How in the hell did WB get Prince to go along with such a poor representation of his song. They pushed out a music video of such poor quality that did not even feature Prince or the Revolution.

I've read that originally Prince did not want any videos released to support ATWIAD and only put together a Raspberry Beret video after a bit of drama with the label. Why did Prince not shoot this video down? Was he powerless in the decisioning process?

I've never understood how someone who demanded so much control of his art, let this happen

I reviewed The Vault entry for the video and it really did not cast any light at all

Thoughts? Theories?

[Edited 2/25/15 0:06am]

I agree. My theory is that Prince felt he was too much in the media at the time, with the Purple Rain album and movie. He "was afraid of a backlash", that's the only theory I can come up with... and therefor he was not on the cover to Around The World In A Day and not in the Paisley Park video (the song was the leading single in Europe).... it's my guess only..


But, these 70's & 80's songs (singles) were missing a good music video,

- 1 with a Prince appearance:

Soft & Wet,
Let's Work,
Do Me Baby,
Paisley Park,
Pop Life,
Sign O' The Times,
If I Was Your Girlfriend.

We should also remember that it was 1985, music videos were still a new form of art and a very clumsy one most of the time, so directors and artists were experimenting with all kinds of things and there necessarly came every once in a while the "video not featuring the band playing", because most videos back them just featured the band in a fake live performance and it was boring as hell. I remember reading That talk Talk did this ridiculous video for It's My Life with animal documentary images just to try and do something different, and doing something diffrerent at the time often meant doing nonsense.

Averett said:

How in the hell did WB get Prince to go along with such a poor representation of his song. They pushed out a music video of such poor quality that did not even feature Prince or the Revolution.

I've read that originally Prince did not want any videos released to support ATWIAD and only put together a Raspberry Beret video after a bit of drama with the label. Why did Prince not shoot this video down? Was he powerless in the decisioning process?

.

IIRC ATWIAD wasn't doing that well on the charts, thanks to Prince's "no singles" (and thus no videos) edict. So when things started to go really badly, Prince and WBR scrambled to get a single released and an accompanying video.

BartVanHemelen said:

Averett said:

How in the hell did WB get Prince to go along with such a poor representation of his song. They pushed out a music video of such poor quality that did not even feature Prince or the Revolution.

I've read that originally Prince did not want any videos released to support ATWIAD and only put together a Raspberry Beret video after a bit of drama with the label. Why did Prince not shoot this video down? Was he powerless in the decisioning process?

.

IIRC ATWIAD wasn't doing that well on the charts, thanks to Prince's "no singles" (and thus no videos) edict. So when things started to go really badly, Prince and WBR scrambled to get a single released and an accompanying video.

I hear what your saying, I suppose I just can't believe that Prince outsourced this effort and it resulted in such a shoddy video. I would think at this stage in his career, he would have been all in or out and if something was released, it would bear some degree of quality control on Prince's behalf. I mean hell, even a lyrical video with with the static image of the kid holding the balloon would have been preferred in my opinion over what was actually released.

[Edited 2/25/15 7:12am]

Averett said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

IIRC ATWIAD wasn't doing that well on the charts, thanks to Prince's "no singles" (and thus no videos) edict. So when things started to go really badly, Prince and WBR scrambled to get a single released and an accompanying video.

I hear what your saying, I suppose I just can't believe that Prince outsourced this effort and it resulted in such a shoddy video. I would think at this stage in his career, he would have been all in or out and if something was released, it would bear some degree of quality control on Prince's behalf. I mean hell, even a lyrical video with with the static image of the kid holding the balloon would have been preferred in my opinion over what was actually released.

[Edited 2/25/15 7:12am]

.

Don't forget that this was a time when there were numerous other concerns. Wasn't he also touring at that time, plus working on several albums by associate artists, plus planning Paisley Park, plus planning UTCM, etc.? At some point it just becomes the easiest solution to slap some stock footage together (perhaps this was something WBR had prepared in advance?) and rush-release something, just to keep momentum going.

BartVanHemelen said: