Other thread was getting a little long.

Continue!

sorry i couldn't quote this with proper attribution; the other thread was closed too suddenly.

What I find really interesting, is that, the upward trajectory Prince was on, Purple Rain, Parade, SOTT, it seemed that with age his music would be getting that more sophisticated. I mean Paul McCarthy had a good long run after the beatles releasing so interesting tracks. Much more so Jhon Lennon.


So to see Prince go from a genius to fallinginlovetonite-like tracks after his 87 zenith is quite jarring.

absolutely fair point. listen to "crystal ball", then listen to no other track ever.

The thing with that is that the sophisticated records didn't sell. Arguably "Joy In Repetition" is the last in that run, and GB wasn't considered a hit. Hence the 180, and putting together the D&P lineup, which, lest we forget, was a HUGE hit.

The public at large want Prince to be sexy, not sophisticated.

Obviously I love "Crystal Ball" but how do you think the public would have reacted to that?

Militant said:

"Joy In Repetition"

"Crystal Ball"

i listened to both of these this morning and honestly, i could have driven my car off a bridge and been happy.

Militant said:

The thing with that is that the sophisticated records didn't sell. Arguably "Joy In Repetition" is the last in that run, and GB wasn't considered a hit. Hence the 180, and putting together the D&P lineup, which, lest we forget, was a HUGE hit.

The public at large want Prince to be sexy, not sophisticated.

Obviously I love "Crystal Ball" but how do you think the public would have reacted to that?

this makes me sad in my heart. i don't care about the goddamn public, and i feel like ...

.

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uggghhhhhh

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if he's at a stage where he actually cares what the public thinks - i don't even know what to say or how to feel. he's the one who said that Prince (the album) was .. fuck. what's the word he used?

not "manipulative" but created to make the record company happy. and he didn't really care for it for that reason.

starkitty said:

.

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he's the one who said that Prince (the album) was .. fuck. what's the word he used?

CONTRIVED

V10LETBLUES said:

But seriously, something happened to the man. He is too young to come off so out of it. His lyrics and delivery is strange, like of someone much older or that actually did suffer a stroke. I've been talking about his awkward delivery making simple phrases come off so badly. His hearing! He uses a cheap digital trick to recreate his "camille" sound, and it sounds atrocious. Anyone, especially a discerning musician could hear and feel the difference. Mnplsound, Fallinlovetonight are so so badly made that it doesn't sound like they are by a professional much less a legend.

Before we all knew that a first time 23 year old kid put the stuff together I made a thread about the elephant in the room because people were not talking about how amateurish AOA sounded. If you like it cool, I have always said that, but that it was amateurish is undeniable. No one needed to confirm to me or others that it was put together by an amateur. It sounds like it. A bad amateur. One with nothing new to say. It's one thing to be an amateur, it's another to not have a unique perspective, something new to add to the art.

People trash music on the radio today, but that's only the less sophisticated among us.

The top music on the radio is produced and written and performed by the people at the top of their game. The young headline artists are another thing, but the people behind Taylor Swift are people at the top of their game. The true pros, the best money can buy.

Again, if people cannot hear that, cool, but it is obvious and again only the least sophisticated among us cannot tell.

Every word true.

Free Urself is more of a good song than a bad one for sure.

The lyrics are not Prince's worst, but they are still no more interesting than the latest JW pamphlet.

Not a strong song, mostly due to Prince's uninteresting ad-libs and boring as milk and toast collaborators. For me it's Strawberry Lake, albeit a frustratigly-hum-drum Prince-Iyanla-Fix-My-Life-styled one.

At this point I think Prince's released Sly and The Family Stone knockoffs outnumber his James Brown, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Staple Singers knock-offs, which is saying something really, given the last 20 years or so of releases.

It makes you wonder why he can't do any classic Prince sound knock-offs like the ones currently burning up the airwaves, as they have, every year since Prince invented the style, but you know, I guess that says more about me than it does about him.

It's a cute 'also-ran' track fromaa guy who has delivered far too many 'just ok' songs without a big hit, even if it's just a creative hit, in far too long. Given his higher profile of late, and the raised stakes and new energy of his Tidal deal, I'm expecting something more from Prince.

[Edited 10/1/15 6:56am]

Militant said:

The thing with that is that the sophisticated records didn't sell. Arguably "Joy In Repetition" is the last in that run, and GB wasn't considered a hit. Hence the 180, and putting together the D&P lineup, which, lest we forget, was a HUGE hit.

The public at large want Prince to be sexy, not sophisticated.

Obviously I love "Crystal Ball" but how do you think the public would have reacted to that?

I have noticed that my two favorite artists, Prince and Springsteen, hit their "sophisticated" peak well before they hit 30. Prince was writing incredibly sophisticated songs like "The Beautiful Ones" and "Strange Relationship", while Bruce was jangling the chord structures with "Kitty's Back" and "Jungleland".

But as each got older, their music has become less sophisticated. I have no idea why, but I have seen it happen to two geniuses so I guess it's just a function of age, audience, and experience.

RodeoSchro said:

BobGeorge909 said:

Ok....I'd like to clarify my 'i feel ya' position re: violetblues(?) Post. I somehow missed the bit about the stroke. I'm not feeling that...and HIGHLY doubting as well. Prince has led an obscenely healthy lifestyle to be popping off a stroke at pre 60....that's just silly. Many members of my family have had strokes...of many sizes...micro to fatal. Nothing of Prince says stroke AT ALL to me...that's just silliness.

oh c'mon, people say that jokingly when you are suddenly and dramatically off your game.

And when I speak of sophistication, it does not neccesarily mean "serious" work. Charles M Shultz art work was very simple but oozed charm and sophistication. Starfish and Coffee is likewise a charming track that oozes sophistication. That kind of work is the work of a master. Someone who knows and understands his/her medium enough to be playful with it. Prince certainly did, from simple charming tracks, lush balads, rock, funk and of course even agglomerations.
They all had that one thing that all masters have, to know enough of your craft to create something special. Serious or not.

[Edited 10/1/15 8:42am]

iZsaZsa said:

I took another listen today, hoping I was wrong yesterday..

Oh no, this song is still very bad, Rock N Roll Love Affair part 2.....

Damn what an awful song.... unfortunately,



I did try hard to like it somehow.. too safe and middle on the road, very BORING song...

I'm feelin' kind of "meh" about this one. It sounds rather bland and uninspired, especially after the masterful, exciting, and ear candy laced AOA and HNR. Even a straightforward rock album like Plectrum has a more blistering, energetic sound production and performance. This sounds more like the blandness of Stare and Baltimore.

-

However, with the exception of Fallinlove2nite and X's Face, I was rather underwhlemed with all of the single track releases until I heard them in context of Pleccy, AOA and HNR, so there's still hope. But right now I'm disappointed, especially in the wake of these recent three monster-kickass albums. I'm not going to let this new song damper my revived excitement over new Prince music.

thedance said:

too safe and middle on the road, very BORING song...

---

Yep! I couldn't agree more.

TheBoneRanger said:

What happened to all the enthusiasm that was in the other thread?

I love this track.. Its fun, its positive. 4 stars for me. Has it been identified who's singing backing vox in the last part of the song? The voice doesn't sound that familiar to me..

xpertluva said:

what I hear, related to all this, is insecurity. He doesn't seem confident enough in his new material to trust it, and let it grow into an exciting structure. Songs like Free Urself, which I think is pretty good, limp along without a build, no bridge, no vamp. It's frustrating as a listener, because you hear the potential, then the song ends.

.

ITS NOT UNUSUAL, though. Dylan released "Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle" in 1989, 23 years after "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands".

V10LETBLUES said:

And when I speak of sophistication, it does not neccesarily mean "serious" work. Charles M Shultz art work was very simple but oozed charm and sophistication. Starfish and Coffee is likewise a charming track that oozes sophistication. That kind of work is the work of a master. Someone who knows and understands his/her medium enough to be playful with it. Prince certainly did, from simple charming tracks, lush balads, rock, funk and of course even agglomerations.
They all had that one thing that all masters have, to know enough of your craft to create something special. Serious or not.

[Edited 10/1/15 8:42am]

So sophistication can be, like, not serious all the time?

xpertluva said:

'Sophistication' in the terms we're talking here comes from an artist's frame of mind, not from any of the rock journalists' (and normals') ideas about 'peaks and decline' due to aging etc.
The age aspect is only circumstantial...when you're 20-something, you're opening up to lots of currents in the world, trying to get a grasp of them, trying all of them on for size. The 'linear' progression of life then has it that you settle into what you like and start excluding other things.
This is what's called 'becoming set in your ways' or 'habits'.
As many get to discover, a disturbance in that linear progression of life, like deaths of loved ones, divorces or other 'ends of situations' can put you back into that investigative mode so the idea that the mode is age-related is false. Once again, the fact that many people go through these upheavals and 'reinvent' theit interests, is covered by such cliches as 'life begins at forty' and so on...

Prince is no longer writing sophisticated tunes because his attention is elsewhere...on what might be called 'esoteric' matters (in religious studies) which do not easily make for popular music ('The Rainbow Children' is the case in point here, an album where he really DID put his interests fully into the music and although it's well thought of now, it was once condemned, controversial AND didn't sell)

Music is his 'job' and he can do it well but it's clearly not the EXCESSIVELY all-consuming passion it once was and he's not constantly on the lookout for interesting themes to write about, to push with. He's often, like many peers with long careers, just turning in tunes and parking cliches like 'party' on them. There's no difference to the 'fun' aspect of creating them. What's missing is his once-constant desire to provoke.

You may say that Prince always had his religious 'obsession' and used to manage to combine it with 'sophisticated' artistry but there's another factor: he used to very LONELY in this. He used to make a rod for his own back with that.
And that, seemingly, came to an end with a series of crises toward the end of the Mayte period when he, by his own brief account, thought he was going mad.

After that, he found COMMUNITY and he likes it.

If you imagine what it must have been like to be singularly talented and 'situated' in a 24 hour 'be Prince the star in full regalia and makeup', you might get to WHY Prince likes a community that is, perhaps, best glimpsed in his Arsenio appearances. Arsenio, like many people from a 'Gospel' tradition are friendly and accommodating of a 'clean living' style of community and 'fun' is light-hearted rather than 'sophisticated'. Many in that community are involved also, as Prince is, in stricter scriptural study and their style of community is the means to recognise that without having to browbeat others around that community. It's a necessarily 'limited' arena, whereas the Prince whose absence people are lamenting on this thread was someone who did not BELONG to that voluntary limitation but was engaged in testing it, pushing it.

The truth is that he has accepted the community's limitation of that. He doesn't push anymore but he does still tickle it.

That's what Prince is thinking about ALL the time (possibly less than he had been just now) and he's 'set in his ways'.

To be optimistic, the last couple of years suggest increasing interest in other things but he's still handing off 'the job' to 'helpers' where once he was avowedly a control freak.

There's sophistication in this but it's mostly about time-management and staying 'community-oriented'.

The alternative would be to hook back to an antagonistic position, even one of excessive pride and blatant superiority, a complex whose inverse isn't much comfort when the isolation really bites.

Prince could have ended up dead like Michael Jackson and possibly much younger.
That he found a path which avoided that is cool with me.

It's not easy being a superhero, people

[Edited 10/2/15 2:31am]

[Edited 10/2/15 2:41am]