Hate U hit number 12 on the charts, I would hardly call that a bad single choice...

All on sales nothing airplay was which was how the chart weighed it then, now this song probably wouldnt see the top 50, if even it charted, the mixes all of it, pushed this song up, i remember this song being Top 5 on the single sales and not even on the airplay top 100 which showed that he had already fallen out of favor at radio for the whole WB slave fiasco.

lastdecember said:

AlexNevermind28 said:

uh.... Eye Hate U hit number 12 on the charts, I would hardly call that a bad single choice...

All on sales nothing airplay was which was how the chart weighed it then, now this song probably wouldnt see the top 50, if even it charted, the mixes all of it, pushed this song up, i remember this song being Top 5 on the single sales and not even on the airplay top 100 which showed that he had already fallen out of favor at radio for the whole WB slave fiasco.

The radio was owned by the music corporations (for the most part) so not fallen out of favor, more like punished for speaking up so publicly.

Umm!

If I was ur girlfriend was not a first single, it was a second single and followed the #3 hit Sign o the Times, although a great fan number, Girlfriend flopped, but U got the look the 3rd single went to #2.

Eye hate U is a great song and was a hit, but really Most beautiful girl came out first a year early, but the version on TGE is a later overproduced one.

My name is Prince, would be worst single, a load of very bad and slipshod rapping along with a plotless series of lyrics, it just a song.

Greatest Romance is a pretty bad choice for a single, over produced sugary dross. It has a plastic sound too. Otherwise his choices for first singles have been okay.

i generally like TGRES, but i hate the way the title gets an acapella introduction before the song starts - something cheesy about it.

kewlschool said:

lastdecember said:

All on sales nothing airplay was which was how the chart weighed it then, now this song probably wouldnt see the top 50, if even it charted, the mixes all of it, pushed this song up, i remember this song being Top 5 on the single sales and not even on the airplay top 100 which showed that he had already fallen out of favor at radio for the whole WB slave fiasco.

The radio was owned by the music corporations (for the most part) so not fallen out of favor, more like punished for speaking up so publicly.

Thing is though there was so much he said this they said that, Prince did these things to himself, he took his stand and rightly so, but he also played the other side of the fence too, it was a fiasco of his doing, yes it was a stand and it needed to be taken, but he know what would happen. He was confusing everyone projects were coming out not coming out he was promoting this than all of a sudden not promoting, he pulled everything back for the TGE, lets remember that the only video "really" released was "GOLD" which was a terrible single for him.

Why was Gold a terrible single? It was actually Prince's last UK top 10 (not counting the re-release of 1999).

Alphabet St. & My Name Is Prince are easily the worst, the latter is basically the worst song of the album, it should have never been recorded!

MattyJam said:

Why was Gold a terrible single? It was actually Prince's last UK top 10 (not counting the re-release of 1999).

It did nothing here, i think Number 88 and that was all because of sales, he was done at Top 40 radio, now i always liked the song, but understand the time it was out in, the world of music had really changed quick and this song was coming off as way too "preachy". It was a bad choice as a follow up mainly because he was dead at radio with getting played, RB radio was all he had (like now) look at every Prince single that has had chart action somewhat and response, not one really is "crossover" not since the Most Beautiful Girl his last hit across the board.