Hey gang! I've been thinking about the song "Temptation" and the ending of ATWIAD and I had a question that I was hoping some of you old timers might be able to answer

At the time, was this seen by Prince fams as a real "goodbye"?

Did it really seem like he was going to give up touring? Or god forbid - recording?

Would this song have been better without the spoken word over the outro and just left as an instrumental ending?

sarielthrawn said:

Hey gang! I've been thinking about the song "Temptation" and the ending of ATWIAD and I had a question that I was hoping some of you old timers might be able to answer

At the time, was this seen by Prince fams as a real "goodbye"?

Did it really seem like he was going to give up touring? Or god forbid - recording?

Would this song have been better without the spoken word over the outro and just left as an instrumental ending?

No one believed for one second he was going away forever, except maybe a few impressionable youngsters that took everything literally.

The Temptation speech was ridiculed but also fascinated younger fans that were into the album.

I was dating someone younger and they were all into some religious stuff on the side andone of this friends started asking me questions about Temptation, he owned the album and loved that "love is more important than sex" bit. I was surprised to see more casual fans be into it as I found the track fairly embarrassing.

Aerogram said:

sarielthrawn said:

Hey gang! I've been thinking about the song "Temptation" and the ending of ATWIAD and I had a question that I was hoping some of you old timers might be able to answer

At the time, was this seen by Prince fams as a real "goodbye"?

Did it really seem like he was going to give up touring? Or god forbid - recording?

Would this song have been better without the spoken word over the outro and just left as an instrumental ending?

No one believed for one second he was going away forever, except maybe a few impressionable youngsters that took everything literally.

The Temptation speech was ridiculed but also fascinated younger fans that were into the album.

I was dating someone younger and they were all into some religious stuff on the side andone of this friends started asking me questions about Temptation, he owned the album and loved that "love is more important than sex" bit. I was surprised to see more casual fans be into it as I found the track fairly embarrassing.

I really like the track but that ending is a little overkill for me. I really think it would have been better as an instrumental outro. But maybe he didn't want comparisons to "Purple Rain"? I imagine by the time this song was being recorded he would have been a little tired of "Purple Rain" as it was and this was him trying something "different".

I remember hearing the Peach and Black guys postulate that the "original order" of the songs might have been "Temptation" and then "The Ladder". Which makes the ending an uplifting kind of flourish instead of tapering off into whatever weird morality play it turns into.

I find the first half of the song really appealling. It's "Prince being Prince" and his sexy best.

"Fingers in the pool go splash!"

There was a confusion back then. Prince just left the biggest project and biggest tour and had already moved on. There were clues that were being noted (MTV discussing his cough in Raspberry Beret, etc.), and his goodbye speech at the end of ATWIAD was a little surprising, but he followed that with HELLO as his B-side, so that sort of opened the door for what to expect.

No one knows where Prince will go with his career. Most of us thought that he'd continue with the PR tour, but in retrospect it makes sense as an artist to bail when he did.

ATWIAD seems like he was trying to move beyond the stuff he'd been putting out until that point.

The music that opens this album is probably the biggest departure from “Prince music” that he’s made up to this point in his career, with the middle eastern sounds that start “Around the World in a Day” and the opening lyric of the album is “Open your heart, open your mind”. And he's got something like 20 players on this record (as opposed to 9 on Purple Rain). Looks like a lot of change was happening at the time.

It's like he's really aware of the fact that he's becoming "the Purple Rain" guy and he wants to do everything he can to not let himself be pigeon-holed.

I wonder if there ever was any chance that he might've become a "studio only" artist (like the Beatles)? I imagine it would have been interesting but I can't imagine never seeing him play live.

Being a Beatles fan, I'd seen/heard all this before. They pretty much did the same 20 years prior with the release of Sgt. Pepper's.

Talk of retirement, no singles relased, a concept album, psychedelic rock etc.
It was a carbon copy.

So it was funny for the educated, but very interesting for the newbies.

It got rid of the bandwagon, and established the hardcores.

As a fan, it was the greatest move ever.

Great song, great album, and great times.

going 2 go find the Ladder... he said in a 1985 interview

callimnate said:

Being a Beatles fan, I'd seen/heard all this before. They pretty much did the same 20 years prior with the release of Sgt. Pepper's.

Talk of retirement, no singles relased, a concept album, psychedelic rock etc.
It was a carbon copy.

So it was funny for the educated, but very interesting for the newbies.

It got rid of the bandwagon, and established the hardcores.

As a fan, it was the greatest move ever.

Great song, great album, and great times.

Agreed. I love this album.

The thing is, the Beatles actually did stop do live shows. Prince thankfully did not.

If we're making Beatles comparisons, Does that make Susannah his Yoko?

And I think that this album and this song in particular is built for the "hardcore" fams.

There's no way a song like "Temptation" ever goes mainstream. Even if you edited out the demonic, drag me to hell ending. Reading about this song on PrinceVault, it looks like the ending was tacked on late, after he got sick of touring the same show for however many weeks and months and wanted to give up.

But speaking for myself (and likely a fair few others), this song is almost everything that I'd want/expect/need from a Prince song.The screams and the guitar work do it to me every time. It just feels hot, wet and sexy.

OldFriends4Sale said:

going 2 go find the Ladder... he said in a 1985 interview

interview with Rolling Stone.

I was 11 and truly believed him.

everybody wants to find salvation of the soul...

the song is really awful. I do know that.

That's some tasty haterade right there...