homesquid said:

How the fuck did Prince go from that unique, challenging, delicious genius album to Emancipation????!! Was a lobotomy performed on Prince we aren't aware of?

100% agreement on this. You've got nothing to be sorry about.

Lovesexy is his best album that he made.

Emancipation is the worst album that he made.

Problem is that the agony of Emancipation lasts 3 times longer. I still think it is used to torture suspects of terrorristic activities, by playing it loud and continuous in their holding cells. I'm pretty sure it is effective.

SoulAlive said:

herb4 said:

ufoclub said:

ufoclub said:

ufoclub said:

SoulAlive said:

The nude album cover and the choice of singles is what prevented Lovesexy from becoming a big-selling album.

There is not one track on that album that could be a commercial hit single. They are all too off the beaten path in one way or another, and also, at the time, his way of using of synth bass seems really retro and old school on tracks like Anna Stesia and Eye No. Almost late 70's old school. Artistically it is great, mainstream it was not in the USA. I would play peeps who were into other prince songs that album and they did not like it. Had nothing to do with the cover art because people listening to the radio did not see the cover. But I heard people dismissing Alphabet St when it came on. Most peeps did like the retro rhythm guitar part though.

Well it did pretty good over here in the Netherlands. Album hit number one and all 3 singles were top 20 (Alphabet St peaking at 5). In our charts the album and singles even did better than SOTT...

skipthecharades said:

ufoclub said:

SoulAlive said: There is not one track on that album that could be a commercial hit single. They are all too off the beaten path in one way or another, and also, at the time, his way of using of synth bass seems really retro and old school on tracks like Anna Stesia and Eye No. Almost late 70's old school. Artistically it is great, mainstream it was not in the USA. I would play peeps who were into other prince songs that album and they did not like it. Had nothing to do with the cover art because people listening to the radio did not see the cover. But I heard people dismissing Alphabet St when it came on. Most peeps did like the retro rhythm guitar part though.

Well it did pretty good over here in the Netherlands. Album hit number one and all 3 singles were top 20 (Alphabet St peaking at 5). In our charts the album and singles even did better than SOTT...

Excalty, i don't think many look past the US charts here.

Guitarhero said:

skipthecharades said:

Well it did pretty good over here in the Netherlands. Album hit number one and all 3 singles were top 20 (Alphabet St peaking at 5). In our charts the album and singles even did better than SOTT...

Excalty, i don't think many look past the US charts here.

As usual, USA is the beginning and the end, for some.

BlackCandle said:

ufoclub said:

Actually when I heard the title track I thought it sounded like a flattened less funky version of 1999. It's the big synth lines that open it and sound out on the chorus

I've often thought that too, but the part where Cats voice morphes into Princes was genius!

that part of the song is great!

skipthecharades said:

ufoclub said:

SoulAlive said: There is not one track on that album that could be a commercial hit single. They are all too off the beaten path in one way or another, and also, at the time, his way of using of synth bass seems really retro and old school on tracks like Anna Stesia and Eye No. Almost late 70's old school. Artistically it is great, mainstream it was not in the USA. I would play peeps who were into other prince songs that album and they did not like it. Had nothing to do with the cover art because people listening to the radio did not see the cover. But I heard people dismissing Alphabet St when it came on. Most peeps did like the retro rhythm guitar part though.

Well it did pretty good over here in the Netherlands. Album hit number one and all 3 singles were top 20 (Alphabet St peaking at 5). In our charts the album and singles even did better than SOTT...

That's why I specified the US charts. I realize the album did very well in the UK and Europe. But the truth is the US market is huge, so from a financial business sense it was important.

ufoclub said:

skipthecharades said:

Well it did pretty good over here in the Netherlands. Album hit number one and all 3 singles were top 20 (Alphabet St peaking at 5). In our charts the album and singles even did better than SOTT...

That's why I specified the US charts. I realize the album did very well in the UK and Europe. But the truth is the US market is huge, so from a financial business sense it was important.

Lovesexy sold around 750,000 in the U.S. alone, making it his first album not to hit Platinum status in the U.S. since For You...

However like stated world wide and in Europe it did sell pretty well, eventually selling over 2 million copies total world wide.

Well, if lovesexy is compared emancipation...we should not underestimate that work, because as it's seems someone from italy really appriciate that 3xCD set while someone is just cool about that - 75€ vs 7€

[img:$uid]http://s18.post.../img:$uid]

thedance said:

Lovesexy gets maximum from me, 10/10.

Such a unique work of art...

Those screaming guitars, and the many layers in the music...


Classic Prince and a very dear album to me..

Me, too.

databank said:

irreverence said:

.

I must say I have grown to really dislike this idea. To put this discussion in the same thread as discussions about other discussions with a similar topic would make it close to impossible to follow each argument. For me this is the equivalent of thought police. I don't like it here on the org - I enjoyed the anarchy of the forums, until this idea surfaced. Now everywhere I see you calling out for a lock.

My idea was to get a sticky for variations of "Prince is over and done" or "Prince has sabotaged his career", since once to twice a week a reformulation of this concept is an excuse for a new thread, and it's been going on without interruption (once or twice a week, I ain't shitting you, sad as it is) for YEARS.

Merging this with the gossip and nonsense thread was OldFriend4Sale's idea and I agree that maybe TWO different stickies should be created, because discussing P's make-up and haircut or theories about him foreseeing the future, being gay or being an illuminati isn't the same as moaning about how lame an artist he has supposedly become. However it's not my call to make and I do believe that allowing the same topic to be recreated week after week without anything new to say from its various OP's is little less than visual pollution on this forum. I would say the same if threads saying "Prince is the greatest musician of all times" were created every week, BTW: it's ridiculous to allow this to happen regardless of the topic or opinion it defends.

Since forum rules do not allow duplicates, I do not think creating a sticky for this is any more thought police than creating a sticky for a new album in order to avoid having 35 different threads about the new album coexisting on a chaotic front page. Impoirtant news and interesting threads about P's music or career just get lost in the chaos and it's a pity.

I really disagree. What you call chaotic, I call dynamic, and my guess is that the looseness of the topics on discussion is what creates the flow and whole energy of the site, since people just post instead of seeking out a sticky to put a comment behind on page 38.

A better solution would be to split the forum into two: "Prince music" and "Prince ... and more".

.

Regarding the posts about "Prince is over and done" - if this is what people are concerned with, let them stay. If nobody cares, it will soon vanish at the bottom of the page.

irreverence said:

feeluupp said:

IIRC Lovesexy was a number 1 album in the UK?

Selling great in general in Europe..

No question it's an amzing album... still sounds so refreshing and "edgy".... a Prince top-5 album for sure.

Love sexy =

Nice to see so much love here for Lovesexy. I have always felt that Lovesexy was in a league of its own to the degree that it shouldn't even be compared to any of P's other works.

It's absolute creative brilliance. It is like a classical composition of modern times, a suite of movements built upon a theme like symphonys from the era of the great classical composers.

There's a reason why it has no track coding on it. It's meant to be experienced as a suite. The dramatic instrumental bridge in Glam Slam is as good as anything ever written by Aaron Copland who was the 20th century's greatest talent.

The fact that it didn't sell well or that "fans didn't like it" says more about the listeners than it does about Prince. It's just too far outside the box for many people to "get."

It's an amazing treasure of a work that will sound just as brilliant a hundred years from now while hundreds of 5 minute songs will be apparent as just so much formula pieces.

It's too bad the economics of the music biz cannot support creativity on the level of Lovesexy.

thedance said:

IIRC Lovesexy was a number 1 album in the UK?

Selling great in general in Europe..

No question it's an amzing album... still sounds so refreshing and "edgy".... a Prince top-5 album for sure.

Love sexy =

Yes that's correct. It actually sold very well in Europe, Parade, SOTT, and Lovesexy all sold well, over 2 million.

In the U.S. the sales were low for those 3 albums. 1.9 for Parade, just 1 million for SOTT and 750,000 for Lovesexy.

I think that's why some of Prince's greatest live shows were in Europe that period, he felt the audience in Europe were more "sophisticated" and appreciated the music more...

[Edited 12/8/15 4:38am]

skywalker said:

feeluupp said:

Lovesexy sold around 750,000 in the U.S. alone, making it his first album not to hit Platinum status in the U.S. since For You...

However like stated world wide and in Europe it did sell pretty well, eventually selling over 2 million copies total world wide.

Think about that. Prince...in the 1980's, 4 years removed from Purple Rain, couldn't sell over a million copies of his new album in the USA?

The cover had a lot to do with it, as well as the lack of proper single and even the backlash of the Under the Cherry Moon movie. People were getting burned out on Prince, couldn't keep with him and I know for a fact that the blatant homoeroticism of that era cost him a lot of fans.

Lovesexy was great because of Sheila E. she did more than just sing background and play drums. she also helped on the Black Album and Madhouse 16. when Emancipation came out Sheila was long gone.

homesquid said:

Was a lobotomy performed on Prince we aren't aware of?

herb4 said:

There are legitimate criticisms to be leveled at the album, but the idea that Prince was repeating himself doesn't seem like a fair one. If anything, it was rather the opposite. I can't think of any tracks on it that sounded redundant or repetitive except for "When 2 R in Love", but that's every Prince ballad. I'm having a hard time drawing immediate comaprisons to "Eye Know", "Anna Stesia", "Dance On", "Positivity", "Glam Slam", "I Wish U Heaven" or even the title track from his prior catalog to that point.

If anything, I remember the general reaction being that the sound was, in fact, too far out there, overproduced, orchestral and ethereal to the point where people weren't sure exactly what the fuck to make out of it. I guess Parade would be the closest comparison.

Lovesexy has qualities. But yeah, the production... Well it did sound magic back in the days. But it doesn't age that well, and I think its's because of the clinical, somewhat cold sound. Susan Rogers bought an SSL console for Paisley Park, and that was a bad idea.
It made Lovesexy sound ethereal, crystalline, but also conformist. With a strange result, being the inventiveness of Prince moderated by the standard, compressed, hyper-realistic sound common to the late eighties.

The coldness of Lovesexy was greatly warmed by Bernie Grundman's mastering for the analog verions. Now, if you only know the CD, you miss half of the equation. Prince's vynil pressings were always on the perfect limit before distorsion, and as a result the kick drums and snares were REALLY pounding on the 2 and 4, the whole of so-called "overproduction" was crisp and clear and displaying every little of its musical details and craftsmanship.
It's not something you can replicate nowadays with the digital versions of Lovesexy, no matter how much you pump up the volume. The dynamics stay flat, everything's dead. Lovesexy on vynil was not, trust me and the other ol'timers.

Parade and SOTT (please again, refer to tape or vynil) are pure innovation, heck, SOTT paved the way for all the lo-fi sound that came after it, Beck and all the other copycats.

One thing you cannot take away from Lovesexy, is that, yeah, maybe the compositions are not top notch, but the way the songs build, every one of them gets perfect near the end. The "I Know", by Boni, Sheila and falsetto Skipper, The recited Alphabet in this odd 7 year old MJ's voice, The Roland D-50 coda of Glam Slam, the luminous gospel choir of Anna Stesia, the (finally) good political lyrics on Dance On, The hyper-excited, Über-sexual Camille, right down your halls, the climax of I Wish U Heaven, and bleak, apocalyptic gospel on Positivity.
And let us not forget the incredible performances of Atlanta Bliss and Eric Leeds, which propelled a good part of the album into higher dimensions.

Clinical sound or not, as every single song of Lovesexy goes by, pay attention to what's going on, deep in the mix. The mastery on the overdubs is not only technical, but musical as well. There's a lot going on, and very little is superfluous.

But the real thing that for me, defines Lovesexy, is the guitar. 1988 was, and will always be, the most creative and innovative year of Prince on the axe. The TGE years are great for the spirit they carry, but it's a guitar that sounds almost psychopath. The octaver chained to the wah-wah, the Marshall amps, and the way he plays is Fusion Jazz, but it forgets to sing in the end.
But maybe Skipper had sung everything he had to sing on the guitar by then.
He had to forget, and start up again on the nineties.

The Blue Angel was really something. I mean just listen to Dortmund's "Purple Rain" (heaven's just a Google away, Google away — do put your headphones on and listen to the crowd), "I Wish U Heaven" pt. II, "Anna Stesia", or "Positivity". Pay attention to the guitar phrases in the background.
He really pushes the envelope, it creates a style so unique that made Clapton himself stare. The apex of it being "Small Club", for the usual suspect reprise, and "Still Would Stand All Time", which is too often overlooked.

The guitar part of Batdance is insane, harsh, but never fails to be melodic. Listen to Dortmund's, "The Cross" again, pay attention to what goes on during just a minute and a half, once Sheila starts pounding that cowbell like a maniac. Here Prince litteraly talks to God through his axe.

But then all the rest of the album counts, Lovesexy is a concept.
Not the feeling you get from falling in love with a girl or a boy but with the Heaven above, Lovesexy.
Cross the line.
When Prince wrote Lovesexy the album, he was already envisioning what the Lovesexy Tour would be like. Lovesexy was a whole package : The logos ("Yes", "Newpowersoul"), the buttons on the side of the pants suddenly going berzerk, the Black Album (one of the most brilliant moves in show-business, what a clever man), the Thunderbird white rad, the biographic basketball dunks.

And, in a way, Lovesexy is the conclusion of the question mark that closes "Temptation", only 3, I repeat, 3 years before.

Lovesexy has depth and a purpose. But after singing about Sex, Love, God and redemption for ten years, what's left?
No wonder he went into deep paranoia after that. Look at his face during the Dortmund solo. Lovesexy was the achievement of everything that started on "Dirty Mind".

After that, one must take a long vacation away from the studio, rest and consider how Dylan and Bowie dealt with their respective post-five-masterpieces-in-a-row careers.

But no, he went on making Graffiti Fridge, that dumbass.

"For the last time, go to sleep Skipper, or else I'm coming and turning that console off!"

[Edited 12/9/15 19:14pm]

skywalker said:

feeluupp said:

Lovesexy sold around 750,000 in the U.S. alone, making it his first album not to hit Platinum status in the U.S. since For You...

However like stated world wide and in Europe it did sell pretty well, eventually selling over 2 million copies total world wide.

Think about that. Prince...in the 1980's, 4 years removed from Purple Rain, couldn't sell over a million copies of his new album in the USA?

Although the music after Purple Rain was genius, especially with albums like Parade and SOTT... It was genius to us and to the real educated music critics... Not to the general "POP" audience... Prince kept reinventing himself and his image album after album, year after year... The general audience wants one image one sound, they just wanted Purple Rain, which is why he never sold Purple Rain numbers again...

Musically the product increased in terms of creativity and quality... Commercially he went from over 25 million copies sold of Purple Rain to 3 million copes for ATWIAD... PARADE saw an increase in European sales which he sold more in Europe in the U.S. with Parade, SOTT and Lovesexy, hence whey he preferred to tour in Europe those years rather than the U.S.

Remember the Lovesexy tour in the U.S. was not frutifull, some sellouts in major places like NYC, Chicago, L.A. but most of the tour he was playing to empty arenas, the beginning of the tour when he opened up in his home state Kurt Loder even made a comment during the MTV special of the tour saying he couldn't even sell out his own state...

He was oversaturated on the market, the general public couldn't keep up... The only real commercial success he had in the 80's after Purple Rain was with the BATMAN album which was due to the fact it tied in directly with the blockbuster movie... Yet sales for that album were still modest with 4.4 million at the time.

^ being north-america-centric again, aren't we?

Lovesexy exploded all over Europe. Amidst people with great taste, that is.
A lot of people who were not die-hard fans went to the concerts.
The european tour was a success.
Dortmund was broadcasted in Eurovision. Live, which was a big technical thing for the times.

bonatoc said:

herb4 said:

There are legitimate criticisms to be leveled at the album, but the idea that Prince was repeating himself doesn't seem like a fair one. If anything, it was rather the opposite. I can't think of any tracks on it that sounded redundant or repetitive except for "When 2 R in Love", but that's every Prince ballad. I'm having a hard time drawing immediate comaprisons to "Eye Know", "Anna Stesia", "Dance On", "Positivity", "Glam Slam", "I Wish U Heaven" or even the title track from his prior catalog to that point.

If anything, I remember the general reaction being that the sound was, in fact, too far out there, overproduced, orchestral and ethereal to the point where people weren't sure exactly what the fuck to make out of it. I guess Parade would be the closest comparison.

Lovesexy has qualities. But yeah, the production... Well it did sound magic back in the days. But it doesn't age that well, and I think its's because of the clinical, somewhat cold sound. Susan Rogers bought an SSL console for Paisley Park, and that was a bad idea.
It made Lovesexy sound ethereal, crystalline, but also conformist. With a strange result, being the inventiveness of Prince moderated by the standard, compressed, hyper-realistic sound common to the late eighties.

The sound is good. Decent levels. Not very overcompressed (yet).

But maybe I should compare.

Do you have a flac or 320kbps mp3 of the 'warm' analog version that I can compare to the CD?

nyse said:

Just listened to LoveSexy again today. LOOOOOOVE this record!

Prince had some big balls (or tits to be fair- Lily Allen anyone?) back then right at the height of his fame.